Other Colors
I was 18 when I realized that I was partially – but not insignificantly – color blind. It is not so rare, about 5% of men and much less women, has problems in properly identifying colors. Since then, I felt that my perception of everything was influenced by this “other colors” that I see. I see different colors and, maybe, I also hear different sounds.
The sound of this quartet was clear to me since long, but it has been not possible until I happen to meet the right musicians for it. Meeting Bruce was unbelievable and fundamental. The first time I listened to the music of the record “Jaco” with Pastorius, Pat Metheny, Paul Bley and Bruce, I immediately felt something very special. It is of course a great record, but there was more to me and, for a while, I kept thinking – with no apparent reason – that I would have something to do with those great musicians. When I met Bruce everything went in “its right place”. It was clear in my mind the other musicians I wanted to involve in this project; actually, I thought I needed them. I had already played with Antonio a lot of times in the last twenty years and I always thought he is one of the best music thinkers. Although I know Lorenzo since less time, I think the same of him. They both take a lot of care of their own sound in function to the band sound and it is always clear to them what they want to “say” and how. Furthermore, they are very personal, but they are also ready “to dress the needed suit” in order to enhance and improve others’ ideas, even changing them when it is better.
Together with Bruce, Lorenzo and Antonio I found myself walking an unlikely way, pushed by a strange instinct in pursuing the blues. I mean the “real” blues, like Delta, Mississippi, New Orleans… I really didn’t know why, except for the fact that I like it. Once Bruce told me: “Do you really wanna play this?”. And I answered: “Yes”, just like as this was the only music with sense to me. I was so sure of it… and, well, consider that I’m never so sure of anything, because I have doubts all the time. We went on playing this stuff until the recording day at Casa del Jazz studios. It was the summer of 2017. It happened that the night before the session I started listening music in an almost compulsive way: around 11 pm I started listening “The pilgrim and the stars”, a masterpiece I use to listen very often, then I put on Jaco, the record I mentioned. I just couldn’t stop. Then I focused on Vashkar and I started searching on internet all the versions. At 2 am, it was the right time for Nefertiti (although it is always the right time to listen to Nefertiti). Only at the end of the long version, the one with the alternate takes, with the slow version of Pinocchio that I listened 100 times, I went to bed.
That night I slept 3 hours and I drove to the studio in Rome (I live 100 km North), arriving perfectly on time (this is the real news for those who know me. Just few days earlier, I arrived very late to a gig we had and Lorenzo was very upset about that; so, this time, I had no chance). We played a blues of mine a couple of time and we started playing Vashkar using some notes I took the night before; then Lonely woman, Ida Lupino and a song I composed for Fabrizio Cecca, a real gentleman who unfortunately died some years ago. Then we played one song we used to play in the blues repertoire “The house of the raising sun” and three extemporary duos. Only at the end we played Other Colors, a theme I composed some years ago for a doc-fiction of Wilma Labate, but it was by playing that song that I had a sort of revelation of what I was really doing there and in the two years before. I wanted to play the music I love, but I wanted to find the BLUES in it, “the meaning of the blues”. I wanted to play that music by mean of my (our) soul more than by using my head (like I was always doing untill that day). I wanted to express my (our!) different colors. And maybe that was the reason why I was lookin’ for the blues, in a strange, stubborn, rational way.
I have to thank these three great musicians who supported me, bear me and, maybe, even perceived what was the arrival point sooner than me, smiling when I use to ask them to play, in our gigs, songs like Corrine Corrina, that seem to be so far from our music, but are not.
Reviews
A colorful picture, full hypnotic sounds, harmonic harshness and tense atmospheres. (translated from Italian)
Stefano Dentice: italiainjazz.it
https://www.italiainjazz.it/il-jazz/novita-musicali/394-recensione-other-colors-di-angelo-olivieri
Variety and, at the same time, consistency and rigor constitute the most significant characteristics of this valuable work. (translated from Italian)
Enzo Boddi: musicajazz.it
https://www.musicajazz.it/other-colors-angelo-olivieri/
Olivieri demonstrates his remarkable expressive ability, which draws spontaneously from several stylistic fields. (translated from Italian)
.Neri Pollastri: allaboutjazz.com
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/other-color-angelo-olivieri-aut-records
Record of rare beauty! (translated from Italian)
Flavio Caprera: Jazz Convention
A successful compromise between melody and experimentation, writing and synthesis. (translated from Italian)
Olindo Fortino: sonudcontest.com
https://www.soundcontest.com/angelo-olivieri-other-colors/
There is a lot of awareness and maturity in this work. Recommended! (translated from Italian)
Marco Campea: iconaculturale
https://www.iconaculturale.it/2020/05/17/recensione-di-other-colors-di-angelo-olivieri/
An extemporaneous exhibition of colors and dreamlike and enveloping sound images, rich in harmonic precipices, daring descents into the abysmal depths of jazz and luminous ascents full of emotional tension. (translated from Italian)
Francesco Cataldo Verrina: il ventuno
A very beautiful record (translated from Italian)
Alessandro Bertinetto: Kathodik
https://www.kathodik.org/2020/09/16/angelo-olivieri-other-colors/
the experience of “seeing music” (translated from Italian)
Pier Marco Turchetti: The New Noise
https://www.thenewnoise.it/angelo-olivieri-other-colors/
Trumpet, electric guitar, electric bass and drums tell of Olivieri’s specific approach to music and composition […] Recommended.
Blaze.Djunkiii: nitestylez
http://www.nitestylez.de/2020/07/angelo-olivieri-other-colors-aut.html
The somewhat classic tone of Olivieri’s trumpet leads to a well-played “accompaniment” that makes us want to hear more […] It’s been a while since I last heard Olivieri.It was for approx. seven years ago in “Europe Jazz Nights” at the Victoria National Jazz Stage in Oslo and over the seven years, I think Olivieri has further developed the way of playing the trumpet. He has become a better composer and I feel he has found his place in Italian jazz where he can develop his ideas without looking either to the right or to the left.
(translated from Norwegian).
Jan Granlie: salt-peanuts.eu