Giorgio Tuma

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19/04/2011

Giorgio Tuma, new album "In the morning we'lll meet"

**Already available on our online store

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Click here to watch the video-clip of "New fabled stories"

Yes, “In the morning we'lll meet” 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.

But beware: don’t confuse the ambition of a project with the density and complicatedness of its sound. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is precisely the hard work that has gone into Giorgio Tuma’s new songs which has given way to a more thoughtful album than his two previous full-lengths, where the dose of sun and light turn out to be slightly austere, leaving space for that nostalgia so common in evening jazz, and the protagonism of blue as an impressionist symbol fills everything. And to achieve this, as always, there is an incredible list of collaborators, among whom a few stand out like Michael Andrews (responsible for a ton of great soundtracks, like “Donnie Darko” and “Me, you and everyone we know”), Lori Cullen (Canadian jazz-folk singer who has worked with Owen Pallet and has three splendid albums out, the last of which was produced by Chris Dedrick who was the mentor of the legendary THE FREE DESIGN), and Susan Karolina Wallumrød (who has also sung with greats like Bonnie “Prince” Billy" himself, and has three albums out with her group SUSANNA AND THE MAGICAL ORCHESTRA).

Ultimately, this is a one of a kind work, completely timeless, an album that the authentic music fans will enjoy with a grateful palate, and which to each new listen is a new banquet with so many new flavors to discover. And in this banquet, the principal actors are, since it could be no other way, the songs:

1.- A ghost in our way
Lori Cullen’s arrangements and Giuseppe Calignano’s synthesizers welcome the listener instrumentally, between dreamy accents and smoky evanescences, discovering that everything in Giorgio Tuma’s magical world is exciting.

2.- Imaginary Sounbdtrack for Yuri Norstein
If we were already talking about a magical universe, now this is telling us about another emotional conjurer, in this case, using audiovisuals as its magic wand. The innocent and fragile figures of the host, Yuri Norstein, evoke so many of the feelings that Tuma’s melodies awaken in us. Ultimately, there is a lot of imagination and fantasy in all of it.

3.- Marzapane Rota
“Tan dulce y añejo como el mazapán... pero éste es muy especial... hecho con los mismos ingredientes de la prestigiosa pastelería italiana Rota” (So sweet and aged, like mazapan… but this is very special… made with the same ingredients as in the prestigious Italian bakery, Rota). And behind Claudio Prima’s Organetto we find the sweet and aged melodies of the great Rota, and that inimitable fresco he composed for “Amarcord”. To say “the chills” is not saying enough.

4.- New Fabled Stories
Probably the clearest single on the album, and one the songs where that sun that Tuma pulls out of his hat and that belongs only to him shines, and gives a special coloring to all of the figures that move through his songs. Bacharach style trumpets, summery harmonies, luminous melodies. How can you not feel good while listening to songs like this one?

5.- Raymond Bleeps
Giuseppe Calignano is a type of impossible mix between Pascal Comelade and PARADE. His toy synthesizers are the medium that Tuma’s friend needed to color his musical dreams with stars.

6.- Noel 1981
The harmonica of Marco Tuma, the brother of our star, gives a tone of distressed melancholy to this beautiful Christmas memory. The snow never stops falling when you evoke your earliest memories of Christmas.

7.- Innocenza Cetra
“My brother Pierluigi introduced me to the music Maurice Ravel five years ago. This song is my little Ravel styled pop symphony, but it is also full of the imagery of Vittorio de Sica’s black and white films, and of Alessandro Cicognini’s soundtrack for “Miracle in Milan”. Ravel, Cicognini and De Sica: the work of these geniuses is full of Innocenza”. He says it all.

8.- An Enchanting Blue
The elegant blue of Chet Baker, the charm of Sinatra, the colorfulness Bacharach... who doesn’t go to pieces when the wind lifts the songs up to the bluest skies in the world? The blue is a cloak, is warmth, the light sleep, the sweetened bitterness…

9.- Oh Marc, please, let me fly with LV
John Lennon tells us about the first time he felt sad, Louis Armstrong’s trumpet plays its last blues for him, the sun orbits around them… As the last line of the song prays, after all of this, we will all have a change of mood at the same time.

10.- Old Old Kiss
The album’s central piece, full of sadness, but hiding the silver lining of hope. Michael Andrews dresses up a melody that came into being on an old guitar with barely three chords and he turned it into an emotional tour de force, devastating, brushing up against exhaustion, which ultimately dissipates the storm with that “In the morning we’ll meet”, sung by Michael and Lori together. The end of the song seems to give meaning to the whole album, and that vital push we needed.

11.- Isaia
If before we were talking about Ravel, now it’s Satie and her Gymnopedies’ turn. The piano evokes a very special person, with a mix of sadness and heat, in little more than a minute.

12.- Apples Rvlll
“When I wrote this song, I thought about John Coltrane’s masterpiece, “A love supreme”, and the incredible chords in Berman Hermann’s scores, with a voice that approaches Tim Buckley’s”. Miss Wallumrød does a prodigal job on the vocals, between the quality of Billie Holiday and the elegance of Minnie Ripperton. Marvellous.

13.- Eyes full of bitterness
A small piece of folk that is evidence of Tuma’s love for Nick Drake and his way of making nostalgia and melancholy the most beautiful feelings that exist.

14.- Sitting on the little church steps
“This song revives a splendid moment. It is trying to describe, musically, the feeling you have when you’re sad but you have someone near you who can help you with their love. Together, embracing, sitting on the little church steps, looking at the sea”. As if he were describing the sunrise, this song is a mood in and of itself. At first, Tuma dims the light of his own sun, and then little by little he returns it to its full power, giving it that subtle but boundless strength that overcomes everything.

15.- Raymond Bleeps 2
Giuseppe Calignano opens the final coda of the album with another one of his synthesized dreams.

16.- When I sing your words all around us is magic
Could this be the private dedication that Tuma makes to his friend Alice Rossi, his private Hal David? In any case, night is coming, placidly, the stars rule the sky, and the bittersweet flavour of the end of the day reaches perfection with whatever it is that awakens in you when an album that has excited you, getting into your bones, ends,