Mottetti

Les grands voillers - La fleur - L'autre - Ambigua favola - La dance que tu cherches - Le mur - Sulla rena - Spotorno 1991 -

Encore une minute - Dolce signora - Daniel - Spotorno 1991 (alternate take) - Il mondo tu

Members

Gianmario Liuni (piano); Arrigo Cappelletti (piano); Maria Antonazzo (voice); Tito Mangialajo Rantzer (double bass); Alessio Pacifico (drums)

Lyrics: Gianmario Liuni, Mara Cantoni (L'autre) - French translation: Maria Antonazzo

Original compositions and arrangements: Gianmario Liuni

Milano - 19th,20th June, and October, 20th 2003

SPLASC(H) CDH926.2

I due the birth of this work to the need of giving a human voice to that constant lyricism that all my compositions and my way of improvising got. Moreover the composing of melodies dedicated to texts (written by me) has let me develop wide melodic arks extended by piano and double bass improvisations (a real wonder the cantabile nature of Tito Mangialajo Rantzer's lines). Singing has been entrusted to Maria Antonazzo, a mezzo-soprano with great performance ability and an almost theatrical attitude, that helped to get a very original result in consideration of jazz premises. Alessio Pacifico has shown as an ideal partner once again, in a situation where a great soul fineness is required to let drums “sing”. The CD title has been inspired by Eugenio Montale's “Mottetti”, love poetries for Clizia, a character embodying the Divine Lover, sensitive and evocable mean of any absolute. Such an inspiration has conditioned the general mood of the work, the texts' brevity, the certainty that beyond any human love wager there's the wager for the divine Love. I due much of the general structure of the excerpts to my listening to Steve Swallow's work “Home”, that my friend Tito recommended me. Special thanks to Arrigo Cappelletti for his master interpretation of “Il mondo tu” and for having me lead into the world of polytonality where “L'autre”, with its wonderful and psychoanalytic text by Mara Cantoni, and “Le Mur” are just an example.

Gianmario Liuni

REVIEWS

Review taken from "Suono":

European jazz, and Italian one sometimes, are going through difficult years, where much has been said and the current “cerebral” tendency of the old continent in making music – that is specially true for jazz – walks along an insidious path, swinging between the beauty of not being superficial and the uploading of excessive haeviness whatever you make. In one sense this good CD raises the question once again. Liuni plays with charm and without filling with useless virtuosity a slow and reflexive music, which is played in trio with an effective aid from the drummer Alessio Pacifico and an efficacious Tito Mangialajo Rantzer at the contrabass. In the final piece “Il mondo tu” the piano is left to Arrigo Cappelletti , who adds a touch of style. The texts, almost entirely in French, are adjusted and sung by Maria Antonazzo, who has a fine tone and fills with a certain passion some moments of the composition. Some deceleration in the mechanism can be heard when the excerpts take a long time over atmospheres which sometimes seem to be excessively constructed, thus running the risk of having some involution. Actually the border-line between a composition which has been cleverly studied to be new and intellectual temptations is quite always weak and not well-marked. Fortunately we aren't in presence of a pure show of compositive ability here, so that it's also easy to prize the sound balance and some good intuitions on the armonic level, which all together invite to an accurate listening and however give a quiet and relaxed atmosphere, without particular asperities. To conclude, some implosion in a good CD.

(artistic mark:7 ; technical mark:7)

Pierluigi Zanzi - "Suono" n° 380, May 2005

Review taken from "All About Jazz Italia":

It is an interesting work balanced between music and poetry, two arts well-mastered by Gianmario Liuni , who writes lyrics and music and is also protagonist at the piano. Excellent rhythmics accompany him: well-known Tito Mangialajo on the double bass, amazing Alessio Pacifico on the drums and Maria Antonazzo's voice. The last one unavoidably plays a most important part, which she's able to perform with good personality, especially in the several tracks she translated in French. Her performance isn't properly jazz, on the contrary it appears more impressionist and recalls Irene Aebi. But this is exactly what the musical work type demanded. A lot of musicians rotate around the singer, and they do it with great mastery. Liuni has a mixed style, which often recalls the guest of the last track: Arrigo Cappelletti , who has already connected poetry and jazz-inspired music several times; but Liuni, maybe better than the composer, can weigh out silences and open spaces for his partners. Mangialajo is conspicuous for his substantial accompaniment, not merely lyrical, with a solid sound, and for some solos at high level (“Sulla rena”). Finally, Pacifico passes from a light use of brushes (“Les grands voliers”) to rhythmical passages almost march-like (“Le Mur”) with great fluency and without altering chamber music atmosphere. The work has its own highly consistent poetics, that is pursued with coherence, without loss of style. It is singular in the approach, maybe a little less in the atmospheres, but it is an excellent quality work as a whole, besides having greatly impressive passages.

Neri Pollastri - "All About Jazz Italia", February 2006

Recensione di Steven Loewy "allmusic"