CARLA MARCIANO QUARTET - Psychosis ( Homage to Bernard Herrmann)
Challenge Records CR 73486
Carla Marciano (alto & sopranino saxophones), Allessandro La Corte ( piano & keyboards), Aldo Vigorito (bass), Gaetano Fasano ( drums)
Quality film and quality jazz, have down the decades become easy bedfellows. From Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Shelly Manne, Terence Blanchard, and many more, top quality jazz musicians have been able to add their considerable improvising abilities to the scores of many great film composers. This album is no exception, with the superb saxophonist Carla Marciano and her trio adding thrilling embellishments to the master works of one of the great film score composers and arrangers Bernard Herrmann. Carla is one of the brightest stars on the Italian jazz scene. A graduate from the Conservatory of Music in her home town of Salerno, she is not only in demand in her own country, but throughout Europe, the United States and Russia. Highly praised by Downbeat magazine, she has recorded, among others for the exclusive Black Saint record label. Having received rave reviews for all of her albums since the beginning of her professional career in 2002, this album, which was released late last year, was included in the top ten instrumental jazz releases of 2020 by "Jazz History On-Line".
Bernard Hermann (1911 - 1975), the legendary film composer to whom this album is dedicated, produced some of the very best high art screen music of all time. Working with many top film makers he was perhaps best known for his work with Alfred Hitchcock on blockbusters such as Marnie, Psycho, Vertigo, and North by North West. A multi-Grammy award winner he is also well known for his work on Taxi Driver, Citizen Kane, Obsession, and many others.
Things get going on the album with Betsy's Theme from the 1976 Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver. Immediately from the ghostly piano opening and the first sound of the leader's ethereal alto, even on a first playing, it seems obvious that, the listener is encountering something very special. The Piece is full of tension and surprises, the saxophone sound has a real expressiveness about it, and as
the dynamic changes and the tension lifts the rhythm section comes into its own on this excellent opening track. Hitchcock's 1964 film Marnie is up next, the first of a sequence of three pieces linking it with the music from Twisted Nerve, another psychological thriller, this time from Roy Boulting in 1968. On the prelude from the Hitchcock film, the alto is at its most fluid but there is an inbuilt aggression and a certain edge about this dramatic piece that contains a fine piano solo from Allessandro La Corte and mood changing undercurrents from Gaetano Fasano's drums. On the transitory piece From Marine To Twisted Nerve we dive into a five minute maelstrom of the Avant Garde with overtones of Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor, until the sopranino saxophone is taken up by the leader on the jagged and edgy Theme And Variations of the second film, which although commencing in free form mode gradually travels to calmer waters on the back of some magnificent bass playing from Aldo Vigorito. The centre piece of any collection, such as this, would have to be the music from Hitchcocks Psycho, and so it proves to be on Prelude, a nine minute excursion around this startling theme, set in motion by a stunning piano introduction, until the leaders chorus after chorus of mind blowing improvisations from the alto saxophone as the tempo rises higher and higher, culminating in a dramatic drum break to finish. The set finishes with two pieces from the 1958 thriller by Hitchcock, Vertigo which was adapted from a novel entitled From Among The Dead. The first piece, aptly named Prelude portrays an ambience of complete blackness, with telling exchanges between piano and alto, and a rare interlude for electric keys, before somewhat surprisingly we find ourselves in the far more relaxed surroundings of Scene D'Amour, an almost straight ahead mid tempo ballad, highlighting enough lucid alto to calm the listener from the mind bending, but brilliant sonic excursions that preceded it. For some reason there is a fine melodic rendering of Hedwigs Theme from Harry Potter as a tribute to John Williams to finish, quite acceptable but with little relevance to what has gone before.
This is a truly superb recording that fuses together the genius of Hermann with the intensity, vision and jazz sensibility of a superb saxophone player and her trio, to form a striking "tour de force" of musical panoramas, that can easily stand alone as a fine jazz album in its own right as well as a fresh and compelling reprise of Herrmann's great scores.
