With their poetic and energetic music, the three storytellers from Italy, France, and Switzerland create an unobstructed view of the Mediterranean across the narrow mountain valleys. The music of these three musical personalities thrives on it's poetry, it's beautiful sound, it's depth of thought, and the interweaving of composition and improvisation. Original compositions meet Radiohead and Monteverdi variations and merge on Fables of Time into soulful music full of energy and subtle wit. A trio with three leaders, all three at home in different musical languages and technically at their peak. Together they form a unity that is rarely found. Thirteen years after the two highly acclaimed CDs What is There What is Not and Mavi, the long-awaited third release from this extraordinary trio is here. "The path offered to the listener is full of surprises and joy - you never know what's waiting around the corner: a stroll through a stately Renaissance melody, a sudden jolt of energy from free improvised passages, an evocation of village dance from an imaginary country that borders the desert, the Alps and the countryside, a flash of funky, and sometimes all these things at the same time", writes Francesco Martinelli in the liner notes.
On Mavi we hear music that seems to emanate from the spheres while remaining wholly worldly, emotional and sensual. The music of Biondini, Godard and Niggli thrives on it's poetry, the beauty of it's sounds, the depth of it's ideas, and on it's tension.
Luciano Biondini is one of the few outstanding masters of the accordion in Europe, a musician who is at home with jazz music as well as being deeply rooted in the music of his homeland: the Mediterranean. After two CDs with Swiss drummer Lucas Niggli and French tuba player Michel Godard, Biondini has recorded a solo album for the Intakt label, dedicated entirely to the music of the area he grew up in: the city of Spoleto, in Umbria, Northern Italy. His plays some of the great Italian "canzoni" from the 60s, 70s and 80s, which are well know by everyone in Italy. These chart-toppers were sung by Gino Paoli, Domenico Modugno, Ernesto de Curtis and Pino Daniele, the icons of the "Cantautori" scene of that era. One tune is from Ennio Morricone - the melancholic title song for Giuseppe Tornatore's movie "Cinema Paradiso". Biondini plays it with passion and emotional power. Jazz critic Christian Rentsch says: "How Luciano Biondini manages it, how he doesn't give the sentimental melody away right from the start but creeps up on the theme, so to speak, continuously bending it in the course of the piece, playing around it, making it disappear and magically reappear, this shows the mastery."
