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| Composer(s) | Antonio Carlos Tom Jobim, Charlie Haden, Cole Porter, Keith Jarrett, Paolo Paliaga, Pat Metheny, Quilapayún, Sergio Ortega, Violeta Parra |
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Why a solo piano album? I answer this question by telling what this experience represented for me. In solo piano, all three elements of music – rhythm, harmony and melody – are concentrated in the pianist’s hands; more than on them, however, they depend on his artistic maturity, on his vision and on his aesthetical approach to the world. Harmony has a fascinating logic of its own. In the pieces’ composition, it allows for emotional itineraries which are discovered at the same moment of the composition. This is a mystery and a revelation which engenders torment and satisfaction at the same time. To encounter a progression which reveals itself in the act of its research is a gesture leading to enchantment and emotion. Rhythm is the foundation of vitality, it is ”swing”, it is beat, primeval movement, pulse, dance, the moving of things. There are many ways to express rhythm, not just one; thus, every piece possesses its own beat, and all beats must reach the listener.
Melody is perhaps the easiest to welcome, because it is singing, and singing is immediate, instantaneous; it enters, and, if it pleases, it remains, inhabiting those listening to it. The pianist plays with these three elements like a juggler sending clubs heavenwards, and walks on the thread of improvisation like a tightrope walker on his rope. To cite a famous equilibrist, “staying on the rope is living, the rest is waiting”. What is essential cannot be said because it is made by life, by one’s experience, by the people we love and we have loved, by our vision of the world, by one’s lived experience and by the context and epoch when one lives. Precisely here lies the essence of one’s musical poetics. Paraphrasing Isadora Duncan, we can say: “could I say it in words, I wouldn’t need to play it”.
The arts’ task is to reconstruct what has been broken, lost, what comes back no more but belongs to us.
In an epoch where everything can be technically reproduced, the performance error – which is inherent to the playing of a jazz piece – speaks about the human element which draws itself free from the machine and the inexorability of the technical mastery.
Many art forms still resist to this process and represent an outpost, a resistance, a refuge and a meeting place where many aspects of the human being encounter and unite with each other.
In solo piano playing there is no compromise, no safety net, or places where to hide or camouflage; the solo piano exposes the performer in all of his dimensions, and leaves no safety. For this reason, it is a total, complete, fascinating and terrible experience, all at the same time; in sum, a vital experience. Enjoy your listening!
Paliaga, Paolo (Pianist) For years, carries on his work as a composer and a performer on the national and international scene with different formations. With his group “Alboran Trio” ,”Paolo Paliaga Quartet” and “Horizon Quartet” has recorded a dozen CDs. He studied jazz piano with, Sante Palumbo, Arrigo Cappelletti and Enrico Pieranunzi. He has composed soundtracks performed live for several films including “The Mother” by Vsevolod I. Pudovkin and “Peter Pan” by Brenon (1924). He lived a few years in France, where he collaborated with French musicians and recorded a CD with the goup “Faena”. He has played in several of the most important jazz festivals in Europe: “London Jazz Festival” and “Brecon Jazz Festival” in the UK, “Rome Jazz Festival”, Bergamo and Padova Jazz Festival in Italy, the “San Javier Festival” and “Madrid Jazz Festival” in Spain among others. With Alboran Trio was selected from among the eight best new jazz trio in Europe Award in Monaco, the BMW Welt. Again with Alboran Trio has played in Bulgaria, Turkey, Albania, Norway and Austria. It was the first Italian group to have an exclusive contract with the prestigious German label ACT. In 2008, the music critic Franco Fayenz called his trio “the musical event of the year.” He has collaborated with musicians such as Enrico Rava, Barbara Casini, Gianni Basso, Ares Tavolazzi and others. In recent years, he is producing concerts of solo piano and has participated several times in the radio show “Inventions for two voices” of Rai Radio 3 curated and designed by Pino Saulo. His musical research continues especially with Alboran Trio, in Piano solo and in the duo of pianos with classical pianist Roberto Plano.
