“ I like the double bass and the electric bass, from Charles Mingus to Paul Mc Cartney, from John Lindsay(in Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers) to Jaco Pastorius.
When Marcello Sebastiani asked if I would have liked to write the cover notes of his album as a solo Bass Express, I accepted immediately: I’ve been appreciating and following this musician and teacher for years, and besides, there is an instinct to follow in the field of music criticism. After having listened to it, I realized that my instinct was right. 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. The
four preludes of Erik Satie (Chevaliers normands ed une jeune demoiselle; Prèlude d' Eginhard; Le Nazarèen; IIème Prèlude du Nazarèen) have a meditative character, with sounds that change stretching to the dark. The variations in pinched introduce rhythm restlessness, generating an elastic tension that doesn’t modifybut brings up-to-date - the pages of Satie. In the austere and martial piece of Marais the overlap of the picking to the bow lightens the metronomic course, coming gradually unhinged at the level of execution and by means of improvisation.
Sebastiani’ s jazz component becomes evident in C.Q., bi-thematic piece (in reality two timbre-thematic sections); here, to beyond the mingusian references, the autonomy and the expressive wealth of the double bass boast, and it becomes able to narrate and sing. In the three mantra it is the horizontal dimension of the phrasing that leads to a great freedom, hardly withheld by the attraction of the gravitational tonal centres; notes beaten again with micro variations and a sitaristic development, confer to the pieces an intimately Indian dimension, the result of deepened sound experiences on the side of the tablas player Badal Roy. It is not a case that the original composition Bass Express has been chosen like the title of the whole album: the chasing low turn that constitutes the cell-base leaves the place to the improvisation, carrying the apotheosis of a solo that maintains its structural steadiness. The historical role of double bass meets the dimension of invention, without for this renouncing to be the pillar of music. It is thus also for Equinox and In a Sentimental Mood, where melody, harmony, timbres mingling are suggested
and make us to catch a glimpse with an happy choice of time and taste. The most delicate, memorial, lyric is the tail of Tutte le funtanelle “. Luigi Onori
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