Enzo Carniel - Aria (2021) Hi-Res

The duo of Enzo Carniel and Filippo Vignato "Silent Room" is a conversation between piano and trombone. Their music is born from the common will to create a space of freedom, a sound space filled with melodies and silences. "Silent Room" is that musical place that can be filled with sound, or left blank. It is in this desire for sound space as a "place" for listening and meditation that the two musicians created the repertoire for the album Aria.

The album is made of simple melodies on which the two improvisers will furrow and let their voices express themselves. 'Aria' can refer to the opening of J-S Bach's Golderg variations, to sung opera arias, but above all to any expressive melody that develops the imagination. 'Aria' is also the air in Italian: the air that comes from the breath, the air that fills the room, the air that vibrates and is transformed into sound. The repertoire is therefore this collection of Arias composed by Enzo Carniel and Filippo Vignato.

With this album, they are promoting their heritage as jazzmen: that of improvisation and conversation, that of freedom and virtuosity. But the duo also explores the contemporary colors of electronic music: from the ambient of Brian Eno, to the Japanese minimalism of Ryuchi Sakamoto or Ryoji Ikeda. This is reflected in the album by the use of the prepared piano, the Fender Rhodes or synthesizers that come to color the sound space of the acoustic piano and trombone.

In the composition In 'All Nilautpaula', Enzo Carniel evokes the water lily (in Sanskrit) coming to purify the water that surrounds him. An almost vegetal composition, close to nature as the duo likes to get closer to it. In 'Babele', Filippo Vignato invokes the great question of language: thanks to Arias, and therefore melodies, language becomes universal through music, and only the sensory experience counts. The eponymous composition opens and closes the album, with an acoustic and an electronic version: the duo walks in the "Silent Room", from acoustic to electronic, a path that reveals all the richness of their work on sound.

To bring this repertoire to life, Enzo Carniel and Filippo Vignato immersed themselves in the Villa Cicaletto in Tuscany, which became their Silent Room for two days: a concert hall in a house classified as a historical monument and with exceptional and inspiring acoustics. These acoustics allowed them to magnify the 8 compositions of the album, the 8 arias to constitute this first album of the duo Silent Room: Aria.

Enzo Carniel and Filippo Vignato meet in 2013 during the Master's program at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris (CNSMDP). The connection is rapidly established as they share the same tastes and desires. They also attend the generative improvisation class in which they push their experiments. The duo was born in 2014, around a tribute to the German trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, then they replace this repertoire with their own compositions.
They also play together in various projects: Enzo Carniel Sextet for the festival Jazz à la Villette in 2014, Filippo Vignato Quartet, etc...
The duo has played since its conception in France and Italy (Théâtre Liberté, Grand Théâtre de Brescia, Cité Internationale des Arts...) many times over the last 5 years to develop this repertoire, make it mature, and lead to this first album.