Giovanni Pintori

Giovanni Sollima is an internationally renowned cellist and one of the most frequently performed Italian composers in the world today. His original BaRock Cello project gave new readings to Rock pieces in the intimate setting of a solo performance, matching these to little-known 17th- and 18th-century Italian composers. These improbable contrasts and surprising connections are now extended further back to their musical roots in Folk & Ba-Rock Cello. In this Sollima takes up the tonal colours and rhythmic grooves of archaic songs from a diversity of countries and blends the common features shared by all music, whether it is globally iconic, nationally popular, or long lost amidst the dusty manuscripts of time.

Pianist Giovanni Guidi (born 1985), is one of the most outstanding musicians to have emerged from the ranks of Italian jazz in the last decade and has already made his presence felt on Enrico Rava’s “Tribe” and “On The Dancefloor” albums. Rava praises both Guidi’s “limitless curiosity” as an improviser and his “relentless refinement” of touch and musical taste, and the pianist continually proves that those qualities are not opposites. His first leader date for ECM is a glowing collection of self-penned tunes, simultaneously inner-directed and creatively daring, with many adroit exchanges between the musicians and plenty of space given also to bassist Thomas Morgan, whose role in the Guidi Trio is perhaps analogous to Scott LaFaro’s in the Evans Trio.

This ninth volume of the Haydn2032 series focuses on the composer’s psychological subtlety in its focus on a central work: his Symphony no.45, known as the ‘Abschieds-Symphonie’ (‘Farewell’ Symphony), composed in 1772. It is said to have got its nickname from a symbolic message Haydn conveyed to Prince Esterházy when he and his orchestra were required to stay longer than planned in the Prince’s summer residence. On the occasion of the symphony’s first performance, Haydn had arranged for the musicians to leave their places one by one during the final Adagio. The day after the concert, all the musicians were able to return to their families and bid farewell to the Prince, who had obviously taken the point of this poetic request for ‘liberation’ expressed in music. The programme is completed by Symphonies nos. 15 and 35 and a cantata sung by Sandrine Piau, the heart-rending ‘Berenice, che fai?’ on a text by Metastasio that was a real ‘hit’ of the eighteenth century, set by some forty composers.

A renowned poet has a new album out Friday titled “The Gospel According To Nikki Giovanni.” In addition to publishing dozens of poetry works, Nikki Giovanni has recorded several spoken word albums over the course of 50 years. But this time, she’s doing something a little different. The new album, a collaboration with saxophonist Javon Jackson, is a collection of gospel hymns and spirituals set to jazz. Growing up in the Baptist church, Giovanni says gospel music was instrumental to understanding herself as a poet. “The spirituals had a message,” she says. “They weren't just some people woke up one morning or came from working in the evening and said, ‘Oh, let's sit down and sing.’ They were sharing information with each other.”