CREDITS

SIDE A

LINER NOTES

Days of purity these are not: instead, they seem to be, musically speaking, times of encounters, relationships, hybrids and fantastic monsters. Bodies in crisis, unsatisfied styles and entire worlds of sound given to be finished make the best of this situation. To who bothers to shout their head off declaring that jazz is dead, the only possible answer is that jazz lives, lives again, transmitting its vital force to other bodies, other styles, other worlds. Something of this kind is happening within these grooves. Four in One is a heavy but loving arrangement of the classic Monk tune, an excercise in style to which old The1onious might have answered "Oh no, no, again... once more!"; even if, just like Steve Lacy once told me, Monk used to love listening to other versions of his own tunes. A heavy and quite rock-oriented approach is also used elsewhere within a Parker-ish methodology: you take the harmonic changes from a standard such as 'All the Things You Are', alter them, you then place a new melody on top of them, and in the end try to put into it All the things you (can) play...

Impure jazz can also be found in Par Hasard, an interactive game between a kind of free bop, electronic and aleatory elements. City Dreams is the record's electric ballad, part of the soundtrack that Phoenix mode for the film 'Dream City' directed in Los Angeles by Valerio Jalongo (it won first prize of the Sorrento Film Festival of 1988, in the 'De Sica' section). The track incarnates, melodically speaking, that which is Californian in Lello Panico's soul, whilst that which is more authentically Neapolitan is entrusted to Fronne. Here, Miles Davis' and George Russell's lydian and modal dream is injected into that lydian feeling that belongs to Neapolitan folk music, with the use of genuine voices of the 'fronn’ ‘e limone' (lemon leafy branches) songs. Within these songs of the Campania tradition, one can maybe discern an Italic equivalent of that which the blues represents to the blocks in America in terms of form, content, and social functions. In fact what they have in common is the predilection for the themes on forbidden love, sweated labour, or (such as in the original context from which the vocal material here has been drown, and undergone re-compositional work) prison seclusion. The semi-improvised phrasing is useful to the communication of daily events and feelings, and the use of standard incipit can be found both in blues and in 'fronn’ ‘e limone' songs. The lyrics on every chorus are in fact improvised, except for the first chorus line: fronn’ ‘e limone... One sings it with the same spirit in which one's heart may open singing "I woke up this morning"... and never know from which direction your daily blues is gonna rain on you.

Fronne, branches of different traditions that bloom, flower and in the end intertwine. For these births, for rebirths every Phoenix takes off, rising from its ashes wherever the need for renewal is at its strongest. In the whereabouts of the gulf of Naples, only Lello Panico's guitar seems to remind me of the Phoenix' singing. And this record is his baptism of fire.

Gianfranco Salvatore

NOTE DI COPERTINA

RECENSIONI

"Un gran bel disco, scritto e concepito a quattro mani insieme a Gianfranco Salvatore".
Marco Crisostomi — AUDIO REVIEW

"La contaminazione non fa più paura a nessuno se i risultati sono al livello del meglio che si ascolta in questo album, come Par Hasard, di cui è autore Gianfranco Salvatore: il pezzo più stimolante della raccolta".
Giuseppe Piacentino — MUSICA JAZZ

"Un album originale e affascinante, che attinge come ispirazione tanto al jazz quanto alla musica popolare mediterranea, rivelandosi ascolto dopo acolto come uno dei migliori dischi di questa annata jazzistica. Enorme talento creativo in brani quali Par Hasard (con un grande Massimo Urbani) composta dal produttore Gianfranco Salvatore".
David Nerattini — CIAO 2001

"Autonomia e originalità compositiva in un gran bel disco in assoluto… La title-track, composta dal leader Panico e dal produttore Salvatore, si basa su un antico canto a fronne di tradizione carceraria, con un’improvvisazione sulla scala lidia che riformula l’ipotesi di un ‘world jazz’. Un lamento della nostra tradizione popolare, l’espressione delle sofferenze di un detenuto, si dimostra l’equivalente di un blues. Abbiamo tutti un blues da piangere e un nostro jazz da inventare, con l’elettronica al suo servizio in Par Hasard".
Federico Vacalebre — IL MATTINO

"Una musica fortemente elettrica, ma molto fresca e sempre logica nel suo tragitto tutt’altro che convenzionale… Par Hasard, composta dal producer Gianfranco Salvatore (coautore anche in Fronne, che vive delle voci e del profumo di Napoli in un mélange fra tradizione e futurismo), intesse un incontro-scontro tra il lessico boppistico di Massimo Urbani, autore di un intervento grintoso e verace, e i suoni generazionali e tecnologici tendenti al rock".
Mario Luzzi - SUONO