Biography
Giorgio Tuma
Alice Rossi
OS TUMANTES:
Alessio Borgia: drums and percussion
Simona Colomba: Farfisa, Wurlitzer, Piano
Matilde de Rubertis: Voice, Guitar
Massimiliano Giannuzzi: Bass
Salvatore Papa: Guitar
Marco Tuma: Flute.
2002
Giorgio Tuma is a boy born in Lecce (Italy) who grew up listening to THE CLASH and whose concept of music changed radically when he discovered STEREOLAB. Pop gains a new space in his life, and he learns to appreciate artists like Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, Tim Hardin, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Marcos Valle, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Broadway musicals, THE FREE DESIGN, Astrud Gilberto, Brian Wilson, Piero Piccioni, Piero Umiliani and Armando Trovajoli. He begins composing music with all of his influences in mind and his lyrics deal mostly with childhood memories mixed with references to the fantasy worlds of fairs, roller coasters and circuses.
He begins to play with a group of musicians who will be baptized as OS TUMANTES (in tribute to OS MUTANTES, the Brazilian band that paved the way to tropicalia), with whom he begins to play live shows and record songs.
2003
He finishes recording his first album, but can’t find a record label to put it out.
2005
Finally, after two years of work, searching for support, he releases his first album, “Uncolored (Swing'n'Pop Around Rose)”, with a small Italian label: L'amico Immaginario. Here we can see all of his influences, his profound tendency toward Brazilian music, his brushes with jazz and his light and colorful conceptualization of music.
2006
In February, the band begins to record the songs that will make up its second album, with the collaboration of Stefano Manca in the Sud Est studios.
2007
In October they finish recording what will be their second album “My Vocalese Fun Fair”
2008
At the beginning of the year Giorgio Tuma sends his album to Elefant Records, and after listening to “My Vocalese Fun Fair” Giorgio immediately became a part of the great Elefant family, with the idea of releasing his new album at the end of the year. It’s an album with a similar direction to the anterior album, which accentuates the Brazilian influences and reaches incredible levels in terms of production and arrangements.
Everything is in motion by the end of the summer; Xavier Alarcón begins work mastering the album while the internationally renowned Italian projection artist, Davide Zucco, begins recreating that circus-like world on paper, illustrating Giorgio’s passion for roller coasters and theme parks. It all comes out perfectly on the album cover.
Giorgio Tuma collaborates with the Italian duo GIRL WITH THE GUN (formed by Matilde Davoli and Populous) on their debut album, writing two of the songs on the disc. The album is released in September by Disastro Records.
In November, Emanuele Kabu finishes the video-clip for “Let's Make Stevens Cake!!!”, resulting in a precious exercise in imaginative and colorful animation, the perfect video to describe the imaginary and fantastic world of “My Vocalese Fun Fair”.
2009
In January “My Vocalese Fun Far” sees the light of day. So long staring out across the Atlantic, observing Salvador de Bahia from the other side of the ocean, and it turns out that the most exotic sun is shining on the Mediterranean, in Italy, where Giorgio Tuma has just released his second, marvelous disc, “My Vocalese Fun Fair”. Starting with fibers as solid as the delicacy of Caetano Veloso at his most Bahian, the elegance of Burt Bacharach, the jazzy approximations of Antonio Carlos Jobim, the circus-like psychedelia of the BEATLES at their highest, the Californian soft pop and a touch of sweet soul to the tune of Terry Callier or Marvin Gaye, Giorgio Tuma builds “My Vocalese Fun Fair”, a source of imagination that makes his inseparable band mates, OS MUTANTES, shine.
It is a disc that is capable of pulling together all of the different influences of all of these artists and fitting them together with their own personality, without sounding mimetic but instead completely the unique; the most astonishing thing about “My Vocalese Fun Fair” is how it manages to make one figure shine above all its own influences, a figure who plays notes like colors in the rainbow, melodies like rays of light, arrangements like ocean reflections. Jazz, pop, soul, bossa, folk... All of these labels end up working for an artist with a special sensibility: as if BLUEBOY came out to enjoy the July coast, Isobel Campbell’s leap beyond the ocean, the sweet exoticness of Gal Costa, the dreamy pop of THE CYRKLE, Brigitte Bardot in a bathing suit… It’s really incredible how Giorgio Tuma managed to bring all of these paths into one album, which is a music lesson speaking both pedagogically and for music lovers.
And the lysergic aspect, the one required by music with so many tonalities, the one that painted the submarine yellow, is found in lyrics that are authentic space voyages, a spirit that is perfectly defined in the lyrics of “Musical Express”, where it says “I've singable dreams”. Giorgio Tuma is the artist that turned the daily journey of the sun into music. But it is not a yellow, monotonal or monotone sun, but a sun that has a complex shine, complete, full of nuances, one we believe in and that, as such, manages to irremediably affect our state of mind. Giorgio Tuma, the man who turned the colors into notes. And if you don’t believe me, please follow me on this modest journey through the album, which could almost be circular, like a roller coaster.
- “Introduction”. The opening melody, the melancholic feeling that sets off the sunrise.
