Year: 2019
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 51:40
Size: 119,0 MB
Art: Front
(3:57) 1. Let's Face The Music And Dance
(3:57) 2. Catch A Falling Star
(3:32) 3. Boys And Girls Like You And Me
(5:11) 4. Clues Blues
(3:58) 5. Good Vibrations
(3:04) 6. Liza
(5:58) 7. Sunday, Monday Or Always
(4:36) 8. Y-am
(3:36) 9. To One I Love
(3:24) 10. What Is This Thing Called Love
(4:23) 11. Utah
(2:58) 12. I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart
(2:59) 13. And Pink, And Gold, And Blue
The sources of inspiration are clear (primarily the masterful The Newest Sound Around by Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake) but the expressive choices and personal talents of Alice Ricciardi and Pietro Lussu make the album original and compelling. The Milanese singer was a pupil of Blake at the New England Conservatory and absorbed her rarefied and alienating aesthetic; Pietro Lussu is a highly sensitive pianist, one of the best in Italy, and relates to it in a natural way.
Refinement and interpretative subtleties are the hallmarks of this piano/voice album, aspects that extend to the editing of the cover. The two protagonists are photographed on an athletics track at dusk: an unusual place for artists who are not preparing to compete like athletes but turn around to catch the lights of the first star. That's what the neon sign above them says, which is the title of a 1957 hit by Perry Como.
That simple nursery rhyme becomes the emblem of the disc and takes on an intense, almost metaphysical connotation in the version by Ricciardi and Lussu, in the contrast between the allusive vocal exposition of the singer and the disjointed accompaniment of the piano. The thirteen pieces of the repertoire have been carefully chosen, ranging across the board.
Classic US songbook tunes like "Liza" and "What Is This Thing Called Love"; little-used songs like "Sunday, Monday or Always" or "Boys and Girls Like You and Me"; the Beach Boys classic "Good Vibrations"; three of their originals and a composition by Steve Lacy with lyrics added by Giulia Niccolai (which on Lacy's album Momentum was sung by Irene Aebi). Each of these pieces is transfigured with the refinement and emotional intensity we were talking about. That of the couple is an essential lyricism that respects the melodic significance of the themes without distorting it.
While alternating the piano with the Rhodes, Lussu varies the accents, introduces harmonic asymmetries (Monk and Tristano would be pleased), plays on the contrasts of register and volume with reflexive depth. Ricciardi's singing expresses its value in the chromatic variety, in the clearness of exposition, in the colloquial game with which she varies the accents and reverberations of the voice. While consistent with the poetics of introspection and whisper assimilated by Ran Blake, different climates and situations characterize the musical journey, alternating subtlety and pathos. To remember as brilliant gems the imaginative rewriting of "Good Vibration," the sensuality and lyricism of "Sunday, Monday or Always," the slow and dilated "Clues Blues."By Angelo Leonardi https://www.allaboutjazz.com/catch-a-falling-star-alice-ricciardi-pietro-lussu
Refinement and interpretative subtleties are the hallmarks of this piano/voice album, aspects that extend to the editing of the cover. The two protagonists are photographed on an athletics track at dusk: an unusual place for artists who are not preparing to compete like athletes but turn around to catch the lights of the first star. That's what the neon sign above them says, which is the title of a 1957 hit by Perry Como.
That simple nursery rhyme becomes the emblem of the disc and takes on an intense, almost metaphysical connotation in the version by Ricciardi and Lussu, in the contrast between the allusive vocal exposition of the singer and the disjointed accompaniment of the piano. The thirteen pieces of the repertoire have been carefully chosen, ranging across the board.
Classic US songbook tunes like "Liza" and "What Is This Thing Called Love"; little-used songs like "Sunday, Monday or Always" or "Boys and Girls Like You and Me"; the Beach Boys classic "Good Vibrations"; three of their originals and a composition by Steve Lacy with lyrics added by Giulia Niccolai (which on Lacy's album Momentum was sung by Irene Aebi). Each of these pieces is transfigured with the refinement and emotional intensity we were talking about. That of the couple is an essential lyricism that respects the melodic significance of the themes without distorting it.
While alternating the piano with the Rhodes, Lussu varies the accents, introduces harmonic asymmetries (Monk and Tristano would be pleased), plays on the contrasts of register and volume with reflexive depth. Ricciardi's singing expresses its value in the chromatic variety, in the clearness of exposition, in the colloquial game with which she varies the accents and reverberations of the voice. While consistent with the poetics of introspection and whisper assimilated by Ran Blake, different climates and situations characterize the musical journey, alternating subtlety and pathos. To remember as brilliant gems the imaginative rewriting of "Good Vibration," the sensuality and lyricism of "Sunday, Monday or Always," the slow and dilated "Clues Blues."By Angelo Leonardi https://www.allaboutjazz.com/catch-a-falling-star-alice-ricciardi-pietro-lussu
Catch a Falling Star