Musica Jazz
A review of Songs of Middle Space, alongside a separate release on another label, praising the coherence and appeal of the songs and the essential interplay of voices and instrumental writing. Print issue, January 2025.
Da Vinci Classics
Adriano Lanzi, Arrigo Cappelletti, Benedetta Manfriani, Cristina Cappellini, Daniele Patumi, Fatime Halmos, Federico Camici, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Giuppi Paone, Laura Gessner, Luigi Polsini, Monica Benvenuti, Nora Tigges, Paolo Zampini, Roberto Laneri, Stefano Diotallevi, Sylvie Lewis
Official Release: 23 February 2024
13.55€
Digital programme · 13 tracks
Track timings refer to the digital edition.
Giancarlo Schiaffini, composer-trombonist-tubist, was born in Rome in 1942 and graduated in Physics at the University of Rome in 1965. Self-taught, he appeared as soloist in the first free-jazz concerts in Italy and subsequently presented his own compositions widely in the mid 1960’s. In 1970 he studied at Darmstadt with Stockhausen, Ligeti and Globokar and formed the contemporary chamber ensemble Nuove Forme Sonore. He also worked with Franco Evangelisti in 1972 and has since collaborated with the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova consonanza until 1983. In 1975 he founded the Gruppo Romano di Ottoni performing Renaissance and Contemporary music. He is member of the well known Italian Instabile Orchestra. He taught at the Conservatorio “G. Rossini” in Pesaro, “A. Casella” in l’Aquila and at the Summer Courses of Siena Jazz (instrument, improvisation, composition). He plays Contemporary Music, Jazz and Improvisation in concerts and International Festivals of Contemporary music and Jazz like Teatro alla Scala, Accademia di S. Cecilia, Biennale Musica di Venezia, Autunno Musicale di Como, Settembre Musica di Torino, IRCAM, Upic and Festival d’Automne (Paris), Reina Sofia (Madrid), Ars Musica (Bruxelles), Europa Jazz Festival du Mans, Jazz a Mulhouse, Tramway (Rouen), Wien Modern, Aspekte (Salzburg), Donaueschinger Musiktage, Moers, UNEAC (Cuba), Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Lincoln Center and Hunter College (New York). Mr. Schiaffini has collaborated with John Cage, Karole Armitage, Luigi Nono and Giacinto Scelsi in various performances and works for solo trombone or tuba have been dedicated to him by Scelsi, Nono, Amman, Alandia, Dashow, Villa-Rojo, Renosto, Laneri, Guaccero. His music has been published by BMG, Curci, Edipan, Ricordi. His treatise on contemporary trombone techniques is published by Ricordi, “E non chiamatelo jazz”, about improvisation, “Tragicommedia dell’ascolto”, “Immaginare la musica”, “Errore e pregiudizio” by Auditorium Edizioni.
Monica Benvenuti: Born in Florence, graduated in humanistic studies and philosophy. From 1993, the year of her debut as the protagonist of L’incoronazione di Poppea by Monteverdi at the Teatro Verdi in Pisa and at the Teatro Sociale di Mantova, and of Zanetto by Mascagni at the Puccini Festival at Torre del Lago, she has performed (always as the lead role) operas by: Monteverdi, Peri, Emilio de' Cavalieri, Purcell, Blow, Rossi, Haendel, Pergolesi, Cimarosa, Mozart, Salieri, Spontini, Humperdinck, Wolf-Ferrari. She also dedicated herself to chamber and symphonic repertoires, with works by Mozart, Rossini, Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, Messiaen, Dallapiccola.
Later, she has developed a specific interest in music from the 20th century as well as contemporary, which has brought her to explore the potential of the human voice in relation to various musical languages and also to electronic experimentations. He has given concerts in Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, Czech Republic, Hungary , Japan (Tokyo, Suntory Hall), Brazil, U.S.A., often playing music dedicated to her. In 2004 she was invited by Sylvano Bussotti as the protagonist in the production of La Passion selon Sade at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid, under the direction of Arturo Tamayo. In 2007 she performed again Bussotti's opera Silvano/Sylvano, at the Academy of St. Cecilia in Rome, in a role specifically written for her. Then, she played Bussotti many more times: the live musical performance for the Rara film (Bologna, 2008), Furioso di Amneris , Ulrica , Eboli , Azucena e delle streghe in Milan (2013) and in Lugano (2016), the entire cycle of lyrics for voice and piano Quasi la fantasia (Paris 2016).