- “Two Happy Sad Guitars...”. A beginning with a bittersweet, vintage feel like THE CLIENTELE, but just a moment before, they make the leap to the world of samba a la Edu Lobo and Marcos Valle. It is in this moment that we realize that the journey has begun, that we are already on the train, just in the moment when he begins to sing, backed by his TUMANTES, “white rails to moon!” and Brazil appears for the first time. The joy of a new day.
- “Saltamontes”. An addictive melody, SATURDAY LOOKS GOOD TO ME spiced with Northern Soul, and lyrics that are pure expressionism: “Happiness and cakes / chocolate words to say / dreams!!! / fireflies on water / glitter together / the more the better / everyone's awake”
- “Let's Make The Stevens Cake!!!” Return to samba, this time along the lines of Luis Bonfa and the QUARTETO EM CY, with a melody that smells like coral, salt and sand. That’s right, we’re by the sea.
- “Musical Express”. A playful song that tells us of a new journey to the heavens, like a song by Vinicius de Moraes released by Él Records. A journey that could easily be a walk through the most wonderful and utopian childhood memory.
- “...And Three Parasol Stars”. Brasil peeks in through the window again, with a bossa rhythm, this time with a memorable piano part, and what is probably the most hummable chorus of the whole album: “Gleaming light on my fingertip / I design a ship with a see-through sail”.
- “Astroland by Bus”. STEREOLAB meet soul. THE BEATLES meet Brian Wilson. One of those meetings that only Tuma can make work, with impossible songs that in little more than three minutes are constantly changing structure, melody, and time.
- “Coney Island Memories”. Sweet and peaceful soul-bossa, Marvin Gaye, SLY & THE FAMILY STONE, Joao Gilberto, the warm and marvelous voice of Matilde de Rubertis...
- “Marsico” closes the trio of openly soul-styled songs on the album. The sun is high on the horizon. The musical journey moves into a new and comforting stage.
- “St. Nicholas' Blue Melody”. Without a doubt the most bucolic moment on the album, with those bells and the omnipresent piano evoking the sweet melancholy of “Pet Sounds” and the elegance of Henry Mancini on the keyboards. The sun is beginning to move toward the horizon. The sky turns lovely shades of carmine.
- “Ml Db (Marie Louise Song)”. Nick Drake and Tim Buckley light up the night sky, while we lie back in the sand on the beach and look at the stars. The accordion’s melody evokes Mediterranean coasts, small fishing towns dyed with lime, the fireworks that mark the local celebrations of August. KINGS OF CONVENIENCE have forgotten the cold.
- “Faye's Flying Shoes”. The sheets get ready to wrap themselves around our dreams, our space voyages. Burt Bacharach and PLUSH sing a lullaby that doesn’t exist. It’s the story that doesn’t let you fall asleep, the story that fills you with excitement.
- “Dedicated to Timmy The Whale”. Caetano Veloso and Joao Gilberto caress us with a samba to say goodbye to the sea and to the sun, full of excitement and happiness as well as peace and beauty.
- “Sirens Pray for Us”. The sirens hold us in their lap and sing us into the deepest sleep. A melancholic, comforting song, goodbye to the day’s last ray of light, with the conviction that tomorrow, bright and early, it will return.
- “G-Lombardi Magic Rollercoasters”. It’s nighttime, time to dream of roller coasters and imaginary planets, circuses and chocolate cakes. That’s how peace sounds, in Brazil.
Emanuele Kabu directs the Video-clip of the song "Let's make stevens cake", the video is pure art in motion.
"My vocalese fun fair" gets very good reviews by the music press of all over the world. The album and Video-clip appear at the prestigious All music website [usa].
The song "ML DB (Mary Louise song)" is included in the Spanish film "Yo, también [Me, too]" and also takes part of the soundtrack of the film.
2011
In April “In the morning we'll meet” their third album, sees the light of day, is the most complicated and ambitious album that Giorgio Tuma has come across. When you deal with the musical fantasy that is hiding behind his notes, it is impossible not to evoke that colossal work of Brian Wilson’s, “Smile. Today, that figure of the song-writer as a goldsmith who pampers his melodies and arrangements with the meticulousness of a watch-maker needs to be reclaimed and dignified, and figures like Giorgio Tuma are indispensible in that process.
An album that, like all good trips, has come into being all around the world (countries like Canada, Norway, The U.S…. have seen these songs grow), to ultimately point straight towards home as the final destination. As the author himself admits, “In the morning we’ll meet” is an album of folk-jazz sung in English, but watered with typically Italian melodies, on which childhood and memories work as an emotional motor. And because we couldn’t expect anything less, the figures of the great Italian composers appear on the scene: Alessandro Cicognini, Nino Rota, Piero Piccioni, Piero Umiliani, Ennio Morricone, and singers like Luigi Tenco, Piero Ciampi and Lucio Batisti stop by to keep the references we already know like Stan Getz, Vinicius de Moraes, Brian Wilson himself, Chet Baker, Maurice Ravel and Nick Drake company.
Discography in Elefant:
ER-1137 GIORGIO TUMA "My vocalese fun fair" CD Digipak (January 2009)
ER-1156 GIORGIO TUMA "In The Morning We'll Meet" CD Digipak / LP (April 2011)
