Paolo Armeni

Paolo Vinaccia turned 64 on March 27. Paolo is not so well these days, and is having his second round of chemotherapy, combined with many different alternative treatment methods.

Legacy & (next) Legacy are the brand new musical projects by Paolo Fresu. New compositions for celebrating three anniversaries: his 40-year-old Quintet his 20-year-old Devil Quartet and his 22-year-old Duo with Uri Caine 3CD Box Set & 3 LP Box Set limited, coloured and hand numbered. Both signed by Paolo Fresu.
At the beginning of the '80s, trumpeter Paolo Fresu attended the Siena Summer Jazz Seminars and amazed Enrico Rava with his creativity, talent, and technique. Over the next ten years, he became a major player on the Italian scene, first with his own quintet (which is still going), then branching out in a variety of projects. After finishing his Conservatory studies, he became a teacher at the same Jazz Seminars in Siena; he lives half the year in Paris, from where he coordinates the major Time in Jazz Festival he created in his hometown…

During the sixteenth century in Italy, the motto ‘i galli cantano’ (the Gauls are singing) circulated, acknowledging the supremacy of the Franco-Flemish ‘transalpine’ musicians who were summoned to the peninsula to serve princes and prelates in the techniques of composing and performing vocal polyphony. Josquin Desprez, ‘Giosquino’ to the Italians, was the emblematic figure: in addition to France, he was in the service of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza in both Milan and Rome (1484, 1498) and of the papal (1489-95) and Este chapels (1503-4). On the fifth centenary of the composer’s death (1521), the Odhecaton ensemble proposes to retrace Josquin’s Italian itinerary with the Missa Hercules dux Ferrariæ, composed for the Duke of Ferrara Ercole I d’Este, and a selection of motets commissioned by Italian patrons. The contribution of The Gesualdo Six in the more solemn pieces brings the vocal ensemble to twentytwo singers, a number that is close to the forces of the Rome and Ferrara chapels and yields new sonic results in our quest to recreate how polyphony sounded in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

Within the Italian polyphonic repertoire for Holy Week of the first half of the 16th century, a group of works that particularly stands out for its organic, comprehensive and unique qualities are the two books of four-voice Lamentations and responsories for the office of Tenebrae from the Triduum sacrum composed by Paolo Aretino (Paolo Antonio del Bivi, 1508-1584). They were published respectively in 1544 (the responsories: a first printed edition of its kind, to the best of our knowledge) and 1549 (the Lamentations). Both books were reprinted in 1563, a rare occurrence for a collection of this type.

Following the success of his solo recordings, Paolo Zanzu returns at the head of his ensemble Le Stagioni with ‘Officina Romana’, featuring the countertenor Carlo Vistoli. In the early eighteenth century, Rome was one of the great music capitals of Europe. In the space of a few years, Corelli, Handel, Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, Caldara, Cesarini and many others crossed paths there, surrounded by painters, sculptors, poets and philosophers who were among the great names of the age. The fruit of long reflection and research, ‘Officina Romana’ crystallises this unique moment in the history of music by recreating an idealised musical evening, a conversazione, a sort of liberal meeting of lofty minds in the palace of a Roman cardinal, with a programme mingling vocal and instrumental music in both orchestral and chamber formation.