Daniele di Bonaventura, Michele Di Toro - Vola Vola (2019)

Searching plain melodic lines, even in improvisation, seems the main trait of Daniele di Bonaventura’s musical language, especially when he plays the bandoneon. It is not by chance that his refined, and intimate poetics finds some of its best expressions in duos. Besides the historic and tested one which binds him to Paolo Fresu, one must remember most recent ones, like the duo with pianists Giovanni Ceccarelli and Giovanni Guidi, but also the one with Polish guitarist Maciek Pysz in «Coming Home», where di Bonaventura can also display off his undervalued talent as pianist. In this new and recent recording the piano, played by his friend Michele di Toro, is called into play once again.
A marked and natural melodic sensitivity is shared by the two musicians, who found in their common Abruzzese roots (distant ones for Daniele, who was born and lives in the Marche region) the thread to crown a partnership which has existed for a few years with an album. The thread is plain in the choice of the title track (which features the elision of a “vola”), a rare example of an Italian popular song, sung in a dialect other than Neapolitan, which enjoys international success. It is a magical and fine interplay, the fruit of mutual knowledge and respect that begins from the first notes of the dreamy Ninna nanna, the opening tune, and also accompanies the duo in the other nine songs, only a part of which are original.
If Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzolla have always been the composers mostly played by di Bonaventura (in any case, the moving performance of Soledad deserves an honorable mention), other musical discoveries were made like the persuasive and nostalgic melodies of the English composer William Turner Walton (Touch Her Soft Lips and Part, from the soundtrack of Laurence Olivier’s «Henri V») and Joe Sample (One Day I’ll Fly Away), the latter revisited from a nice version by the Swedish trombonist–singer Nils Landgren. It is a lyricism which can be longing at times, without being banal or sugary.