Something about New Music Horizons - Hiromi and Esperanza

Hi to those who read me. 

I can see that even if I'm not as frequent as in the past (in no one of my activities, sadly!) there are lots of contacts on this blog!
This probably means that you're interested in good music or in amusing stuff, or both of them!

This time I'm not going to talk about proggeries. Or better... not in its common way.

I'm going to talk about something really new coming from two sweet and beautiful ladies, one from Japan - Shizuoka, the other from USA - Oregon. They both are genius in their instrumental and musical knowledge and composition.

If the first is following her own path of instinctive innovation since 13 years ago, playing her piano and synth in her own incredible way, the second one has recently broken the comfortable conventional jazz rules in which she was involved since the very first start (however greatly pleasant and exciting, having played with all the greatest living jazz players on the scene) to explode in something new, very surprising, innovative, catchy, rocky, broadway-ish and jazzy at the same time, enriched with a huge quantity of feeling, while singing and playing bass with great talent and power, as ever in her fast carrier (she's only 32).

I hate when someone says "There's nothing really new to listen to" or "In my times music was better".

It's pretty FALSE. As I tried to explain in other posts, it's just a matter of how you approach the music: if you try to make it always with the same passion, curiosity and will to discover something which makes you shiver... maybe you'll find it! 

For those who cannot reach  this goal maybe the right sentence should be: "I'm not really interested in something new because music isn't my passion anymore and I prefer to remain anchored to my old, comfortable, well known cliches".

But the worst sentence is "The latest xxx album isn't that good, but better than lots of new stuff around". This means: "I'm a xxx blind fan, I MUST appreciate everything he/she does and I HAVE to justify it to the world, neglecting or underestimating the good music around"

These are blind and poor listeners, generally not really emotionally involved in music (anymore?).

They often prefer an uninspired cover or tribute band to something new, because it's always easier to follow and appreciate something you already know in a nostalgic way, than to approach something new.

In his book The Music Insinct Philip Ball says (more or less... I've read an Italian translation): "The distracted listener prefers something he already knows, the passionate one needs something before unheard".

But let's give space to Music (what a great kind of it!), with the powerful, extremely talented and graceful Hiromi Uehara!

If I remember well this is one of the first videos I've seen.
It was in a couple of links my brother sent to me to let me know about her.
The first comment was "not so bad!", but then immediately I was totally captured by her music, her energy and her close, almost physical contact with her piano! I suddenly fell in love with Hiromi, this feeling carries on and renews every time I listen to some new stuff or go to see her to a concert.

Please notice how she leads the other musicians with her incredible sweet glances and little smiles over the piano, and pay attention to her great technical knowledge, while she continuously follows the bass pattern with her left hand and works variations with the right one! Astonishing and crazy!


This video is dated 2005 but we can already find something new born.
Hiromi mixes up all her musical preferences, from Liszt to King Crimson, passing to jazz, which is however the main character, but giving enhancement more to drums than to bass.
She shifts the musical power from the usual bass-piano pair, normally used in jazz trios, to the drums-piano one, never heard before in this way.

Hiromi is not only  a great composer, but also an incredible improviser, as it's shown in the following video in duet with Chick Corea, who has been her first mentor, after having seen what she was able to do on piano in a Yamaha piano shop in Tokyo.





Here you can see that she catches informations on how to go on from the master, looking with great attention to him and matching his glances. Can't you see how great is her work, also with the respect to Chick's one?
And it's beautiful to see her smiles when she realizes she's guided by him to do something maybe unknown one second before!


But let's go back to her beautiful compositions and the path she's following.
What she started about 13 years ago, you can find more enhanced in the latest work Spark, as you can listen in this magnificent piece of high Music.




The greatness of this piece of music is that we can notice the mood changing several times in the very start, but the central part, with that melancholic mood is really greatly emotional.

Here, as often in Hiromi's music, the drummer Simon Phillips is the second soloist, while Anthony Jackson's bass work is mainly the framework of the track.

I've seen Hiromi LIVE several times, with different drummers and bass players, and every time is a new exciting, involving and satisfying experience. She moves on the stage in deep contact with her piano, almost as they are merged together!
Even if the other instrumentalists are great and talented performers with years of experience, your attention will be caught by 'Her Sweetness and Power' Hiromi, that's for sure!

