It's often been said that "you can't go home
again" - but with his Italian Job project, Lello Molinari proves that old
cliché wrong. The acclaimed bassist has not only returned to his Italian roots,
but brought with him three decades of experience as a bandleader, an educator,
and a virtuosic bassist with his fingers on the pulse of modern jazz. Now he
views the unparalleled musical traditions of his homeland through the lens of a
lifetime's worth of accumulated musical knowledge, creating something that's
both Old World and New, deeply personal while reflecting a profound tradition.
Molinari left his native Naples, Italy in 1986 to study jazz
at Boston's Berklee College of Music. In the intervening years he's gone on to
become a revered educator at that same institution, perform as an in-demand
bassist on both the jazz and classical music scenes in Boston, tour the U.S.
and Europe with his own Quintet, and venture to the leading edges of jazz in
partnership with saxophone great George Garzone.
In recent years, however, Molinari began to glance back over
his shoulder at the wealth of musical riches to be found in the land of his
birth. That adventure began as part of his 2000 album Multiple Personalities,
which peppered three Italian tunes into an album that also veered from
forward-leaning jazz to a Monk classic, and featured Garzone, guitarist Mick
Goodrick, pianist Frank Carlberg and renowned Italian vocalist Chiara Civello.
On the 2016 release Lello's Italian Job, Volume 1, he explored material from
across the wide spectrum of Italian song - traditional folk music, classical
arias, popular songs - and radically transformed them through his own singular
jazz voice. Now, with Lello's Italian Job, Volume 2, he offers a second
collection that marries timeless melodies to contemporary sounds. The CD will be released on Friday, March 9,
2018 via Fata Morgana Music.
"I had a desire to reconnect with my roots,"
Molinari says. "But I also wanted to incorporate these new things that
I've learned over the years here in the States to old material and give it a
fresh look and a fresh take."
As on the first volume, Molinari leads a quartet of stellar
artists who share his Italian heritage - and are all members of the Berklee
faculty. Drummer Marcello Pellitteri is a fellow immigrant, hailing originally
from Sicily, while saxophonist Dino Govoni and guitarist Sal DiFusco are both
Italian-American. Their repertoire for Volume 2 varies from a Respighi tone
poem to popular Neapolitan songs that have been sung for generations, to
original music penned for the project.
With centuries of musical history to delve into, Molinari
found that the hardest part of the project has been whittling down his list to
just enough repertoire to fill (so far) two volumes. "Rather than picking
which songs to do, I really had to think about which ones not to do," he
says. "If you think about Italian music, it's like saying
'Jazz' - there's so much and it's so diverse that it's
impossible to put it into one place. Because I play with a number of
orchestras, I've reconnected recently with classical music and opera. Then
there are certain pieces of music that I just adore and that I wanted to do
with my group in my way. Others were songs that I grew up with, folk songs that
I've known since I was a kid. So it was a natural process."
The insistent tap of Pellitteri's percussion opens "'O
Sarracino," a popular song by legendary Neapolitan performer Renato
Carosone, given a jazz-funk feel by Govoni's keening soprano, Molinari's slinky
electric bass line, and DiFusco's strummed groove. "Jazz Tarantella"
takes the melody that is the bane of every Italian's existence - you know the
one, it accompanies every Italian stereotype and cartoon that's ever appeared
on screen - and reimagines it as an alluring straightahead jazz tune in the
vein of Miles Davis' "Dear Old Stockholm." DiFusco's original "Sulla
Strada di Damasco" follows, inspired by the story of the conversion of
Saint Paul and incorporating a vaguely Middle Eastern feel.
"Intermezzo Sinfonico," from Pietro Mascagni's
operatic masterpiece "Cavalleria Rusticana," is jolted into the
present via Govoni's EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument) and Lello's harmonies on
Electric basses, while Pino Daniele's "'na Tazzulella 'e Café" makes
the unlikely journey from Napoli espresso bar to Bourbon Street coffeehouse in
Molinari's New Orleans-influenced arrangement. Ottorino Respighi's
four-movement tone poem "Pini di Roma" becomes a lush,
impressionistic ballad, followed by Luigi Canoro's famous mazurka "Tra
Veglia e Sonno," which opens familiarly with a mandolin and percussion
intro before Govoni's tenor shifts it firmly into the jazz realm.
"Lidio Napoletano" shows off the improvisational
empathy of the trio, built on a short melody in the Lydian mode and created in
homage to the treasured Boston band The Fringe, mainstays on the local scene
for more than four decades. "Anema e Core," which has been sung in
different languages by everyone from Perry Como to Andrea Boccelli, is a famous
Neapolitan song written by Salve D'Esposito in 1950, rendered as a moving duet
for bass and guitar. Another song that's traveled the globe, the famous
"Torna a Surriento" has been recorded by everyone from Luciano
Pavarotti to Dean Martin to Elvis Presley (as "Surrender"), its
heartbreaking melody here pairing Govoni's EWI with cello played by Meena
Murthy. The gorgeous melody of "Tu 'si 'na Cosa Grande" is set to a
slow, swaying beguine, while Molinari and Pellitteri close the session with an
improvised duet, evocatively titled "Neapolitan Snake."
"I guess as I get more mature," Molinari
concludes, "I don't need to play 'punk jazz' anymore or do music that's so
difficult to listen to. I can enjoy a simple structure, a simple melody -
Lello's Italian Job lets me do both, reinterpreting this old material from a
new, contemporary jazz point of view."
Born and raised in Naples, Italy, bassist, bandleader and
educator Lello Molinari studied contrabass at the Scuola Civica in Sesto San
Giovanni. In 1985 he joined the Italian Vocal Ensemble, performing on radio and
television as well as at Italy's leading jazz festivals. The following year he
moved to Boston to study at Berklee College of Music, earning his Bachelors
Degree there and his Masters from the New England Conservatory. He's since
joined the Berklee faculty, where he leads an ensemble dedicated to the music
of his mentor, Dave Holland, and a new ensemble drawing on Italian repertoire.
In the early '90s Molinari toured the US and Canada with the acclaimed
Either/Orchestra and began a longstanding collaboration with sax great George
Garzone. Since 1992 he's been the principal bassist for the Melrose Symphony
Orchestra, with whom he's recorded several albums. He's also a member of the
Cape Ann Symphony, Hillyer Festival Orchestra, and Salem Philharmonic. Molinari
has played with such jazz legends as Kenny Wheeler, George Garzone, Mike
Melillo, Jerry Bergonzi and Victor Lewis, leads his own Quintet and co-leads
the trio 3Play. Lello's Italian Job, Volume 2 is his 5th release as a leader.
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