Reviewed by Jim Burlong
Challenge Records CR 73486
Carla Marciano (alto & sopranino saxophones), Allessandro La Corte ( piano & keyboards), Aldo Vigorito (bass), Gaetano Fasano ( drums)
Quality film and quality jazz, have down the decades become easy bedfellows. From Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Shelly Manne, Terence Blanchard, and many more, top quality jazz musicians have been able to add their considerable improvising abilities to the scores of many great film composers. This album is no exception, with the superb saxophonist Carla Marciano and her trio adding thrilling embellishments to the master works of one of the great film score composers and arrangers Bernard Herrmann. Carla is one of the brightest stars on the Italian jazz scene. A graduate from the Conservatory of Music in her home town of Salerno, she is not only in demand in her own country, but throughout Europe, the United States and Russia. Highly praised by Downbeat magazine, she has recorded, among others for the exclusive Black Saint record label. Having received rave reviews for all of her albums since the beginning of her professional career in 2002, this album, which was released late last year, was included in the top ten instrumental jazz releases of 2020 by "Jazz History On-Line".
Bernard Hermann (1911 - 1975), the legendary film composer to whom this album is dedicated, produced some of the very best high art screen music of all time. Working with many top film makers he was perhaps best known for his work with Alfred Hitchcock on blockbusters such as Marnie, Psycho, Vertigo, and North by North West. A multi-Grammy award winner he is also well known for his work on Taxi Driver, Citizen Kane, Obsession, and many others.
Things get going on the album with Betsy's Theme from the 1976 Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver. Immediately from the ghostly piano opening and the first sound of the leader's ethereal alto, even on a first playing, it seems obvious that, the listener is encountering something very special. The Piece is full of tension and surprises, the saxophone sound has a real expressiveness about it, and as
the dynamic changes and the tension lifts the rhythm section comes into its own on this excellent opening track. Hitchcock's 1964 film Marnie is up next, the first of a sequence of three pieces linking it with the music from Twisted Nerve, another psychological thriller, this time from Roy Boulting in 1968. On the prelude from the Hitchcock film, the alto is at its most fluid but there is an inbuilt aggression and a certain edge about this dramatic piece that contains a fine piano solo from Allessandro La Corte and mood changing undercurrents from Gaetano Fasano's drums. On the transitory piece From Marine To Twisted Nerve we dive into a five minute maelstrom of the Avant Garde with overtones of Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor, until the sopranino saxophone is taken up by the leader on the jagged and edgy Theme And Variations of the second film, which although commencing in free form mode gradually travels to calmer waters on the back of some magnificent bass playing from Aldo Vigorito. The centre piece of any collection, such as this, would have to be the music from Hitchcocks Psycho, and so it proves to be on Prelude, a nine minute excursion around this startling theme, set in motion by a stunning piano introduction, until the leaders chorus after chorus of mind blowing improvisations from the alto saxophone as the tempo rises higher and higher, culminating in a dramatic drum break to finish. The set finishes with two pieces from the 1958 thriller by Hitchcock, Vertigo which was adapted from a novel entitled From Among The Dead. The first piece, aptly named Prelude portrays an ambience of complete blackness, with telling exchanges between piano and alto, and a rare interlude for electric keys, before somewhat surprisingly we find ourselves in the far more relaxed surroundings of Scene D'Amour, an almost straight ahead mid tempo ballad, highlighting enough lucid alto to calm the listener from the mind bending, but brilliant sonic excursions that preceded it. For some reason there is a fine melodic rendering of Hedwigs Theme from Harry Potter as a tribute to John Williams to finish, quite acceptable but with little relevance to what has gone before.
This is a truly superb recording that fuses together the genius of Hermann with the intensity, vision and jazz sensibility of a superb saxophone player and her trio, to form a striking "tour de force" of musical panoramas, that can easily stand alone as a fine jazz album in its own right as well as a fresh and compelling reprise of Herrmann's great scores.
Reviewed by Jim Burlong
