AS I NOTICED, I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA TO PRESENT A REVIEW IN THE REVIEW SINCE THAT OF "NIGHTWALKER10" IS NOT WORTH ANYTHING........................... ................................... ..................Archaeological Park of Cuma - Via Dell'Acropoli 1 - 80078 Pozzuoli (NA)
GINO VANNELLI feat. Michiel Borstlap
Gino Vannelli: vocals, Michiel Borstlap: piano and keyboards, Boudewijn Lucas: bass, Erik Kooger: drums. Gino Vannelli probably boasts one of the most qualified and, at the same time, enthusiastic audiences you could ever see at a concert, so don’t be surprised if you spot Vittorio De Scalzi and Nico Di Palo, the legendary New Trolls, quietly huddled together dispensing ecstatic comments on this extraordinary crooner who colored for an evening the evocative ruins of Cuma with his extraordinary voice.
The Neapolitan concert, his first ever, showcased the sophisticated sound that has characterized the last decade of the Canadian artist increasingly drawn to "combo jazz" atmospheres, now warmly accepted even by some nostalgic fans of the 70s Vannelli jazz fusion. Vannelli's artistic rigor and integrity, for which he sacrificed a much more lucrative career, are legendary and can also be found in the nuances of his performances; indeed, before the concert he dedicates a long and meticulous soundcheck in search of precise sounds that first put the stressed sound technicians to the test and then enriched the show dominated by his powerful, malleable, and nuanced vocals, allowing him to literally stroll on the notes, climbing into the most unexpected tensions and then relaxing into lush vocalisms.
Classic hits from his pop past are transformed by courageous arrangements, sometimes dry and angular, and harmonizations that primarily highlight Michiel Borstlap, a talented Dutch pianist (already with Les Paul, Roy Hargrove, and Jimmy Haslip and owner of personal projects including the beautiful "Body Acoustic," an acoustic reinterpretation of Weather Report by the late Joe Zawinul) as well as the very young Erik Kooger, who enchanted attentive listeners with his polyrhythms, and the skillful Boudewijn Lucas on bass; but what perhaps above all characterized the performance in Cuma was a masterful use of dynamics that delighted the audience with the alternation of frantic bebop phrases with deadly break stops, clusters of chromaticism, and hypnotic electric piano voicings.
Gino Vannelli's concert modestly avoided easy indulgences in past hits, delving instead into new songs from the upcoming CD created by Vannelli with this lineup, presenting himself more as the frontman of a band rather than a true soloist, thus leaving ample and deserved space for the instrumental talents of the musicians. And here, for example, is the beautiful ballad "Don't give up on me" or the pulsating "Knight of the road" showcasing all his capability as a composer, arranger, and chameleonic interpreter, in his own way an "orchestra conductor" with Davis-like intuitions, where jazz, soul, and melody are transfigured without boundaries of genre or trends: his live music is absolutely unpredictable moment after moment. The music unfolds naturally and charmingly until the closing number, which naturally belongs to "I just wanna stop" in a slow version sung with the audience, the only true concession of the evening, one might say, to his pop past that, as he sings in a new song, “I buried my castles of Spain and my fifteen minutes of glory six feet under.”
Only a small flaw from an efficient organization for the approximately six hundred people who came to see him, an unusual brevity of the show (about an hour and a half) for an artist who is always very generous, but who then allowed himself the ritual of photos and autographs from his always very enthusiastic Italian audience, who tried to echo his "where's Joe?" (the keyboardist brother, a symbol of the pop era) or ask him for old songs, but he smiles patiently and gently and with a wave of his