If you have knowldege of an Hiromi Trio Project gig in your neighbourhood don't miss it! You will thank me for this advice, as many other friends of mine before!


Now take a look (and both ears) at the following video...






Or to the next one:



What a grace in her voice, how talkative and elegant is her presence on stage, what greatness in her hands and fingers!
Esperanza Spalding is a multi-instrumentalist, being able to play violin, guitar and piano. She is a contrabass virtuoso and a lovely jazz singer.
Her melodic and high tuned voice matches with her bass playing and no one can win!
Pay attention on how easy is to her to sing going up and down through the musical scales, while she's playing complicated patterns on the contrabass!

Until the end of 2015 she's been in her comfortable shoes of what she studied and loved at Berklee.
She flyed between the jazz standards and her own jazz-bossa compositions, good to exalt her warm, virtuoso and inspired vocalism. And made us happy!

But something new and explosive was growing in her heart and mind...




Have you heard how powerful is the killer attack in this song?
The dissonant electric distorted guitar chords and the powerful electric bass pattern are the carpet on which Esperanza's great voice sings about her hidden personality (Emily) finally exploded!
No more classic and elegant outfit, no more hair leonine mane but dreadlocks, no more contrabass in her hands (not always)!
Please notice how she sings up and down the beat, making the pair tempo odd and vice versa!
And pay attention to the choir (three women and a tall man who participate to her Broadway-ish gigs as actors and singers)... It's not a simple one: the lines and harmonizations are different from a usual choir and somehow special and previously unheard!
I have the feeling that she thought about the choir contribution, making them the substitutes of keyboards or piano, as you can argue in the following:




If you mentally substitute the "oh-oh" with a piano chord you'll have similar contribution to the song, but less innovative and pleasantly impressive.
Can you hear the drums pattern how far is from a jazz one, though you can't say this isn't a easy jazz song? The key is in her magnificent vocals and bass lines!

Esperanza's late music is mainly soft, graceful, but also rich of power and passion. But not only... please notice the first lines of the following lyrics:

"We could change the whole story of love
 Same old play I'm getting tired of
 No more acting these predictable roles
 Just us living
 Unconditional love"

Don't you think it's the same thing we all hope when we start a new relationship?
Heart bumping fast when, after her first words the song starts so intense, powerful and sweet at the same time!
...and that unusual bass & drums patterns that seems to sigh at every line, what a great sensation of short breath at every sigh! Highly inspired song!


Please don't trust those who say that musical theory and technical improvement aren't any necessary to play good music.
These skills are fundamental to transform what the artist has in his heart and mind in the best way he can, and we can feel it...This is the magic of Music!
Obviously there is some exception, almost as if someone has nothing but technical knowledge, his music will be only a sequence of exercises to demonstrate how high is his skill, but without feeling and emotion... and this sadly happens quite often, as you know.

But Hiromi and Esperanza are not the case, as you may notice from what you have heard in this post.


The Music you tasted in this post is not far away from the Progressive area, in its actual meaning of "something which takes basis from the past but it's in progression towards the future", even if in different ways and directions. The most of prog musicians and listeners seem to have lost this important meaning.
Luckily there are musicians like Hiromi and Esperanza who strongly believe in it, work on it, giving to their passionate fans incredible moments of astonishing music, without Dilemma... with Unconditional Love!

Together on stage?
It would be to me a dream fulfilled, but I don't think it can be realized.
They are two great front-women and they cannot share the stage (strongly because they're women!).
It would be as they would be forced to make love with the same beloved and possessed man at the same time... impossible!

Enjoy their music, go and see their incredible gigs and don't forget to occasionally take a look at this blog!

Hope we'll get soon in contact again!

Veroodstock (Veruno 2 Days Prog + 1 2016 edition) - three lovely, enchanting, free and musicfriendful days!

Hi to those who read me!

Yeah, I know I'm not as frequent as I'd like to be on this blog, but many things happen, as you know...

Here after you can find the posts about the preceding editions I commented:

http://proglessons.blogspot.it/2014/09/veroodstock-ovvero-il-festival-prog-piu.html

http://proglessons.blogspot.it/2015/09/veruno-is-always-veroodstock-2-days.html

So Veruno Prog has reached its 8th edition.