For the past few years, after extensive experience as a singer-actress – including a performance with the famous actress Milena Vukotič based on the tragedies of Sofocle - she has dedicated herself to a repertoire of music theatre which includes operas such as La voix humaine by Poulenc, Mahagonny Songspiel by Weill, La tragèdie de Carmen by Bizet, Giorno di nozze by Gino Negri, along with works specifically composed for her.
In the last years she performed Acustica, Pas de Cinq and Der Turm zu Babel by Mauricio Kagel , and Como una ola de fuerza y luz by Luigi Nono, for the opening concert of the Symphonic Orchestra of Rome, various editions of Pierrot Lunaire by Schoenberg - in 2011 in scenic form for the Concert Society of Bolzano - as well as many vocal works by John Cage. In 2017 in Milan she performed Le Marteau sans maître by Boulez.
In January 2014 she began collaborating with the Voxnova Italia group, with whom he performs - among others - Stimmung and Pole by Stockhausen, in Santa Monica (California), at the Roma Europa Festival, at the Angelica Festival in Bologna, in Stockholm, Ulm, and during a residency at the Music Department of the University of Buffalo (USA). Also with Voxnova in 2015 she sang in the first performance of In the midst of things by Gene Coleman at the Venice Biennale, in 2018 Mains Hum by David Lang MAXXI Museum in Rome and Feliseti Mekidesi by Elliot Sharp for the Ruhr Triennale festival of Bochum. In 2015 she recorded for Sheva Collection Richard Strauss: an unusual portrait, with the pianist Giuseppe Bruno, and in 2016 - in collaboration with Tempo Reale the Ema Records - two live CDs dedicated to Open Music from the seventies to today; again for Ema Records, in 2017 she recorded a CD dedicated to the vocal compositions by Alessandra Bellino entitled "Volubile e leggiera".
Paolo Zampini
Nato a Pistoia, ha compiuto gli studi di flauto traverso a Firenze sotto la guida di Mario Gordigiani e Roberto Fabbriciani. Da oltre 40 anni svolge attività concertistica sia come solista che come componente di importanti orchestre ed ensemble: “Sinfonica della RAI” di Roma, “Roma Sinfonietta”, “Roma Group”, “Solisti dell'Accademia Filarmonica Romana” e “Orchestra Nazionale Santa Cecilia”.
Dal 1985 è stato uno degli interpreti preferiti del M° Ennio Morricone, eseguendo in concerto i suoi film e musica da camera. Sempre con il Maestro romano ha realizzato numerosi CD e DVD ed eseguito concerti in Austria, Francia, Belgio, Inghilterra, Germania, Norvegia, Repubblica Cèka, Polonia, Israele, Stati Uniti, Spagna, Giappone, Corea del Sud, Siria, Portogallo , Russia, Lituania, Georgia, Brasile, Cile e Messico. Ha inciso per Edi-Pan, Rai Uno, Mediaset e Tele Montecarlo. Dal 1980 è stato docente di flauto traverso nei seguenti Conservatori Statali: F. Cilea di Reggio Calabria, L. Refice di Frosinone e L. Cherubini di Firenze, Istituto di Alta Formazione di cui è stato Direttore dal 2015 al 2021.
Adriano Lanzi, born in Rome in 1972, is a guitarist, composer, improviser and electronic performer. His work moves between acoustic and electric instruments, experimental sound and collaborations across musical traditions. He has worked with the Senegalese musician Siriman “Pape” Kanoutè, among other projects. He plays guitar in La pension des alizés on Roberto Laneri’s Songs of Middle Space.
Arrigo Cappelletti was born in Brunate, near Como, on 12 February 1949. After graduating in philosophy and teaching in Italian high schools, he devoted himself to jazz. His discography includes thirty recordings. Samadhi, Reflections, Pianure, Terras do risco, Trio in New York and Mysterious have contributed to an Italian approach to jazz characterised by lyricism, introspection and connections with other musical cultures.
