Gianfranco Menzella - Dedicated to Bob Berg (2024) [Hi-Res]

GleAM Records is proud to announce the release of Dedicated To Bob Berg, the new album by italian saxophonist Gianfranco Menzella, available on CD and digital download/streaming from May 24, 2024 and distributed by IRD International and Believe Digital.

A trip to New York in the 80s and 90s, a tribute to the aesthetics of a great saxophonist who, together with Michael Brecker, has outlined the Post-Coltrane language: Bob Berg.

The modern sounding songs with pop and Davisian references are part of Berg’s repertoire of the last years of his career influenced by collaborations with M.Stern, C.Corea, D.Kikoski. Among the songs an original composition “Mr Berg” composed by Gianfranco Menzella. The project “Dedicated to Bob Berg” aims to be a tribute to the art of Bob Berg filtered by the personal history of individual members of the quartet surely permeated by the aesthetics and personality of Berg.

The album begins with Angles, a track from the postbop mood of Bob Berg recorded in 1993 on the album “Enter the Spirit”. His is a regular structure in which complex tonal and modal harmonies converge on a medium up swing pulse. The author describes it as “Angles is a piece of Berg with a modal flavor in which intertwine the delirious chromatic lines that have always accompanied me”.

It follows Promise, a composition by Chick Corea also featured on Berg’s 1993 album and characterized by the leader’s vision of “an elegant melody that recalls to the mind urban atmospheres… a Manhattan penthouse…. and the lights of the city below.”

Second Sight is a bluesy theme by Bob Berg with an Irish flavor with a second line accompaniment that in the version of Menzella retains the accents but with a more modern rhythmic drive that leads the quartet to explode unexpectedly.

The first part of the album ends with The Search, a wonderful ballad by Mike Stern recorded by Berg together with the guitarist on the album “Short Stories” of 1987. A slice of New York in the 80s full of graffiti imbued with pop art but also anger and violence.

Mr. Berg is the only original track on the album. Here Menzella reveals a solid ability to build poetry through small forms. A theme full of lyricism and the author’s intentions “a dedication full of feeling to the energy and soul of a musician who has always moved me”

It’s the turn of Summer Night, the famous standard of Harry Warren, often attended by Bob Berg and arranged by the leader at fast swing time. “A minimal theme and an unusual structure with two modal pedals that recall the energy and vitality of long summer nights.”

The Secret Life of Plants is a song by Stevie Wonder that Berg often played on his Italian tours in the 90s with Danilo Rea. Here the quartet unfolds all its expressive and dynamic energies to return the beauty of a song full of mysterious recalls and to a hidden world.

The album closes with Sometime Ago, a theme written by Sergio Mihanovich and very dear to the leader. A jazz waltz full of feeling and sensuality with a final climax in crescendo.