Sad, slow modern chamber music composed by Andrea Giordano and played by a dream-team of European musicians – including Ingar Zach, Christian Meaas Svendsen, Kalle Molberg, Allessando Rombola and many more – on this recording of Àlea (SOFA MUSIC SOFA602) made in 2022 at the Norwegian Academy of Music and in 2023 in Turin.
Giordano is attempting to pay tribute to her Piedmont roots, by including texts (written by Vieri Cervelli Montei) spoken and sung in a specific Piedmontese dialect, a tongue which she heard spoken by her own grandmother. Besides the family-locality theme, the piece honours her friend Alessanda Giachero – a jazz musician whom Andrea Giordano considered to be her personal mentor. The sadness of loss at Giachero’s death, and the cultural loss implied or embodied by the fragile existence of a particular means of linguistic expression, probably accounts for the bittersweet, melancholic tone of the music. Some fine spartan arrangements in this composition of Andrea Giordano – who also supplies voice and plays the organetto – arranged in four stanzas and played with great deliberation and respect by the assembled musicians; while restrained and understated overall, the piece grows increasingly spectral as it proceeds, and by Stansia 3 it’s positively swarming with phantoms and ethereal shades, and the composer’s unhinged vocal wails on track 8 are quite something to witness, a testament to the sincerity of her emotional undercurrents.
Not really sure if this is jazz, despite presence of many improvisers and support from the Norwegian Jazz Forum. (15/10/2024)