From a very young age, Italian-born, Boston-based drummer
and composer Giuseppe Paradiso always felt like a person who was a little
different. He’d been exposed to many different styles of music as a serious
young drummer and delved headlong into everything from flamenco music to jazz,
bebop, pop and the melancholy cadences of southern Italy’s funeral marching
bands that first inspired him. But he never really felt like he belonged with
any one group until he moved to Boston after receiving a scholarship to attend
Berklee College in 2008.
Inspired by the multiculturalism of that city, Paradiso’s
writing began to combine elements from all the different cultural influences he
encountered. He’d struggled for many years to find a musical identity, and suddenly
the opportunity to work so closely with people from so many different cultures
transformed what was once a struggle into a distinct creative advantage.
This is what inspired MERIDIAN 71, a cross-cultural music
project that Paradiso created and has led since 2012. The project, whose name
comes from Boston's longitude - the 71st meridian that passes precisely through
the eastern part of the city - is now set to release its second album
Metropolitan Sketches (to be released 02/12/2020) featuring original
compositions by Paradiso which he performs with an eclectic and multicultural
ensemble of well-established Boston-based musicians.
“Boston is the location where I met musicians from different
parts of the globe with whom I deeply connected and spoke the common language
of music,” reflects Paradiso. “It felt like I had known for a long time that at
some point in my life I would have met musicians just like them, from way
before moving across the Atlantic in 2008. Meridian 71 becomes then the creative
laboratory and space to develop this music.”
Median 71 is more than a band in concept; it's a dynamic and
ever-changing musical project with a revolving lineup and a driving vision to
create several more albums in upcoming years. The new album differs, both in
terms of lineup and musical themes, from the projects first release Otherness
Collection, which came out in 2012.
“I think my writing on this album is more mature, as seven
years have passed by since I first began working on it,” reflects Paradiso. “On
the previous work, the tendency was more toward the jazz field, whereas on
Metropolitan Sketches I wanted to incorporate more of my deeper influences.
This project’s lineup reflects exactly those influences, manifesting somewhere
between a jazz, Mediterranean, and West African sound.
This change in personnel is perhaps best personified by the
inclusion of the Senegalese griot from the Gewel tradition and Sabar musician
MALICK NGOM, an amazing player and a very knowledgeable expert of West African
music. The project’s current line-up also features some of the Boston area’s
top musical talents including guest jazz trumpeter PHIL GRENADIER,
internationally touring musician, Berklee, and New England Conservatory faculty
MARK ZALESKI; internationally renowned Turkish pianist and composer as well as
Berklee faculty UTAR ARTUN; in high demand jazz guitarist PHIL SARGENT; and
world music, electric fretless bassist GALEN WILLETT
Paradiso began his official training in music when he was
just five years old in the Southern Italian town of Puglia. At the age of 14,
he was invited to attend the “N. Piccinni” classical conservatory where he
studied classical music with a focus on percussion, as well as training on
classical piano and classical composition for eight years.
“I started to compose when I was about sixteen,” says
Paradiso. “Some of my major inspiration for writing, believe it or not, was
actually the music of marching bands for funerals in southern Italy. I was very
inspired and touched by the funeral music of my hometown, and when I was
sixteen I even wrote some funeral themes. So, my writing, I guess, has always
been inspired by this melancholic key.”
This inspiration accounts for the heavily cinematic tone and
the thematic thread of 'a search for belonging' that runs through the tracks on
Metropolitan Sketches. The first track
“Nomvula (Mother of Rain)” is inspired by the life-story of one of Paradiso’s
very dear friends who’d immigrated from South Africa during apartheid. A black
woman who arrived in Boston as a refugee when she was just twelve-years-old
with no parents, no family, nothing, her life-story really resonated with
Paradiso’s own search for belonging, which led him to the historied
metropolitan immigrant hub. Musically, the track is a little bit of a
combination of her life story merged with musical inspiration Paradiso felt
after watching a movie about the life of John Coltrane.
The third, fourth and fifth tracks on the record comprise a
trilogy story that represents a piece of Paradiso’s own family heritage. His
mother's mother was a gypsy descendent, and after watching a movie about the
history of those nomads, he was again inspired to write something about his
roots. “Introduction to Tuntkah,” is a haunting drum solo piece that tells the
story of a caravan moving along slowly across distant lands. Then, when coming
to a halt at the end of the day, a drummer would play a sequence meant for
collective healing and giving the travelers the energy to keep moving forward.
“Tuntkah (The Nomad King),” is a story Paradiso created in his mind when he
imagined a king who would give up his kingdom and all his wealth and fame to
live the wandering life of a nomad. And “A Partial Life Story” depicts the
nomad king arriving in some new place where nobody knows him. Says Paradiso, “I had in my mind when I was
writing that song, that people often get
an idea of you, but there’s always a whole side that they won't ever really
know. A part that is always a mystery. So, the impressions we get of people are
only partial life stories."
The final track of the album “Metropolitan Sketches,” which
is also the title track, is a composition Paradiso started way back in 2011 and
finished nearly six years later in 2017. The varying instrumentation, time
signatures and moods of the track invite the listener to imagine they are
cruising into a vast multicultural city, and as they pass through from area to
area, they experience different atmospheres, different kinds of vibe, different
colors, different cultures and foods, and so on. All within the same city. “I
built the song in that way with a lot of different sections, very different
from each other, to bring the essence of the truly multicultural city to life”
Meridian 71’s official CD release show is scheduled for Feb
13, 2020, at Regattabar in Cambridge, MA following their online release date on
Feb 12, 2020. More tour dates to be
announced.
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