A fascinating collaboration between lyrical Italian jazz improvisers trumpeter Paolo Fresu and bandoneon player Daniele di Bonaventura and the transfixing voices of A Filetta from Corsica. The prize-winning vocal ensemble, renowned as the standard-bearers of Corsican polyphony, make their ECM debut.
The appealing combination of sound-colours and idioms adds up to 'Sketches of Corsica'. As the improvisers approach this regional music of universal appeal, Fresu's pensive, romantic trumpet inevitably brings Milesian associations to mind, and the ingenious bandoneon of di Bonaventura implies 'chamber music' and 'folk music' in every breath of the bellows.
A Filetta (Filetta translates as fern or bracken), led by Jean-Claude Acquaviva, is celebrated for its re-casting of Corsican vocal polyphony over the last three decades. Many commentators credit the group for saving a unique singing tradition, both secular and sacred, whose roots stretch back into antiquity. Paolo Fresu, from the neighbouring island of Sardinia, could relate at once to the Corsican music with its refined and archaic voices, its mix of contemporary compositions and its attempt to hold fast to melodies vanishing in the darkness of time.
Acquaviva is the group's principal composer and two of his pieces here, Rex tremendae and Figliolu d'Ella are parts of a requiem composed in 2004, while Liberata was created for the soundtrack of a film about the Corsican resistance movement in World War II. Other pieces are by Parisian film composer Bruno Coulais, and di Bonaventura contributes three.
Despite different instrumentation and goals, the juxtaposition of 'jazz'-informed creativity and vocal music in Mistico Mediterraneo has some affinities to the Garbarek/Hilliards Officium project and will likely appeal to a similar audience.
Multiple award-winner Paulo Fresu is one of the most highly regarded jazz musicians in Europe, and his ECM collaboration with Ralph Towner on Chiaroscuro (released in 2009), was immensely successful both with critics and the public.
Personnel: Paolo Fresu (trumpet, flugelhorn), Daniele di Bonaventura (bandoneon), A Filetta Corsican Voices
