Marcello Tonolo - Skrjabin in Jazz (2018)

Three years after «Crazeology», Marcello Tonolo is back with a new interesting work based on a jazz reinterpretation of ten piano pieces by the Russian composer Alexander Skrjabin. He had previously worked in a similar way on the album «Puccini in Jazz» in 2013. On that occasion, the Venetian pianist led a quartet with Michele Polga playing tenor sax; here, on the other hand, half of the songs are played by the trio only, and the other half by a sextet completed again by Polga, besides David Boato on trumpet and Federico Pierantoni on trombone.

In his liner notes Tonolo explains: “In 2015, for the centenary of the death of Alexander Skrjabin, I was asked to reinterpret some of the pieces in a jazz key. After careful consideration on the meaning of the operation and the risks involved… I started working. I examined some preludes, studies and sonatas written for piano by the great composer at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It had to be a project limited to a couple of songs; instead, Skrjabin’s music, which I did not know in all its facets, proved to be extremely stimulating and so, track after track, I built a repertoire large enough to make it into a record…”.

You go from the unexpected Monk’s colors of Languid Violet and the sweetly nostalgic lyricism of Indigo, both performed in trio, to the refined sextet arrangements of Scarlet dream or Pervinca, marked by the unmistakable stylistic trait of Marcello Tonolo’s orchestral writing. The ten tunes are worth to be listened to in one breath, from beginning to end, as complementary parts of a single suite. Once again the pianist specifies: “The result is so far from the original to convince me to put my name on all the reworked songs, naming them according to a personal palette of colors, similar to the one that Skrjabin conceived for his famous poem «Prometheus», where a tone corresponded to each color…“.

Marcello Tonolo (piano),
Domenico Santaniello (double bass),
Mauro Beggio (drums);

Added on tracks n. 1/3/5/7/9:

David Boato (trumpet, flugelhorn),
Federico Pierantoni (trombone),
Michele Polga (tenor sax).