His festival appearances include the Como Jazz Meeting (1976 and 1996), Rapallo Festival (1984), the Italian Jazz Festival at Capolinea in Milan (1986, 1987 and 1989), the Seventh International Jazz Festival Città di Milano (1988), I suoni del jazz in Pavia (1991), the jazz festival at Palazzo Butera in Palermo (1991), Pori Festival in Finland (1991), Sanremo: l’altra musica (1993), Jazzitalia in Verona (1994), Noto Jazz (1996), Lisbon Expo (1998), Sete Sóis Sete Luas in Portugal (1999), Clusone Jazz (2000), Jazz & Wine in Gorizia (2000), Le voci del jazz at Milan’s Auditorium (2003), Iseo Jazz, Siena Jazz and Ecojazz in Reggio Calabria (2004), Villa Celimontana in Rome and Siena Jazz (2005), Novara Jazz (2007), Sant’Anna Arresi and Padova Jazz (2009), Udin&Jazz and Iseo Jazz (2011), and the Chiasso International Jazz Festival in Switzerland (2013).
In Italy he has played with Gianni Cazzola, Sergio Fanni, Paolo Dalla Porta, Roberto Ottaviano and Gianni Coscia. His international collaborators include Barre Phillips, Lew Soloff, Mike Mossman, Daniel Schnyder, Hämi Hämmerli, Bill Elgart, Olivier Manoury, Steve Swallow, John Hébert, Bruce Ditmas, Ralph Alessi and Mat Maneri. He has also collaborated with Mia Martini and Giorgio Gaslini’s national jazz orchestra. In 1988, Cadence included Reflections among its ten best recordings of the year.
His work in Lisbon brought him together with Custódio Castelo, Jorge Fernando and Alexandra in a project connecting fado and jazz through twentieth-century Portuguese poetry. He has also worked in Russia with singer Polina Runovskaya.
Active in jazz education and writing, he is the author of Il profumo del jazz (ESI, Naples), a book combining teaching and autobiography; Paul Bley: la logica del caso (L’Epos, Palermo), translated into English by Greg Burk and published by Véhicule Press in Montreal as Paul Bley: The Logic of Chance; and Le avventure di un jazzista-filosofo (Arcana). He has taught jazz at CDM and Nuova Milano Musica in Milan, the Civico Istituto Musicale Brera in Novara, and the conservatories of Sassari, Alessandria, Reggio Calabria and Venice.
Benedetta Manfriani is a singer and visual artist working across music, video, installation, photography and ceramics. Her collaborations include Tempo Reale and the theatre company Catalyst. In 2016 she founded CONfusion, a multicultural vocal project promoting inclusion through music and performance. Her recording collaborations with Roberto Laneri include Winterträume and Songs of Middle Space.
Cristina Cappellini is a vocal performer featured on Roberto Laneri’s Songs of Middle Space. She sings Black Lily and Awareness of Breath, in settings combining her voice with Laneri’s wind instruments.
Daniele Patumi is an Italian double bassist whose work spans jazz, improvisation and contemporary concert music. He studied in Perugia and was a member of Pago Libre from its foundation in 1989 until 2003. His collaborations include John Wolf Brennan, Pino Minafra’s Sud Ensemble and Roberto Laneri’s Memory ensemble. He appears on Laneri’s Songs of Middle Space and in the ensemble recordings included in Songs of Surrender.
Fatime Halmos is a vocalist whose recordings include The Hungarian Songbook with pianist Stefano Travaglini, a programme drawing on Hungarian song. She also contributes one of the “ghost voices” in Delta Yearnin’ on Roberto Laneri’s Songs of Middle Space.
Federico Camici is an electric bassist whose recording and performing work includes the bands Torpedo and Torpedo Sound Machine, as well as collaborations with Motta. On Roberto Laneri’s Songs of Middle Space, he plays electric bass in Delta Yearnin’.
Giuppi Paone received her musical training in Italy during a period of intense cultural activity. Exploring a variety of vocal techniques and forms of expression, she sought a personal synthesis of her interests: jazz improvisation, the technical discipline of classical singing, Indian raga, the vocal traditions of rural Italy, other traditional vocal practices, contemporary music, the relationship between voice and gesture, and vocal teaching.
By the time of Winds of Change in 2017, she had collaborated with Roberto Laneri for more than twenty-five years, lending her voice to his multifaceted music. Her teaching work has included jazz singing at the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory in Naples.
Laura Gessner contributes one of the “ghost voices” in Delta Yearnin’ on Roberto Laneri’s Songs of Middle Space, alongside Fatime Halmos. Her contribution is credited in the album’s original booklet.
Luigi Polsini was a double bassist and multi-instrumentalist active in orchestral performance, early music and musical research. An alumnus of the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, he worked with opera and chamber orchestras and as a music consultant for RAI in Rome. He plays double bass in Hear the Voice and Sicilitudine on Roberto Laneri’s Songs of Middle Space.