As you can argue from the shot on the left, taken with my cell phone during the Uriah Heep concert, Veruno Prog is growing fast (about 5000 heads banging!), and maybe in the next future, hopefully for the 10th edition, they will need more space and different organization for food and drink needs, since on friday night collapsed!

By the way... we are only in it for Music!  

And at Veruno 2Days Prog + 1 you can listen to something very near to the best one! And as ever... it's all FOR FREE!

You only need to take a look at the complete lineup on the right.

First of all I have to say that the progressive (hey!... the right word in the right position!) opening to progfusion, started with Area last year, is bearing its fruits.

To my opinion, among the best performances there are Special Providence and Soft Machine Legacy, even the first are surely up to date, with their metal influences, with the respect to the second ones, more jazz and Canterbury (if not them...who?) oriented.

But this edition has given to its wide audience a lot of good vibrations, as I'll try to say after in this post.

Also this year the bands were presented by the always smiling and sunny Octavia Brown, but maybe for the narrow times between the bands and the other duties in which she was involved, I had the feeling she couldn't express with her own spontaneity as in the past edition.
But don't worry... good job and nice presence, after all!

DAY 1

As in the past I noticed for FEM, once more I have to say that the band which opens such a Festival, always has more shivers than the others, for a great number of factors: they play at 18.30 with still the sunlight beating on the stage, the first day lots of people come late in the evening because of work, something always has to be tuned up, the excitement to find friends you don't see since last year takes advantage on the stage performance, and so on.

Ubi Maior (Italy), with their histrionic singer/violin/trumpet Mario Moi, the great work on keyboards of Gabriele Manzini and the talented guitar player Marcella Arganese (who I had to calm and shake before the performance) seemed to be the best choice.

The crowd, before distributed all along the location in search for friends, CD, LP and other merchandise, slowly has approached the stage, caught by their music. 

I have to say, I heard UM many times before, in other locations in Milan neighbourhoods, but never I noticed such a power in their music. 

At the moment it seemed to me their best performance I ever heard!

Veruno has its fascination, its mystical microclimate, and everyone gives his best on stage... and also the powerful equipments have their importance!

Here is an example of their music.

Special Providence (Hungary), as before mentioned, are something new in Veruno Festival, with their sound mixing fusion and metal, above all.
I first met SP at Casa di Alex and I was as impressed by their music (and their virtuoso drummer Adam Markò) that I bought all their albums.
They enchanted the audience with their complex rhythm patterns on which captivating melodies lay on, sometimes almost danceable, as the last performed at Veruno, 'Lazy Boy'.

Pleace notice that in their discography there's a lot of good music, especially from their second and third albums, to my opinion the two best releases until now.

Mystery (Canada) are in newprog stream and since I developed a strange idiosyncracy for this kind of music, I can only say that the audience was enthusiastic and moved by their music, but I found the way to go to have dinner.

Unfortunately the crowd was so great that I didn't have dinner until the next end of Uriah Heep performance!

Here after you'll find a beautiful song by this band.

Uriah Heep (England) were the first headliner of this edition. 

I have their Very 'eavy Very 'umble LP and I've always filed them as hardrockers, not progrockers.

But what does it matter? Their exploding energy made us jump and headbang for the whole performance! How amusing!

DAY 2

To my feelings this has been the weakest day. 

Nemo was one of my proposals to Alberto Temporelli (fulfilled! Thank you Alberto!), and I enjoyed them so much, I already knew about Airbag's devotion to Pink Floyd music by listening some songs from the Youtube, and I was curious about Saga, never heard before to know them LIVE directly, but I felt not as impressed as I thought I could have been, apart the greatness of their frontman.

Cheeto's Magazine (Spain) I lost their performance to go to pick up a friend at Borgomanero rail station. The audience was divided in "crazy but good" and "crazy and stop", but the craziness was saved!

They stayed also after their performance dressed in their strange coloured costumes, smiling, laughing and signing their autographs on the bottoms of who was according to!



From what I listened in this video, they maybe wouldn't have been my cup of tea...

Nemo (France) Is a band which, in my opinion, is grown CD by CD, reaching its highest with double Le Ver dans le fruit (2013) and the latest double Coma (2015). The dark atmospheres are typically french, and the guitar work reaches high levels. As an example I post a beautiful song, not performed at Veruno's Festival (but I talked about it with Jean Pierre Louveton after their performance), containing one of the most impressive (to me) guitar solos of the last five years.

