LUCIA BRIGHENTI – Objets de Vertu
Ars Artis (available from Crotchet Classical)
Lucia Brighenti (piano); Bob Jones (composer)
Recorded Abbey Road Studios, 2nd October 2013
This is an interesting release on several different counts, and an album that I have returned to on numerous occasions, purely for my own enjoyment as well as for the purposes of this review. As you will gather from the credits above this is not a jazz album per se, but instead is an album that is performed by a formally trained classical pianist and composed by a classically trained jazz pianist.
Pianist, Lucia Brighenti has given concerts as a solo performer in the Chamber Music field as gained a first class honours degree from O Respighi a State Conservatoire in Latina, Italy. Composer, Bob Jones’ credentials are somewhat closer to home, both geographically and musically. Jones has a degree in modern languages but his passion is music and especially jazz. For a number of years he ran the successful Gibbs Jazz Club in Cardiff that played host a many visiting American musicians including Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis along with some of the UK’s leading soloists and bands. The Club with its six nights a week live music policy also presented a valuable and much loved place to play for a whole host of locally based musicians with Andy Sheppard and Tina May often to be heard performing a Gibbs in the mid-eighties.
The music presented on this intriguing album therefore bring together the composer’s interest in jazz and more formally composed music, and retain his own sense of lyricism that frequently surfaced when I heard Bob Jones leading his own trio or as pianist in the Tina May Quintet. It is therefore interesting to note that the written compositions impeccably performed by Brighenti all started life as piano improvisations performed by Jones and later transcribed for to be performed as the individual complete pieces heard here.
The music is kept fresh and interesting with the somewhat unexpected (and uncredited) additional instrumentation that is heard on ‘Portrait of an Artist’, and the guitar solo on ‘Postlude’. A jazz sensibility is brought more thoroughly to the foreground on two delightful pieces that appear towards the end of the album with ‘Those Old Piano Blues’ and ‘Rag’.
As a classical recitalist, Brighenti plays these compositions as the composer as scored them, and it would be interesting to hear how Jones would interpret these pieces if he was to perform them himself, having said that, the pieces have an attractive quality that stand on their own merits and warrant repeated and careful listening.
Reviewed by Nick Lea
Ars Artis (available from Crotchet Classical)
Lucia Brighenti (piano); Bob Jones (composer)
Recorded Abbey Road Studios, 2nd October 2013
This is an interesting release on several different counts, and an album that I have returned to on numerous occasions, purely for my own enjoyment as well as for the purposes of this review. As you will gather from the credits above this is not a jazz album per se, but instead is an album that is performed by a formally trained classical pianist and composed by a classically trained jazz pianist.
Pianist, Lucia Brighenti has given concerts as a solo performer in the Chamber Music field as gained a first class honours degree from O Respighi a State Conservatoire in Latina, Italy. Composer, Bob Jones’ credentials are somewhat closer to home, both geographically and musically. Jones has a degree in modern languages but his passion is music and especially jazz. For a number of years he ran the successful Gibbs Jazz Club in Cardiff that played host a many visiting American musicians including Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis along with some of the UK’s leading soloists and bands. The Club with its six nights a week live music policy also presented a valuable and much loved place to play for a whole host of locally based musicians with Andy Sheppard and Tina May often to be heard performing a Gibbs in the mid-eighties.
The music presented on this intriguing album therefore bring together the composer’s interest in jazz and more formally composed music, and retain his own sense of lyricism that frequently surfaced when I heard Bob Jones leading his own trio or as pianist in the Tina May Quintet. It is therefore interesting to note that the written compositions impeccably performed by Brighenti all started life as piano improvisations performed by Jones and later transcribed for to be performed as the individual complete pieces heard here.
The music is kept fresh and interesting with the somewhat unexpected (and uncredited) additional instrumentation that is heard on ‘Portrait of an Artist’, and the guitar solo on ‘Postlude’. A jazz sensibility is brought more thoroughly to the foreground on two delightful pieces that appear towards the end of the album with ‘Those Old Piano Blues’ and ‘Rag’.
As a classical recitalist, Brighenti plays these compositions as the composer as scored them, and it would be interesting to hear how Jones would interpret these pieces if he was to perform them himself, having said that, the pieces have an attractive quality that stand on their own merits and warrant repeated and careful listening.
Reviewed by Nick Lea
