Alberto Mandarini - Love Song (2019)

The songs of Tenco, Lauzi, Conte - naturally together with those of many other authors (Endrigo, De André ...) - have traced a definitive furrow between the traditional Italian song and the modern one with the figure of the singer-songwriter: who wrote and at the same time he interpreted his own songs bringing in the Italy of the boom "... a charge of unconventional unconventionality" (Gianni Borgna History of the Italian song Mondadori). And this work starts right here to renew the meaning of our musical-cultural past.

Now we come to the record: two original songs by the leader Alberto Mandarini, as the beginning and the end of a record dedicated to Italian songwriting. Multi-faceted arrangements: soft and elegant on slow times with bows dedicated to a great filling job; instead they are turned on and on the faster rhythms, in which the voices of the two winds tend to emerge.

If on the one hand it seems therefore to be present at re-readings - as in Parlami d'amore Mariù and At least Tu Nell'universo - rather traditional, on the other, listening to some passages of Ba-Ba-Baciami and Non gioco più, we are instead taken and think again; and the truth, as often happens, is likely to be in the middle.

"Love songs" is a refined record that essentially explores two stylistic registers: the melodious one of our song themes, and a second jazz-style one. A disc that for its appearance can remain hidden to the attention of the purist jazz musician, but that instead is very interesting for the variety of languages ​​that elaborates and assembles, and for the strength with which it is able to involve and excite (it will also be because linked melodies resound in one way or another to the life of each of us).

The strong expressive charge of Alberto Mandarini's music is all in the reinterpretation of the piece by Tenco Vedrai, Vedrai: where lyrical moments alternate, in which the melody of the sax of the always excellent Trovesi flies on the carpets woven by the strings, to bolder passages and digressions - also of free matrix - which complete a picture full of different but absolutely complementary styles.