However they didn't reach the goal to create the same atmospheres you can find in their albums.
Funny the end of their performance, with the stage assistant thumbing up to say "ok", and JP answering with a thumb up saying "one more?" and started to play! Amusing to us but not for the musicians, who were disappointed to be forced to end up the song!

Encores are permitted in Veruno only for the headliners, since the stage shift between bands has to be very fast!

Hope Jean Pierre was not as angry as it seemed in a subsequent post on Facebook! Don't mind! Things can happen! Your performance was great!

 
Airbag (Norway) are a carbon copy of Pink Floyd, with a little different and more powerful rhythm section (you don't need too much to be more powerful than Nick Mason...). It sounded me not interesting, too well known and sickly, so I decided to go to dinner...in this case successful! 

However I have to notice that a great number of people was satisfied by the performance and by the gilmourish guitar solos.

As Philip Ball says in his book 'The Music Instinct': "If you ask to music nothing more than what you already know, that's your loss"

 
Saga (USA) Once more I have to say that I intentionally didn't heard anything of this band before, to listen them LIVE.

I can't say why I felt so uninspired after two or three songs. Maybe I expected something different from a pompous easy-yes-ish, Toto-like band. 

Maybe I expected something like Echolyn or Umphrey's Mc Gee or many other bands that in USA perform good prog music.




No problem... the wide open place was almost full of happy people that enjoyed the music, danced and sung with Michael Sadler and this is what matters!

Veruno to me is important also in this way!

DAY 3

Maybe the best in terms of good vibrations, confirmations and surprises!

Syndone (Italy) They are acknowledged as one of the best prog bands in Italy. 

Their unusual lineup, with three keyboards, a vibraphone and no electric guitar,  is greatly supported by the powerful rhythm section formed by Maurino Dellacqua (bass) and Martino Malacrida (drums), one of the most talented young drummers in Italy.

Their frontman Riccardo Ruggeri has a powerful and delicate voice at the same time and generates deep melodic emotions on the harmonic strucures created by the founder/main composer Nick Comoglio.

Syndone music is not readily for all, but when you're in is great and satisfying!

Frequency Drift (Germany) I heard something on CD and found them quite good. The electronic Harp played by Nerissa Schwarz gives to their music a particular sound. Unfortunately they were forced to play without their singer Nadja Jaye, so the performance was a little poor and influenced by the forced guitar work by Michael Bauer, sometimes out of tune.

Pay a good attention to the above track, and you will realize that Veruno performance has been a pale example of their beautiful music.
I have to notice that they were the only band which spent a word for the Amatrice earthquake victims, and this is a signal of their sensitivity.

Anekdoten (Sweden) One of the most awaited bands in this edition, which I know from their CD Vemod, From Within and the latest beautiful Until All the Ghosts are Gone.
Sadly to me they've been the deepest delusion: the singing was poor, even if it was from the guitar or the bass player and frequently off-tune, the guitar was sometimes off-timing and this, in my opinion, compromised the whole performance.





I never heard them LIVE before, but some people said their singing has always been their weakest point.
No problem. Now I know it's better to listen to their great music from studio CD than LIVE.

Soft Machine Legacy (England) They've been the best way to end this exciting festival edition.
I have to admit I wasn't sure they could catch me, so I said to my friend: "OK, we are going to listen a couple of songs and than we'll go home."





I was wrong... starting from the very first tune I realized we'd stayed until the end of the along acclaimed encore!
Their music is formed by incredible soft and magnetic melodies on a magic carpet of rich rhythm section. Theo Travis (sax) and John Etheridge (guitar) mixed together the Canterbury style with a special soft jazz (which is actually already present in Canterbury style), with great solos and interplays, ending up in a fascinating and captivating mood, greatly satisfying. Really GREAT and touching performance, really great and talented musicians!

So, if the great bands acted their best (apart someone, as before mentioned), giving us the expected good vibrations, I have to say that, for the first time with such a powerful impact, the young bands from Auditorium have surprised the audience so high.
El Tubo Elastico (Spain) and Eveline's Dust (Italy) proposed quite good music and have reached good satisfaction in merchandise.
But the most beautiful thing is that they both fraternised with those crazy boys of Cheeto's Magazine and at the ED's encore, a melange of prog songs by Wilson, PFM, and so on, the other two young bands danced and jumped down the stage in front of them, to join together at the end. GREAT!









