1. Heart Beat
2. Tears of Joy
3. Attempo
4. African Dawn
5. Tatubatu
6. Sahara Rain
7. Night Passage
8. Funky
9. Indian Café
10. Tarantella
11. Maurizio’s Party
Bonus Track: Touch Wood
Antonio Forcione – Guitars, oudan
Jenny Adejayan - Cello
Adriano Adewale – Percussion, kubing
Nathan Thompson - Double bass, Tanzanian flute,
alto flute, kalimba, kubing
From
the very first number, you can tell you’re
in the presence of a guitar virtuoso. Alone
on the stage, the Italian guitarist Antonio
Forcione coaxes an amazing range of sounds
from his instrument: making the guitar sing,
snap and echo; playing melodies with his left
hand as well as his right; and adding percussive
punctuation by striking the wooden body of
the guitar.
The
virtuosity continues with the arrival of the
other members of the quartet. Nigerian cellist
Jenny Adejayan plays the most complex pieces
entirely without sheet music, while Adriano
Adewale adds stimulating sounds from a battery
of percussion instruments. For his feature
Tatubatu, Adriano even uses a set of
drainpipes cut to different lengths, which
he plays by blowing down them and hitting
them with flip-flops! The most exciting piece
in a very exciting concert is the duet between
Forcione and Adewale – the latter simply playing
a tambourine, albeit amplified so as to let
us hear the smallest tap. The interplay between
the two is amusing as well as spellbinding.
The
music mingles jazz with many kinds of world
music, including flamenco, African and Latin-American
rhythms. Antonio has been labelled "the
Jimi Hendrix of the acoustic guitar"
and he certainly makes the instrument speak
in many innovative ways – although the instrument
is amplified, so perhaps it is not truly "acoustic"
– but this allows him to add even more effects
to the amazing number of sounds he produces
naturally. Mostly he plays guitars with nylon
or steel strings, but for Indian Café
he uses a fretless guitar called the oudan,
with eight added sympathetic strings, designed
to sound like the Middle Eastern oud.
The
DVD records a concert last June at the Trinity
Theatre in Tunbridge Wells, and the sound
quality is excellent – although I wish the
cameramen had focused on the really interesting
parts instead of swooping indiscriminately
from one shot to another. At one point I wanted
to see what both of Forcione’s hands were
doing but the camera only showed me the right
hand. But the concert was obviously a happy
affair – for Antonio’s pleasantly welcoming
announcements and good humour, as well as
the superb musicianship. A CD of the concert
is also available, but this omits three of
the dozen tracks on the DVD.
Recommended
unreservedly.
Tony Augarde
CD Reviews
Naim
NAIMDVD 100
