.
From
Bass Express LINER NOTES
Bass Express is a brave
album because it doesn’t limit to afro-American music and spreads the
sound reflex of the double bass both in a planetary dimension (America,
Europe, Asia) and in a time shift, touching the year 1723 (La Sonnerie de Sainte-Geneviève du Mont
de Paris by Marin Marais , G.B. Lully’s
pupil), after having crossed the 1900 with Four Preludes by Erik
Satie.
After a deep sight, you can appreciate the precise, accurate and
narrative pagination of the album: that prevents the listener from an
occasional listening of the sequences. The first five pieces are
re-readings, agreements, adaptations of pieces, from a classic repertory. A
sort of jazzed up bridge (C.Q.) follows and leads to three
compositions inspired by India, three mantras adapted to double bass with
various tonal centres, written by Sebastiani. Another bridge, the influence
of Marais’ musical scoring and we get to other three compositions,
this time strongly jazzed up (the coltranian Equinox and the
ellingtonian In a Sentimental Mood, and the most original Bass
Express). In other words, it is a sort of multiethnic album, which can
be outlined as follows: classic pieces / jazz bridge / Indian pieces /
classic bridge/ jazz pieces / folk tail. A whole musical career, an
entire life are summed up, in that way.
The repertory choices find a
reflex -but with different lights- in the instrumental and stylistic ones:
in the field of classical music, Marcello Sebastiani frequently uses the over
recordings and shares between the bow and the pinched often overlapping
them; in the ethnic and jazz field, the picking prevails and the over
recordings disappear, as to highlight the concept of instantaneous
composition, of performance, even if mediated by the recording studio. In
the real dynamic of pieces, however, the styles aren’t strictly
separated, but they interlace themselves in an unexpected way creating the
polichromy which makes Bass Express unique in his gender
[
Luigi Onori ]
