Franco Cerri - Cerrimedioat (2011)

This "Cerrimedioatutto", with which Franco Cherry celebrates his happy and fruitful 85 years, is certainly an autobiography, but I prefer to define it as a mosaic of old and new emotions, since Franco fished out some of his "old" recordings full of memories, feelings, joys, to which time has given subtle shades, well suited to the tender the elegance that always distinguished his musical signature. Fourteen (web version) recordings that, if read as a whole, do not reveal their dates: compositions from the past and present merge and create a single language that dilutes its words over an endless period of time, in a kind of golden timelessness that simultaneously demonstrates the guitarist with his stylistic sophistication and the composer with his complex inventive ideas. Let's start with "Cerrimedio", which dates back to the 1980s, where Stefano plays bass, and the memories of that interrupted journey grow painfully. Here, Franco did nothing but add a few voices: the theme is suggested by Franco with tenderness, emphasized by Stefano's bass. The composition is simple, but it already demonstrates the elegance of the guitarist: a few notes, depth, sounds that seem to be extracted not only from the strings, but also from the soul, and therefore the music acquires the scale of a fantastic fairy tale. The listener is also attracted by the feeling of daydreaming. In the music of Franco, I mean the composer, you can feel a kind of dream that seems to be inseparable, you move from one theme to another, as if fantasy and reality can merge together to create a tempera that obscures his life, which tells it through a hundred different shades, which collects its breath. and makes it sound. More complex are the harmonic progression and the theme "Partnerschaft", which came from the 1960s. In this case, the story also becomes clear due to the powerful sound of wind instruments, and I like to remember Freddie Green, who emphasized the dynamics of the Count Basie orchestra, but then Franco breaks free, plays in a chord melody, that is, chords and melody are used simultaneously, shaking off the dust from the past and offering it as the future. Some of the names reflect old ironies: for example, "Flay", which was originally called "The Ballad of Moses" or "L'isola", "Ciononostante sono un assiduo bagnante" or "Deep in You", which allows us to rediscover the voice of Bunny Foy, who sings without words with noticeable intensity. This search for myself in my youth also seems important to me. The Proustian sense of self-discovery arises almost in order to make the poetic path obvious, to come to the present, with "Foxology" or "L'attesa" on a scale of continuous poetry, a lexicon full of nostalgia and hope, an unexpected, always amazing way to impress, to keep the listener's attention hooked with the help of various nuances, nuances feelings that immediately dissolve into his quiet irony.