Track List:
1 Samo 8:58
2 Inscape 9:38
3 De Kooning’s Double Portrait 10:21
4 The Whale 10:30
5 Tilsa 6:55
6 Longing 7:15
7 Okitatanana 6:48
8 Lush Life 6:01 (B. Strayhorn)
Four tracks on this album were either inspired or generated by the artistic qualities of four twentieth-century North and South American painters. I owe them a word of thanks for having illuminated my spirit. The other four songs are the result of a variety of sensations, but once again I want to thank the people, the places and the things that inspired me.
PORTRAITS:
Samo is dedicated to Jean-Michel Basquiat… and I’d like to thank my painter cousins Alvar Haro and Nieves Garcia for introducing me to his art. The track features a recurrent blues theme and a completely open part where we all three improvise together. I think we can only do that because we have spent 15 years playing together as friends.
Inscape. This song is for my compatriot Sebastián Matta. The structure is made up of a twelve-tone series, a transposition of the series for the bass, the chords are generated from above rather than below, but the most important thing is that the theme, the melody, is improvised by the drums after a piano intro. Listen to the refrains and the responses: Claudio makes a beautiful theme!
De Kooning’s Double Portrait. There is a great photo of Willem de Kooning that shows him in his studio aged eighty, in front of another photo of himself in his studio at forty. The paintings in the background have changed, but he has the same expression on his face: he is happy and at peace with the world. I get the same sensation from a 4/4 medium as when I look at this photo and his paintings. This track alternates parts in a regular tempo, but without any predetermined chords, with open parts. (It’s fantastic to be able to choose not only the note of the melody, but also the chords for improvising and generating different structures, and I have to thank Roberto for his musical understanding and intuition).
Tilsa. Tilsa Tsuchiya is a Peruvian painter who portrays strange creatures in weird, magical, mysterious worlds. This is one of those compositions where the melody turned up unexpectedly and the only thing I had to do was to “put the pieces together” to get a song.
…AND SONGS:
The Whale. This is a regular piece in 4/4 (although there are a couple of measures in 3/4 and a couple in 2/4 in the middle of the song), where we share the solos on a more or less classical model: the bass improvises on its own in the intro, the piano after the theme and the drums at the end on a pedal.
Longing is a poem by Emily Dickinson. The song has a multiple melody and an open form in a regular tempo. Just as in Samo, everything here depends on the interplay.
Okitatanana. I originally composed this track thinking of my continent, Latin America, and about Amazonas, its nature awakening with the dawn, but I hadn’t found a title for it. One day, my daughter Alice, who was about two at the time, woke up from her siesta and said: “okitatanana”. And that was when I realised that the song was complete.
Lush Life. This track is in memory of Tony Scott. I was lucky enough to play with him several times, so had a chance to witness the energy and generosity that only the great artists have. When Carla and I went to reserve the date for our wedding in Rome’s City Hall in 1994, we ran into the dancer and choreographer Cinzia Bastianon, who was then Tony’s companion: – what are you doing here? – we’re getting married! – so are we! So we got married on the same day and, when we came out of the Capitol, we had the honour of Tony playing and Cinzia dancing as we were showered with handfuls of rice. Thanks Tony.
All the tracks on this CD are first takes: the main reason why this was at all possible is the friendship that binds me to Claudio and Roberto. So I’d like to thank them for their musical understanding, their dedication and their trust in the music we have created over the years
Personnel: Antonio Flinta piano, Roberto Bucci bass, Claudio Gioannini drums
