Album “Partenope”
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-“It absolutely deserves a spot on the shelf of any musician with an interest in contemporary clarinet music” (The Clarinet)
- “The whole CD is fascinating to listen to” (Clarinet & Saxophone Magazine)
- “Luciano is one of Europe’s leading exponents of jazz clarinet” (Tom Robinson BBC Radio)
- “The New Voice of the Clarinet” (front page on De Kalrinet)
- “Remarkable the Fragment #4 and #5.Bravo! (Gianluigi Trovesi, clarinettist, ECM)
- “A superb clarinettist and a superb composer” (WJFF Radio in New York has dedicated a whole two-hour-show to Luca’s music with a live interview, click here to listen to it)
- “Interesting music and fantastic playing, beautifully recorded” (All Classical FM)
- “…a thrilling exploration of the relationship between composed and improvised music…” (Ian Patterson All About Jazz USA)
- “…if Jimi Hendrix played clarinet it may possibly have sounded similar to ‘Partenope’ (Brent Black, Critical Jazz)
- “…it bridges the gap between the idea of the Belcanto and jazz creating a warm atmosphere” (Rohrblatt Magazine)
- Leggi l’intervista per Nuove Dissonanze e le recensioni per All About Jazz Italia e “A Proposito di Jazz”.
We are pleased to introduce “Partenope” (LUC01 CD, 2011), the new album by Luca Luciano. The project has been realised thanks to the precious contribution of the sound engineer, DJ and producer Massimo Luciano. The album is available for physical and digital distribution world-wide via CD-Baby and it is also available on Amazon (CDs and download), iTunes, Napster, Cd Universe and in exclusive at Harold Moores Records for the UK. Download the scores here.
Continuing the journey started with the album “Clarinet” (MCPS 2008-2010), the compositions included in this release are also informed by Luciano’s research on extended techniques and new music for solo clarinet that he has also presented during the masterclasses and workshops he holds (UK, Europe, South America). Luciano’s aesthetics is inspired by the Italian intellectual Umberto Eco and aims at presenting 21st Century music that, paraphrasing Eco’s view on post-modernism, ”neither repudiates nor imitates either his modernist or post-modernist parents and has the music of the past centuries behind his back but not as a burden on the his shoulders”.
The core of the “Clarinet Solo Project”, is made of the two Sequenze premiered at the Cathedral of Bristol in June 2009 along with “Rondo’ Contemporaneo” and “Fragment #4″ premiered in 2010 and 2011 respectively at St Martin in the Fields in London part of their New Music Series. Inspired by the famous line of Gustav Mahler’s, “A symphony must be like the world, it must embrace everything”, the Sequenze include sections of notated and improvised music where a “sequence” of propositions are developed by the musician during the piece. During the performance the clarinet is pushed to the edge using a wide range of styles and expressions in an imaginative journey around the world from Western European music to Afro-American or folklorist music ofSouthern Italy, from contemporary classical music with chromatic and angular-shaped lines to heartfelt melodies. The sequenze were first recorded in 2007 and have been revised, re-performed and re-edited during the studio sessions of June 2010.
The programme is completed by a series of short, written pieces where a variety of techniques are applied (multi-phonics, growl/flutter, glissato, quarter-tones, “timbral-trillos”, etc) on scores that may well feature other effects (as in the tarantella section of “Rondo’ Contemporaneo”), or the use of the Neapolitan minor scale (as on Sequenza #1 and Rondo’ Contemporaneo) or even a short section of serial music (as on “Fragment #5”). Jazz Impromptu is a freely improvised track that includes short quotations from some of Charlie Parker’s famous tunes as a homage to the American saxophonist.
The music also shows the potential of the instrument endorsed by Luciano (a full Boehm System clarinet with a low Eb) with extra keys and rings that has attracted the attention of critics and enthusiasts alike.