Antônio Carlos [Tom] (Brasileiro de Almeida) Jobim,
(b Rio de Janeiro, 25 Jan 1927; d New York, 8 Dec 1994). Brazilian composer, pianist, guitarist and arranger. In his early teens he took piano lessons from Koellreutter and later from Branco and Tomás Terán, and also studied orchestration, harmony and composition. In the mid-1940s he began to work as a pianist in the bars and nightclubs of Rio's beach areas of Copacabana and Ipanema. In 1952 he worked as an arranger for the recording firm Continental and his first recorded pieces appeared in the following year. He became the artistic director for the Odeon label in 1956 and began a lifelong association with the poet Vinicius de Morais, composing and conducting the music for the play Orfeu da Conceição.
Cole (Albert) Porter
(b Peru, IN, 9 June 1891; d Santa Monica, CA, 15 Oct 1964). American songwriter. His parents were wealthy and his mother, Kate, an accomplished amateur pianist, arranged for him to learn violin from the age of six and piano from the age of eight at the Marion Conservatory, Indiana. Porter began writing melodies – The Bobolink Waltz (1902) for piano was his first published work – and contributed words and music for amateur shows at the Worcester (Massachusetts) Academy (1905–9) and for the Dramatic Club at Yale University (1909–13). He sang with and conducted the university glee club and wrote two songs, Bingo Eli Yale and Bulldog, which remained popular as Yale football songs. For a time he studied law, but in 1915–16 studied harmony and counterpoint at Harvard University. In 1915 two of his songs were performed on Broadway (‘Esmerelda’ in Hands Up and ‘Two Big Eyes’ in Miss Information) and in 1916 he had his first Broadway show, See America First, a ‘patriotic comic opera’ modelled on Gilbert and Sullivan; all these shows were failures.
Keith Jarrett,
(b Allentown, PA, 8 May 1945). American jazz pianist and composer. He began learning the piano at the age of three, and by the time he was seven had presented a full recital and was composing and improvising. He played professionally throughout his elementary school years, and during his teens toured for one season as piano soloist with Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians. In 1962 he moved to Boston, where he spent a year, on a scholarship, studying at Berklee College of Music. He then began working in the Boston area with his own trio and also with such visiting artists as Tony Scott and Roland Kirk. He moved to New York in 1965 but, having decided to avoid commercial work, was scarcely noticed until Art Blakey heard him during a jam session at the Village Vanguard. He joined Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in December of that year and stayed with them for four months, gaining critical notice and making his first recording with an established group, Buttercorn Lady (1966, Lml).
PAOLO PALIAGA - pianist and composer
For years, carries on his work as a composer and a performer on the national and international scene with different formations. With his group "Alboran Trio", "Paolo Paliaga Quartet","Horizon Quartet" and “Piano solo” has recorded about fifteen CDs. He studied jazz piano with Sante Palumbo, Arrigo Cappelletti and Enrico Pieranunzi.
Degree in Political Science in Milan, and a PhD in Sociology.
He has composed soundtracks performed live for several films including "The Mother" by Vsevolod I. Pudovkin and "Peter Pan" by Brenon (1924). He lived a few years in France, where he collaborated with French musicians and recorded a CD with the goup "Faena". He has played in several of the most important jazz festivals in Europe: "London Jazz Festival" and "Brecon Jazz Festival" in the UK, "Rome Jazz Festival", Bergamo and Padova Jazz Festival in Italy, the "San Javier Festival" and “Madrid Jazz Festival” in Spain among others. With Alboran Trio was selected from among the eight best new jazz trio in Europe Award in Monaco, the BMW Welt. Again with Alboran Trio has played in Bulgaria, Turkey, Albania, Norway and Austria. It 'was the first Italian group to have an exclusive contract with the prestigious German label ACT. In 2008, the music critic Franco Fayenz called his trio "the musical event of the year." He has collaborated with musicians such as Enrico Rava, Barbara Casini, Gianni Basso, Ares Tavolazzi and others. In recent years, he is producing concerts of solo piano and has participated several times in the radio show "Inventions for two voices" of Rai Radio 3 curated and designed by Pino Saulo.