Nora Tigges is a singer whose projects include Zenìa, an ensemble exploring an imagined folk repertoire. On Roberto Laneri’s Songs of Middle Space, she sings The Garden of Mirrors, La mia sponda and Nähe des Geliebten, with pianist Stefano Diotallevi.
Roberto Laneri is a composer, wind player — clarinets, saxophones and didgeridoo — and overtone singer. He studied philosophy in Rome and music in the United States, receiving a PhD from the University of California, San Diego. His teachers included Lejaren Hiller, Charles Mingus, William O. Smith, John Silber and Keith Humble.
After many years of work in contemporary music, his music has developed beyond established categories and conventional boundaries of time and place. His recording credits include collaborations with Charles Mingus and Peter Gabriel, alongside his own albums Two Views of the Amazon, Anadyomene, Memories of the Rain-Forest, The Tail of the Tiger, Sentimental Journey, Escher, Breath and Winds of Change.
He has published two books on the theory and practice of overtone singing, La voce dell’arcobaleno and Nel cielo di Indra. He has been a member of the Club of Budapest, founded by Ervin László to promote planetary consciousness. He taught at the Florence Conservatory until 2011.
Stefano Diotallevi holds conservatory diplomas in piano, jazz arranging, chamber music and music education. He also earned a degree in music history from Sapienza University of Rome, with a thesis on piano music in Futurism.
He performs with a variety of jazz, chamber and world music ensembles. His teaching work has included the Scuola Popolare di Musica di Testaccio and the Licinio Refice Conservatory in Frosinone.
Sylvie Lewis is a singer-songwriter from London. She studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston before developing her career in the United States and Europe. Her albums include Tangos and Tantrums, Translations, It’s All True and Night Flowers. She sings Delta Yearnin’ on Roberto Laneri’s Songs of Middle Space.
Roberto Laneri is a composer, wind player — clarinets, saxophones and didgeridoo — and overtone singer. He studied philosophy in Rome and music in the United States, receiving a PhD from the University of California, San Diego. His teachers included Lejaren Hiller, Charles Mingus, William O. Smith, John Silber and Keith Humble.
After many years of work in contemporary music, his music has developed beyond established categories and conventional boundaries of time and place. His recording credits include collaborations with Charles Mingus and Peter Gabriel, alongside his own albums Two Views of the Amazon, Anadyomene, Memories of the Rain-Forest, The Tail of the Tiger, Sentimental Journey, Escher, Breath and Winds of Change.
He has published two books on the theory and practice of overtone singing, La voce dell’arcobaleno and Nel cielo di Indra. He has been a member of the Club of Budapest, founded by Ervin László to promote planetary consciousness. He taught at the Florence Conservatory until 2011.
SONGS OF MIDDLE SPACE In my opinion, in the production of a composer songs, Lieder or whatever one chooses to call them, represent his most authentic part, like a sort of intimate sound-diary. It is no accident that the songs in this collection cover a span of 50 years, from 1972 to the present, since in fact I never stopped writing songs, although of various typologies and persuasions. The title, SONGS OF MIDDLE SPACE, refers to songs that belong neither here nor there, or, rather, are “here, there and everywhere”…
SONGS OF MIDDLE SPACE
In my opinion, in the production of a composer songs, Lieder or whatever one chooses to call them, represent his most authentic part, like a sort of intimate sound-diary. It is no accident that the songs in this collection cover a span of 50 years, from 1972 to the present, since in fact I never stopped writing songs, although of various typologies and persuasions.
The title, SONGS OF MIDDLE SPACE, refers to songs that belong neither here nor there, or, rather, are “here, there and everywhere” in the sense that they evoke different places, times and atmospheres which, furthermore, may overlap considerably. I’ve always thought different atmospheres and musical styles can coexist.
Speaking in broad terms, the songs in this collection may be grouped in different categories, reflecting the main influences in my music and listening habits:
Jazz songs which in various ways and measures welcome a degree of freedom in phrasing, and often, but not always necessarily, a degree of improvisation. Some are in contemporary jazz style (#12, 13), others (#4, 5) are more rooted in older (#5) or more popular forms. (4, 7, 8). Incidentally, I find strong points of contact between the American songs of the first half of the 20th century featured in the musicals by Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers and others, and the Lied cycles by Schubert, Schumann and Brahms. They both lend themselves to highly professional as well as amateur performance practices, and also to various modalities and abilities of improvisation, since basically they share a common harmonic ground.
