TANGO VERTICAL, the new release from the Funky Juice label, is a successful bet, perhaps a surprising squaring of the circle, certainly the ideal meeting point between apparently distant musical worlds.
With this album, an idea by the Roman composer and guitarist Anton Giulio Priolo takes full and happy shape. By founding the ENSEMBLE SIDERAL, he brought together well-known musicians from the classical and jazz worlds. In order to fully reveal the intent and penetrate the refined constructive framework of the CD, it is more than ever appropriate to explain the complex personality of the musician who, in addition to being the interpreter of all the guitar parts, signs all ten songs that make up Tango vertical, nine as an author and one (the famous Oblivion by Astor Piazzolla) as a subtle orchestrator.
Anton Giulio Priolo, during his musical training, alternates his being a guitarist dedicated and passionate about jazz (and those musical forms related to it), with the study of composition that is completed in the traditional path at the Conservatory and in the advanced training courses that follow after graduation. But there is no predominance of one path over the other, rather an osmosis. It is in the DNA of this composer an instinctive idea of revolutionizing, mixing and experimenting. This leads his scores to be awarded in international composition competitions (in Italy, Spain and England) and to be commissioned and performed by important orchestras and chamber groups such as the Lazio Regional Orchestra or the London ensemble composed of musicians from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Christopher Austin. London is also the city that the musician chose to further broaden his horizons, also specializing in film music (with a master’s degree with honors from the prestigious Royal College of Music, as a student and then collaborator of the composer Dario Marianelli, Oscar winner for the film Atonement) and where he worked for several years, composing numerous soundtracks.
Tango vertical therefore closes that “circle” mentioned at the beginning, and is an extreme synthesis of this very rich musical journey.
The title of the CD alludes to tango, obviously alive and present in some songs, but it is also a pretext to fly and land musically not only in South America, but also in the vast Mediterranean basin that includes Spain, Portugal, Italy and the coasts of North Africa.
The lesson of the “Maestro” Astor Piazzolla (to whom homage is paid in the aforementioned Oblivion, here in a version for string trio and piano) finds its rightful counterpart in another very inspired track entitled Milonga para Elisa in which refined polyphonies of Bachian flavor and Brazilian reminiscences à la Villa-Lobos are compared. The piece that gives its title to the album is exquisitely “Argentine” in which, according to the best tradition, the main themes are entrusted to the accordion and the violin. The surprise, however, is found in the heart of the song where the master is a long and beautiful piano solo with a distinctly jazzy color that rests on a bed of strings; the pressing rhythmic base that forms the backbone of the song is also strongly jazzy. It is a CD that displaces and seduces with each new listen, always balanced between “cultured” music and popular music: from the North African percussions used masterfully to support the amusing Danza del pavo real and that accompany the virtuosic theme of the violin, to the colors of a modern flamenco just hinted at in Flamenco road, to the melancholy a bit typical of Portuguese fado in the splendid El aliento del mar, to the warmth and guitar virtuosity of Sublime ilusion and Rumba escondida, and again a cinematic “nuance” in the track entitled Felliniana in whose incipit we find an explicit homage to Nino Rota. In this CD, contamination stands out for not being an overlapping in which different styles are recognizable and combined in a scholastic way, but a new, already complete world that has its own stylistic “code”, its own common thread that runs through the entire listening experience.
Coming to the other musicians, the string quartet, which is the classical soul of the ensemble (sometimes acrobatic, sometimes ethereal and rarefied) is composed of Elisa Papandrea and Natascia Gazzana on violin, Daniele Marcelli on viola, and Laura Pierazzuoli on cello. The four musicians boast very respectable curricula having played for the most prestigious concert institutions, both chamber and symphonic, such as, among others, the Accademia Nazionale di S. Cecilia, the Quirinale, the Swiss Radio, the Covent Garden in London, the Musikverein in Vienna and the Lincoln Center in New York. Another cardinal point is the pianist Massimo Fedeli, a very well-known musician in the Roman area, who in recent years has also developed a visceral and very personal relationship with the accordion, an instrument that he masters with equal mastery and to which he naturally transfers his skills as an uncommon improviser. Special mention also goes to the instrument, built in the 1950s, that the musician uses in the recording and that magically combines in its peculiar sound the typical attack and dynamics of the accordion with the sweet melancholy of the bandoneon. Its presence and its beautiful solos punctuate pieces such as the aforementioned Tango vertical, the Danza del pavo real, Flamenco road, Felliniana and Agua de cielo.
To stay with the “black and white” keys, the classical pianist, internationally renowned concert pianist Tonino Riolo, is the other bursting musical personality called to participate in the project. His extraordinary touch and musical sensitivity – highly appreciated and absolutely out of the ordinary – give an intimate and precious version of Oblivion that, together with the strings, goes from moments of extreme rarefaction in the “pianissimo” to the dynamic explosions of the central part. No less intense and appreciable in its dynamic and timbric excursions is El aliento del mar, another piece in which the pianist’s singability and excellent technique find full satisfaction.
The rhythmic structure is entrusted to the sure and expert hands of two old acquaintances of the label: Stefano Cesare on double bass and Gigi Zito on drums, already authors and collaborators present in many titles of our catalog. Once again they demonstrate, for their part, that they are great musicians even before being very solid session-men called to confront – with their vast palette of colors and rhythms – with a repertoire that, due to its originality, lacks pre-established holds, therefore complex and heterogeneous.
Last, but certainly not least, is one of the most famous Italian percussionists: Arnaldo Vacca, of which it is also useless and boring to draw up the infinite list of collaborations and productions in which he took part. Suffice it to say that Arnaldo provides all his vast baggage of sounds and “essences”, sometimes inventing apparently impossible combinations, unusual combinations which, when all is said and done, bring freshness, originality and unity to the entire project.
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