Orchestra SMS - Musica Sparpagliata CD
SKU
33-Alt 065
Stefano Giannotti: arrangements, conduction, guitar, percussion, harpsichord
Eva Bartolucci: flutes
Domenico Piegaia: clarinet, bass clarinet
Tommaso Barattini: clarinet
Riccardo Santabarbara: violin
Giada Del Grande: voice
Elisa Cheng: electric guitar, voice
Jacopo Di Grazia: banjo, guitar, voice
Gabriele Stefani, Nicolò Paganucci, Franco Cheng: guitars, voices
Enrico Giuntini: piano, voice
Francesca Pezzuti: keyboards, voice
Sofia Paterni: harp
Duccio Nieri, bass guitar, voice
Edgar Gomez: drums, voice
Matteo Lucchesi: percussion
“The SMS Orchestra is a chamber orchestra project founded in 2012 by the artistic director Stefano Giannotti.
The album contains fifteen songs recovered from the forgotten drawers of artists such as Robert Wyatt, Lucio Battisti, Franco Battiato, David Bowie, Lou Reed, David Sylvian and many others, played orchestrally not to propose simple covers but reinterpreting and revitalizing them, making them somehow their own and "personal". The arrangements of the songs are refined and often even phantasmal both for the use of an instrumentation far from the original and the chamber approach, and for the rhythmic-melodic choices that form diagonal paths between them and markedly versatile and functional.
As musicologist and art critic Vittore Baroni says in the booklet: “What makes the difference … are also the peculiar choices of the songs to interpret, going back for example to pages of the lesser-known Battisti, the more inspired Bruno Lauzi or the dazzling post-punk meteor Young Marble Giants. The original arrangements by Stefano Giannotti are fundamental, in addition to his contributions to the tracks as a guitarist and multi-instrumentalist…”.
Despite the title and its genesis, a record was born that is homogeneous in quality and above all in the atmosphere created, played a lot on the rarefaction of the rhythms, embellished by careful and wise inserts of guitar and drums. Among all the songs that stand out are “Molecole” by Lavezzi/Mogol, sweet and introspective like the original, the beautiful and almost ambient “Nostalgia” from Sylvian’s post-Japan debut album and the little-known psychedelic-flavored song “Memory of a free festival” by Bowie, introduced by a delightful keyboard that improves the original intro that was entrusted to a Rosedale electric organ for children.
But the revisitations of the very famous “Venus in furs” by Lou Reed, from the famous “banana” album by The Velvet Underground, and the wavering “Sea Song” by Wyatt that maintains the hypnotic slowness of the original and the Canterbury flavor so dear to the artist, also intrigue.”
- LabelAltrOck
- UPC8019991892862