| AMG EXPERT
REVIEW: "For those who don't yet know, pianist and composer Andrea
Pellegrini is one of Italy's brightest shining musical lights. His compositions
have been performed by jazz orchestras the world over. He has also been
commissioned by symphony orchestras to compose original works and he remains
a pianist of the highest order. This set all inspired by the works of both
J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy and the mythology of elves-hence
an 11 piece band for the project-is his most ambitious project to date and
walks through all musical worlds to arrive at a crossroads where 20th century
vanguard European music meets the improvisation and swing of jazz and the
dynamics of film and theater music. One cannot stress enough how adventurous
this music is with its many legs planted in as many seas. In "One For
Tristan", a serialist theme gives way to a series of bop and post bop
solos on piano, oboe (courtesy of Oregon architect Paul McCandless), flutes,
strings, and tenor saxophone all as dissonant percussion falls around the
band's ears before it returns to its erstwhile origins and fades. On the
"Suite Tolkeinana" a six-part work comprising the majority of
the album, Pellegrini creates a series of orchestral colors, intricate solo
and ensemble counterpoint and timbral adventures for each section and creates
a series of cadenzas that are echoed in the thunderous crescendos that signify
the end of each section until the finale "Chiara Stasera," which
is, in itself, a crescendo that restates all five themes in contrapuntal
dynamic resulting in a conclusive, yet expansive overview of the entire
work. To rate this recording on its performance is one thing, but it is
far from the entire story, it deserves its considerable merit for not only
the realization of such an ambitious project, but for making it so accessible,
emotionally direct and impressionistically vivid. Gil Evans did a version
of this kind of work, but his focus was deeply influenced by the history
of jazz, as he perceived it. Pellegrini' s view is universal and deeply
Debussian in its aesthetic. In addition, the sound is first rate, crisp,
but warm in all the right places. Extraordinary." |
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