Artist.......: Mario Schiano Joelle Leandre Renato Geremia
Album........: Blue Memories
Label........: Splac
Genre........: Jazz
Catnr........: CD H449.2
source.......: CDDA
rip.date.....: Feb-02-2010
str.date.....: 1995
quality......: VBR/44,1Hz/Joint-Stereo
Url..........: n/a
track title time
01. Blue Memories part one 13:09
02. Blue Memories part two 13:21
03. My Home 04:26
04. Blue Memories part three 14:21
05. Blue Memories part four 04:20
Runtime 49:37 min
Size 62,6 MB
Release Notes:
Recorded live in 1994 during an Italian jazz
festival, the Schiano/Leandre/Geremia trio proves
two things on this gig: one, that there is no trio
capable of making improvised music so completely
intimate and refined that it sounds as if it were
composed, and two: that there is such a thing as
musical empathy that transcends even the language
of music itself. Blue Memories is a suite: a
concerto for jazz and a free improv trio that is so
deeply communicated, it reaches past even the
listener's prejudices or hopes for a meeting of
such high caliber individuals. Mario Schiano plays
alto and soprano saxophone here and acts as a kind
of conductor while premier bassist and vocalist
Joδlle LΘandre creates a vast middle ground for not
only rhythm but for flights of the imagination --
which she herself often takes. Finally,
multi-instrumentalist and longtime Schiano
compatriot Renato Geremia doubles on tenor, but
also plays everything from clarinet to violin and
piano to flute as the piece develops. In the first
14 minutes, the interplay between the three is
established. Schiano looks to LΘandre to set the
tempo, which she does at a trot. Alternately bowing
and playing pizzicato, she forms tone fields and
harmonic bases from which to ascend. Schiano sets
the mood as basic and bluesy, keeping the tempo for
a few minutes before slowing it down to a slow
stroll as Geremia enters with the violin and sticks
an entire set of semi-quavers into the middle to be
negotiated equally. The blues-feel, the old,
forlorn, melancholy in Schiano's lyrical statement,
is taken up with both force and gentility by his
bandmates. Geremia and Leandre kick off section two
with deeply, sparely plucked bass, and
impressionistic, mysterious piano chords creating a
rhythmic theme, restrained and paced carefully. It
explodes at about nine minutes with Schiano taking
the small, timbral embouchures he was slipping
between his bandmates and goes full bore, head to
head not only with his bassist's instrument, but
her voice as well.
Even though it wasn't part of the original gig, but
recorded a day before, the trio breaks up their
suite -- or rather, the record producers do -- with
Leandre's "My Home": a work that showcases her
vocal style and open-toned bass playing, heavily
chorded and abstracted by the angular structure of
the composition. Schiano and Geremia are merely
painters on the tune, filling in wherever she needs
them to. It proves an interesting break, as the
pace and sheer number of instrumental and modal
ideas that get introduced in the last two sections
of Blue Memories is staggering, moving from
classical themes (Mozart, Haydn, Bach, Handel,
Geremia) -- to Abdullah Ibrahim's trademark B flat
major with a suspended ninth, (Geremia again) and
the "Girl From Impanema" -- to free association
based on the multi-ribboned sonic approach of John
Coltrane in the early '60s and Steve Lacy's
advanced harmonic abstracts put forth during the
early '70s. From bossa to brassa it's Schiano never
letting the noir-ish blues feeling completely slip
away from the foreground. Simply put, there is no
ensemble playing -- particularly in the
improvisational world -- like this at all. ~ Thom
Jurek, All Music Guide