Multiple Personalities
Liner Notes
Jazz is a language spoken by people from every corner of the world. The itinerant nature of the jazz life ensures that a musician's path will cross those of a wide variety of other artists, many of whom will underscore the music's universality by merging their diverse talents and backgrounds in common creative efforts. Often these are brief encounters, associations too fleeting to reach their full potential. Less frequently, connections are nurtured in a hospitable environment and strengthened over time into something truly special.
Multiple Personalities is proof of what can occur when such relationships take root. It reveals how Lello Molinari has tended his musical garden over more than a decade in the Boston area - first as a student from Naples, Italy, then as a working musician. "This CD involves friends that I have played with for many years, in many different combinations," he explains. "That's one meaning of the album title. But I think that I also have a touch of schizophrenia, in the sense that I like different musical styles, which I've tried to represent here."
The music, recorded at two different sessions, is performed by a cast of like-minded spirits. The trio tracks include Frank Carlberg, the Finnish pianist who has performed with Molinari since the pair met as students at Boston's Berklee College in 1986. The drummer Marcello Pellitteri, a native of Palermo, began his teaching duties at Berklee that same year. "Frank, Marcello, and I took the same route," the bassist notes, "Berklee undergraduates, graduate work at the New England Conservatory, then teaching at Berklee."
One more native Italian, vocalist Chiara Civello from Rome, is heard on the second session, where the variously-configured ensembles also include three Italian-Americans from the Boston area - trombonist Jeff Galindo, saxophonist George Garzone and drummer Bob Gullotti - plus veteran electric guitarist Mick Goodrick. Garzone and Gullotti, both charter members of the free-form trio The Fringe, have played particularly significant roles in Molinari's development.
"I didn't know anything about George when I got to Berklee," the bassist says of the multi-faceted tenor and soprano player, who has also played a prominent role on Molinari's previous albums. " Then someone took me to the “Willow” the club where the Fringe played, and my life changed. George also led my first graduate ensemble at NEC - just me, George and a drummer, every Wednesday morning. He asked me to play on a tour of Italy that Maurizio Carugno put together for him in 1991, and we've been working together since then.
"I mostly listen to drummers, because the three most important things in jazz are time, time and time," Molinari continues, "and I've learned more things about the bass from Bob than from most of my bass teachers. For the past decade, Boston-area listeners have been impressed by Molinari's quintet, which has dealt exclusively in original compositions from within the band. Here, the agenda is different. "I built this CD tune by tune," he explains, " I wanted to play some of the other great music that is out there, and I no longer feel that I have to prove to myself by only playing my own music. I also wanted to recapture my roots by including music from my background. "
Two tracks on which Civello sings in Italian are prime examples of this last point. One, "Malafemmena," is an older Neapolitan song written by Antonio DeCurtis that might be considered the Italian equivalent of Charlie Chaplin's "Smile." "DeCurtis was a prince who became a comic actor and a master of slapstick known as Toto," Molinari notes. "He also wrote poetry and books, although this is the only known song he wrote. This was my father's favorite song." Garzone plays some beautiful lines behind Civello's vocal, and also takes one of his mellower half-choruses.
"Quando" is a more contemporary example of Neapolitan pop, by singer/songwriter Pino Daniele. "I talked to Chiara about including one of his songs a few days before the session," Molinari recalls, "because Pino Daniele was the first to write and sing in a Neapolitan dialect over modern, hip music. I listened to him a lot as a kid, even before I started playing. We both thought of `Quando,' and tried it unrehearsed at a gig right before the recording." In addition to Civello's riveting interpretation, the performance is marked by a dramatic use of rubato and another beautiful Garzone solo, this time on soprano.
"Tarantella del 600" is part of every Italian's heritage, including many Italian Americans. The only direction I gave to the band was to mess with each of the four melodies. I provided brief examples, and then we just did it. It's a happy romp, with tinges of what used to be called `the freedom movement.' Mick, the only one on the session without a vowel at the end of his name, provides some inspiring dementia."
The spirit of freedom is carried further on "Ma che Ffai?," a collective improvisation where Garzone and Galindo mix it up to inspired effect. Molinari's title ("What are you doing?") comes from what Garzone seems to say on his tenor as a response to the swirling arco bass. The same five musicians perform "Invitation," which Molinari recalls playing with Garzone on their 1991 tour. "In order to keep the length reasonable, only George and Jeff solo, because this is the kind of tune that can last an entire set when we play it live." With Civello back aboard singing wordlessly in the ensembles, the band also tackles "Anthony Goes to the Mardi Gras," a Garzone composition also heard on his recent album The Fringe in New York (NYC Records). The barely channeled energy of this minor blues waltz creates a strong Coltrane mood, with potent solos by Galindo, Goodrick, the composer and Gullotti.
The session with horns is completed by a quartet version of Sam Rivers' "Beatrice," with solos by Garzone and the rhythm section. "This was the first thing that the band played in the studio. It was totally unplanned, and intended as a warm-up, but I liked its fresh feel," Molinari says.
Similarly, "Friday the 13th" was tackled at the start of the trio session to loosen the musicians up. Instead of taking individual solos, they create what Molinari calls a band solo, filled with unpredictable tempo shifts, breathing spaces and tantalizing asymmetries. There is similar surprise on "Boo Boo's Birthday," with the original 6/4 feeling giving way to 4/4 as the tempo increases. The trio's third Monk tune, "Bemsha Swing," is more straight-ahead, although it begins and ends with a unique echo effect as the bass respond to the drum's melody statement at the opening, with piano added to the mix at the close. "With Monk's music, you play the melody, not the changes," Molinari notes. He also recalls that the remaining trio performance, Jimmy Rowles' "The Peacocks," was one of the tunes that he and Carlberg played on their 1988 visit to UmbriaJazz.
"With Frank and Marcello, I never say anything," Molinari says of the trio's approach. "The music just happens. What joy!"
That same word, joy, can summarize the entire album. "I'm not as angry as I've been at times in the past," Molinari says of recent developments in his music. "I realize that there is no arrival point. Music will always be a journey, and you might as well enjoy it." And Molinari's pleasure, to borrow a phrase from Tadd Dameron, is our delight.
-Bob Blumenthal
