Michel Petrucciani
Oracle's Destiny

"Comme un soupir avant la fin du monde".

Yes, the short life and great art of Michel Petrucciani was "like a sigh before the end of the world"...

A sketch of sparkling vitality never dampened by his faithful companion, osteogenesis imperfecta, the "disease of glass bones," a calcium deficiency so severe it made the bones extremely fragile and sometimes, as in his case, resulted in dwarf growth, just over a meter tall and weighing 25 kilos.... but perched on a piano stool, by his wife or sister, he infused his pianistic art with the delicacy of Bill Evans interspersed with the rhythmic dynamism of McCoy Tyner and the precision of Debussy.

But perhaps it was only and just Michel, the extraordinary Michel: a master of life and music, which, after all, are the same thing. "Oracle's Destiny" is a secret potion, a refuge in the woods, an imagined kiss, meditations for hands and keys in total solitude with his piano in his Big Sur - California, a place of great natural charm.
In every "moment" of this album, emotions flow, starting from the suspended chord that welcomes us in the title track, precisely "Oracle's destiny", calm and serene, almost narrative, a tiptoed debut as the nature of the entire project demands. It seems like listening to the man's breath at the piano.

And yet "Big. Sur/Big On", almost Debussy-like in certain passages, with an imperious evocative force that almost asks the listener to let their mind draw landscapes made of distant mountains, silent lakes... or simply an impossible run in the green of a meadow... simple and impossible.
But the album does not linger long in poetry and self-indulgence, "Amalgame" is indeed a blues, naturally interpreted in his manner, that is, with continuous harmonic digressions made easy by a deep knowledge of the various onomatopoeias, but permeated by a personal lexicon that envelops every measure. "It's what I am doing when I miss you" is instead a sweet romantic ballad, of a romantic and gallant man according to his companions, in which the most gentle and passionate tones are tinged again with blues allusions, thus refreshing the underlying lyricism with a slightly ironic tone, but above all expressing a constant yearning to communicate, whether it whispers or strikes the keys with his small hands, almost an impatience to express. Desire to live.

The music of this album vanishes just as it materialized, with refined discretion. The barely ten minutes of "Mike Pee" recapture the tones of the literary and the introspective, with delightful dynamics of clear Evansian imprint, to whom, among others, Michel dedicates the entire CD in the liner notes; there are learned citations lightened by dissonant avant-garde jazz, thick basses placed with lightness, sharp melodic phrases proposed with boldness, like a soft stroke of Monet next to the rigorous scratches of Guttuso. "Je suis un type qui va vite" said Petrucciani, he was a guy who was in a hurry and true to his way of living, he passed for just a moment on this earth... only 36 years to climb onto that stool and paint a slice of sky, just like a sigh before the end of the world.