"[...] and the pianist Antongiulio Foti offer us excellent albums, of appreciable quality far beyond our borders.[...]
Antongiulio Foti
Hold Fast (Alfa Music)
Score: 8/9
Raymond Chandler’s publishers, the great writer of hard boiled crime fiction that led to noir, used to ask only one thing: action. Because the audience just wants the action. He replied: “They think they are only interested in the action, but in reality, even if they don't know it, they care very little about the action. What they really care about, and what I care about, is creating emotion, through dialogue and description." This made Chandler a master of storytelling. The impression, listening to this debut of the little more than twenty year old pianist from here, is that Foti had in mind the words of the great writer who invented the investigator Philip Marlowe. No wonder that the American Phil Markowitz, his teacher at the Manhattan School of Music (in New York, where ours lives), writes in the notes that this "Hold Fast contains great storytelling, mystery, joy and pathos, with colorful inventive compositions and exceptional performances by all. Mr. Foti has a great imagination, pianistic touch and sound. It is an amazing debut that belies the years of the talented leader ".
We agree and we like to add that the rhythmic duo Jacopo Ferrazza/Ettore Fioravanti works excellently, a multi-colored and shrewd springboard for Foti (and also for the guest Rosario Giuliani, playing Alto Sax in two very calibrated and virtuosic pieces, starting with dialogue – between piano and sax – in Elastic Bands). The other refined guest, the singer Daniela Spalletta, offers precious vocals in Hermes and becomes the protagonist in the Mediterranean Suite, which unites Seikilos, the ancient melody of the "Seikilos Epitaph" proposed in different idioms and rendered as an infinite sigh, driven by the bow on the strings of the double bass towards an almost free dream, with the piece Mediterraneo by Mango, sung instead in a questionable way. Still of excellent caliber is the swinging Tesseract, the thoughtful La découverte de Lascaux and the close in quintet Mokongo Ma' Chevere, a sparkling tribute to Mother Africa."
Click here to continue to read online (Italian version)
Raffaello Carabini, from MUSICA, “SPETTAKOLO”
September 12, 2021
September 12, 2021
Please note that the present article is an automatic-machine translation from the corresponding Italian version. It is hoped, however, that the original sense, style and character have been preserved.