His musical continues especially with the Alboran Trio in Piano solo and duo piano with classical pianist Roberto Plano combining traditional jazz with the sounds and the sound dimension more European and African roots of rhythm. In 2020 the CD "Islands" was the winner of the “Golden prize” for the "Best Jazz Record of 2020" by the Japanese magazine "Jazz Hyhyo".
In 2022, together with the graphic artist Jesus de la Iglesia, he conceived and prepared the show 'Anthropocene, the tale in sounds of modernity', playing live on the animation of the painting 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' by Hieronymus Bosch.
Pat(rick Bruce) Metheny
(b Lee’s Summit, MO, 12 Aug 1954). American jazz-fusion guitarist, composer and bandleader. He started on the trumpet, but at the age of 14 took up the guitar. In his late teens he enrolled at the University of Miami but was so proficient that he was appointed as a guitar instructor in his second semester. In 1973 he began teaching the guitar at the Berklee College of Music and in 1974 he joined Gary Burton’s group, at which point he took up the 12-string electric guitar to differentiate his sound from that of Burton’s other guitarist, Mick Goodrick. He left Burton in 1977 and formed a quartet that included the keyboard player and composer Lyle Mays, who has remained as Metheny’s longstanding associate into the 1990s. Away from the quartet, Metheny and Mays joined Joni Mitchell (1979), and Metheny spent two months in 1980 performing with the tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, the double bass player Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. In 1981 he established a quintet that included Michael Brecker. In these settings Metheny has toured almost unceasingly, establishing a large and wide audience for his music. In the early 1990s he also toured and recorded in a quartet with Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette, worked on other projects with Haden, Jim Hall and John Scofield, and with Holland and Roy Haynes.
Sergio Ortega
(b Antofagasta, 2 Feb 1938). Chilean composer. At the age of 20 he abandoned architecture training for a career in music, studying composition with G.B. Schmidt and Roberto Falabella at the University of Chile. In 1969 he became a professor of composition there, taking over the artistic direction of the university television station the following year. Forced by political events to flee Chile in 1973, he settled in Paris, where he became director of the Ecole Nationale de Musique at Pantin.
Ortega's operas, songs, chamber music and film scores have been heard throughout Europe as well as in Chile. But he has reached his widest audience with his two political anthems Venceremos (‘We Shall Triumph’), composed in 1970 as the hymn for Salvador Allende's government, and El pueblo unido jamás será vencido (‘The People United will Never be Defeated’), written in May 1973 in protest against the growing right-wing movement in Chile. Political protest is also central to many of his operatic and vocal works; the writing of Pablo Neruda has proved a particular inspiration in this respect. His music incorporates atonal and other modernist techniques alongside a memorable lyricism, and draws on Chilean musical traditions, though rarely through the use of actual quotation and never merely for the sake of local colour.
Violeta Parra
(b San Carlos, Nuble, 4 October 1917; d Santiago, 5 February 1967). Chilean traditional singer, collector, cantautor (singer-songwriter), poet and artist. Parra inherited a folkloric repertory from her parents, singing with members of her family in circuses, theatres and bars in Santiago. From 1953 she dedicated her life to the subject of Chilean folklore: collecting, broadcasting on radio, recording and teaching. During the periods 1954–6 and 1961–4 she lived in France, based in Paris, performing in festivals, theatres, clubs, radio and television and recording Chilean music. In 1964 her art was exhibited at the Louvre’s Musée des Arts Decoratifs. On her return to Chile she installed a tent in a suburb of Santiago called La Reina, and here she lived and worked with Chilean popular culture, performing until her premature death by suicide.