Once more I have to say... If you are going to attend Veruno Prog for the first time, surely you're not prepared at what you will find: Enchanting location and surroundings, powerful equipments, friendship, freedom, wellness, astonishing, unexpected and crazy situations, owed to the exciting atmosphere you breathe. It's a fantastic, unique moment of life and everyone at the end says: "I'll be here next year!"

And all is continuously supported by good music in the best way you can listen to!

Already waiting for the 9th edition!

http://www.contagiorni.it/contatori/id/162056/

The White Dove Has Flown Away

Hi to those who read me.

No. Don't fear my blog is going to be the Prog Rock Artists obituary. It's not my style and attitude.

Maybe you have noticed I hardly talked about ELP in all these years, though sometimes I posted some of their music stuff on Facebook.

How it's been possible to neglect such great prog icons?

And why only now, after Keith Emerson's self-shot, I'm going to do it?

Will to be clicked? Will to be read?

I repeat... it's not my style, otherwise I didn't wait for so long to publish this post, isn't it?

Let me first give you evidence on how I came in contact with ELP.

When I was very young (about 12 years... sigh! A huge amount of years ago!), almost every afternoon I used to go to some of my friends who lived near home, to stay with them, play football and (obviously) listen to some music.

We often were in our older friend's home because his father had the best stereo deck among us. So we used to bring our LP or 45rpm to listen on it and discuss about them together.

Giancarlo was also a proficient piano player, so we eventually asked to him to play for us. 

At that time there was a cultural/political in-depth  TV Show named "Stasera G7" or something like this, whose ending musical theme started with a filtered snare roll, followed by a snare/bass drum attack and the entering of the other instruments: bass and electronic keyboards...

The father of our friend was as captured by it that went up and down to the music shops to find it, but he wasn't successful.
So he decided to ask directly to someone to RAI and knew the name of the song and of the band, but the 45rpm was not available, so he bought the LP.

Once Giancarlo put it on the turntable and the magic began...

This was my first time with His Greatness Keith Emerson, and I have to thank Giancarlo's father for his obstinacy!

The fun fact is that when I asked to listen the rest of the album my friends were a little bored, because they didn't like it, so I asked to my friend to copy it on a MC to listen it on my own.

After the first listening, I was astonished by noticing that 'Tank' (and 'Lucky Man') weren't the best track in it! 

Then came the opus Tarkus, Trilogy (their best to my opinion), and the powerful Brain Salad Surgery...

I remember at that time BSS was considered "too cold and technical" by the most, and even by me. I re-evalueted it several years ago, especially comparing it to some nowadays steel-cold prog-metal (who shouted: "Dream Theater"?).

So, why I never talked about this great band?

To be honest I always felt a hate/love feeling towards them.

There are moments I need to listen to them, but sometimes I don't stand their music. I cannot explain why, but it's this way in my mind.
However I always esteemed Keith Emerson as a great keyboardist and composer.

You should pay attention to tracks like the following:

This is a complete rock-opera: passes to different moods and dynamics and it's composed in the aim of a classical piece of music.

The piano moment, with that incredible left-hand ostinato is among the best things we can find in progrock (in fact it inspired, among the others, a similar passage in Kansas 'Song For America')

Or to this one...




One of their best song ever...


Or their magnum opus epic track:

In their whole production you can find something timeless, eternal. Something which is still considered as basics for musical compositions, inspiration for old and new keyboardists.

It's not strange that the most keyboardists I know on Facebook identify Keith Emerson as their unreachable Master.

Someone said: "Keith Emerson stays to the keyboards as Jimi Hendrix stays to electric guitar"... and he's not far away from the truth.

Now that Keith has decided to pass away, because of his degenerating hillness, I feel so guilty and cold, and so I decided to write down this post.

One thing I'm sure: If Keith should see from wherever he's now, the respect, love and affection we have showed in these days after his departure, he surely would mind to come back... and we all should be happy to see his smile another time.

Thank you to His Greatness "best keyboard player in the world", thank you to the always smiling face graceful artist. Thank you Keith...