To be both lyrical and ironic is the sole shield against utter despair.
(Gian Marco Griffi, Mexican Railways, Laurana Publishing, Milan).
Paul Bley used to assert that the solo piano is a relentless duel with the instrument, a contest to see who will ultimately triumph. This solo piano CD, with a title – “Tough Love” – suggesting the complexities of affection, narrates a rather different tale. There’s an absence of performance anxiety, of violence, of ambition. Merely an endeavour over two unremarkable autumn afternoons, within a friend’s quaint, somewhat ‘vintage’ studio located on Milan’s outskirts, to reacquaint myself, to inch closer, as life draws to its conclusion, to that truth which, through cowardice or ambition, I’ve frequently kept hidden from my own view. And in so doing, to remain unafraid of the lyricism and irony which, as Griffi notes, increasingly seem the only genuine antidotes to despair. After this, all that remains is complete improvisation; a solitary, imperfect adventure bolstered only by the moral support of the Maestros (Paul Bley, but also Ornette Coleman, Andrew Hill, Bill Evans, Steve Swallow) who have journeyed alongside me throughout my musical existence.