Alba

Music of the Trecento At the dawn of the fourteenth century, the Trecento, an Italian tradition of polyphonic music with texts in the vernacular tongue began to develop. The first centres were the towns and courts of Lombardy in the north. Before, French musical and literary influence had been strong both by the imported culture of emigrated troubadours from Southern France and by some of the teachers at the Paduan university who had studied music at the University of Paris.

Markus Stockhausen & Florian Weber - Alba (2016) {ECM 2477}
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© 2016 ECM Records | ECM 2477
Jazz / Contemporary Jazz / Piano / Trumpet

Alba is the premiere recording of trumpeter Markus Stockhausen’s duo with pianist Florian Weber, a formation in existence for some six years now. Though very different in their connections to the language of jazz, both musicians share a deep interest in the process of creative expression: of looking inwards and outwards with intensity at things, for echoes, resonances, insights. Initially, the duo experimented with electronic sounds, also to create the “opening sounds” that have attracted Stockhausen since he first played with Rainer Brüninghaus’s trio in the early 1980s.

"Ascanio in Alba" K. 111 came about through the good offices of Count Firmian, who had shared the Milan audience's enthusiasm for "Mitridate" and exerted his influence on the Empress in Vienna. He suggested entrusting the young Mozart with the composition of a festa teatrale for the wedding of the Empress's son, Archduke Ferdinand, and Maria Beatrice d'Este of Modena. Mozart began working on the score in late August 1771.

A very important artist from Naples, ALAN SORRENTI released his first album in 1972 on Harvest. He had a Welsh mother and had lived in Wales as a child. "Aria" is a very good album, with two different sides: the first only contains the long title track, a dreamy suite starting with acoustic guitar and based on the marvellous, instrument-like voice of Sorrenti, and culminating in the final part with a memorable violin solo by Jean-Luc Ponty. Side 2 is softer, with three tracks, two of which ("Vorrei incontrarti") also appeared as a single. The album was successful in Italy, and Alan Sorrenti was one of the few solo artists to compete with other prog groups in the open air festivals of the time. The album was also released abroad, but to little success.

With his second album, Alan Sorrenti reached the most complex and brutal vocal experiment in all his career. The album's structure is similar to the previous Aria, a little bit extended being over 46 minutes of music and divided between the whole side's self titled epic (side two - 23 min.) and shorter and simpler songs.
For the recording sessions of the album he went to London and was helped by other famous guest musicians as Van der Graaf Generator sax hero David Jackson, who played flute and by Curved Air's member Francis Monkman on synthesizer, piano and electric guitar. Differently from Aria, his voice appears more nervous and complicated passing through stronger dissonances and unusual noises and strange sounds…

Music played by the very veteran vocal Catalan ensemble Grup Alba, one of the pioneers of the genre and the first to reach a record of this style. The album features a selection of 10 classic 'habaneras'. Guitar, accordion and bass are the musical instrument to serve this nice vocal performance dedicated to lovers of this musical style.