While all the songs are meant to be sung and played according to the score, some are thru-composed, like contemporary Lieder for the classical duo of voice and piano. (# 6, 9, 10, 11). Others leave room for individual interpretation and improvisation in various degrees, and are scored accordingly. For example, the score of the songs notated in the standard jazz common practice (#12, 13) give only the melody line, the lyrics and the chord changes. The rest, like Hamlet might have said, is the arrangement.
Between these extremes the scoring suggests all kinds of “middle spaces,” for example including chord changes in thru-composed songs (almost all #s), or suggesting bass lines and counterlines in lead-sheet type songs. Jazz-style writing is assumed to be a more or less universal musical lingua franca.
On the whole, assuming the music in this CD sits in these two spaces, they are open enough to accommodate “tropical” or latin breezes occasionally blowing through (#6, 7), and even drafts of Indian monsoons (#3).
(R.L.)
1.Black Lily. This is the first song I wrote, back in 1972. It was written on a commission by Cristyne Lawson and Graham Smith’s Company of Man for the production of Black Ivory, a ballet for masked spectators and dancers premiered at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, NY. Originally the text was a Lullaby in The Blacks, the play by Jean Genet on which the production was based, but at the last minute permission to use the original text was withdrawn, so I sat down and wrote a new text with the help of the dancers in the company.
It is a purely monodic song, a single line open to all kinds of treatments. The accompaniment consists of shifting drones, which can be realized in different ways with different instruments and voices.
2.Awareness of Breath. A song which can be performed both as a vocal solo and an atypical jazz ballad, in which case chord changes should be used. This version uses a backdrop of wind instruments.
3.Salutation to the Sun. A song with an Indian devotional flavor. This is a recording from a live performance back in 1990. According to Indian performing rules, it starts with an alap-like section, followed by the tune in which India meets Brahms.
4.Delta Yearnin’. A song in tongue-in-cheek country style (the Delta to which the lyrics refer to is not the Delta of Mississippi).
5.Hear the Voice. Another song not to be taken too seriously, this time the model for the “cheap imitation” (J. Cage) is Gospel music. To further muddy things up, notice the presence of the didjeridoo.
6.The Garden of Mirrors. This song is a vocal showcase, a bravura aria pitched in a huge range for virtuoso soprano with a Latin feeling.
7.La pension des Alizés. The text to this song was written by Guadeloupean writer and singer Josette Martial, as part of La Voyageuse, a play based on the life of Maryse Condé, the award-winning Guadeloupean writer. The electronically modified introduction brings me back to when I used to listen to very unstable short-wave radio from the whole world. The tune has a tropical feeling.
8.Sicilitudine. This song tries to express the spirit of Sicily, both in the text (in Sicilian dialect) and the music with a folk-like feeling.
9.La mia sponda. One afternoon, walking on a street in downtown Rome, I passed a woman who attracted my attention, and I turned around. She did the same thing, and we found out that we had been in school together some 30 years before. She was Maria Palma Javarone, who had written the poem when she was 15. The setting is thru-composed and to be played and sung “as is.”
10. Nana’s Song, Another thru-composed Lied with a Kurt Weill flavor. The text speaks of an unhappy housewife.
11. Nähe des Geliebten. One Winter night I was reading Goethe’s poems at a house in the country near Rome. Against all odds, it was snowing. I ran into Nähe des Geliebten and I found it very beautiful. There was a grand piano, and thanks to the heavy snow it felt like being in the Black Forest, resonating to the music of Schubert and Schumann.
I did not know at the time that Schubert had written a Lied to this very poem. I am fascinated by the fact that the same text could inspire such widely different musical atmospheres.
12.Thinkin’ of You. This is a transformation of the preceding song into a jazz up-tempo standard. The text is a paraphrasis in English of the Goethe original.
13.Wind & Water Dance. A song in the modern jazz idiom with a Californian flavor, it is actually a fantasy, in which a sailing trip to Santa Catalina island ruined by sea-sickness turns into an erotic memory.
Selected awards, reviews and interviews. Radio broadcasts and podcasts are listed separately below.
Musica Jazz
A review of Songs of Middle Space, alongside a separate release on another label, praising the coherence and appeal of the songs and the essential interplay of voices and instrumental writing. Print issue, January 2025.
il manifesto
‘Roberto Laneri, complessità intellettuale’ praises the results of Songs of Middle Space, with particular attention to the arrangements, singers and pianists. The article also discusses Songs of Surrender.
Read the review ↗ — il manifesto
