(soundbite of deborah harry and chris stein's performance of nino rota's 'la dolce vita suite') WHITEHEAD: That's not the only suite on the album 'Amarcord Nino Rota' to cut across genres. Oct 24, 2018 'Amarcord Nino Rota' Returns — And It's Well Worth The Wait A just-reissued album, from 1981, features diverse musicians playing songs that Nino Rota.
Multi-artist tribute CDs crop up all over the place, celebrating the most unlikely songwriters and cult figures, from Cole Porter to Gary Numan and Dusty Springfield, but few have the consistency, grace and power of Amarcord Nino Rota (Hannibal), which was released in 1981. This is the first CD 'produced by Hal Willner for Deep Creek Productions' and has the confidence, variety and idiosyncratic vision he put into later albums based on the work of Thelonious Monk, Kurt Weill, Disney and Charles Mingus. There is a kind of formula you can spot after hearing a few of Willner's albums: the judicious mix of up-and-coming heavyweights, cult figures, a few inspired but unlikely collaborations and just enough big names to produce a marketable product and a curiosity-inducing press release. (Amarcord Nino Rota features a vignette from Debbie Harry plus Wynton and Branford Marsalis, barely out of their teens and bursting with energy and ambition.)
At their best, Willner's compilations tell you something about their subjects that you couldn't learn any other way, whether through an article, analysis, simple description or even a single-artist tribute album, such as Mark Isham's Miles Remembered: The Silent Way Project or Scott Walker singing Jacques Brel. Bis Records' A Tribute To Antonio Carlos Jobim is good fun, but tells you little about the songs other than their extraordinary resilience. Monk Plays Duke (1955) says far more about Monk than Ellington.
A good compilation, in addition to being a good listen, can function as an audio critique. Willner's approach seems to be instinctive rather than intellectual, working more like a movie producer than a record producer. The distinguishing feature of a Deep Creek production is the finely-tuned 'casting' of musicians and selection of material.
Nino Rota Amarcord Soundtrack
Amarcord Nino Rota [I remember Nino Rota] has a specific theme - the music the composer wrote for the films of Fellini. The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of Music cites Rota's six operas, two symphonies, a harp concerto and 'film scores'. Some film buffs will know him better for his work with Visconti on Senso, or with Zeffirelli on Romeo and Juliet - not to mention his theme for The Godfather. But Willner zooms in on Rota's music for films such as La Strada, La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2 (the last two showing soon at the NFT) - themes and atmospheres that add substance to the glamour and sentimentality.
Despite dazzling cinematography, I suspect Fellini's impoverished villagers and smart urbanites will seem increasingly dated and baffling as the years pass, while the music can still be rediscovered and re-interpreted by successive generations.
Many musicians have kept Rota's flame burning since his death in 1979, not least Banda Cittá Ruvo di Puglia, a traditional Italian town band. A 48-piece version - with international jazz soloists such as Michel Godard and Willem Breuker alongside the amateurs - records and tours under the name La Banda: they're playing the Racing Green London Jazz Festival in November. One disc of La Banda's double CD (Enja) includes Verdi and Puccini arias while the second includes a hefty medley of Rota's Fellini scores.
Rota was the director of the nearby Liceo Musicale in Bari, not far from Ruvo di Puglia, and traces of rough and ready 'banda' music, particularly marches, can be heard in his scores for Fellini. The Dutch band I Compani has enjoyed a certain amount of European success in the 1980s with their slightly stiff jazz versions of Rota's music (on BVHaast) sometimes playing to clips from Fellini's films in concert.
Yet Willner's album goes beneath the skin of the music and the musicians. Each player or arranger appears to find something of themselves in Rota's melancholy, chromatic refrains. Jaki Byard, the exemplary ex-Mingus pianist who opens the record with a solo version of Amarcord, digs deep into his own memories to find a treasure house of jazz history - stride piano and boogie - within the charts laid down by a white Italian who was a classically trained composer for hire.
Nino Rota Amarcord
Byard's overture is followed by Carla Bley's exultant arrangement of all the main themes from 8 1/2. Bley's achievement is to internalise Rota's music so completely that the piece sounds more typical of her music (and of the wonderful band of that time including ex-Modern Lover D Sharp on drums and trombonist Gary Valente) than many of her own compositions.
After a solo spot from vibes player Dave Samuels comes Bill Frisell, whose spine-tingling version of Giulietta Degli Spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits) was his recording debut. Comparing this to Ghost Town (Nonesuch), his new solo album, you realise how complete Frisell's musical language sounded nearly 20 years ago. (Frisell became something of a secret production weapon for Willner, playing on Mathilde Santing's Love of the Common Man, for example, and on Ringo Starr's When You Wish upon a Star, for which Fellini offered to direct a promotional video.)
The solo pieces clear the air before La Dolce Vita Suite. This is spliced together from three sections: Sharon Freeman's multitracked French horns and piano combined with steel drums; a spacious (and live) Notturno scored and conducted by AACM founder Muhal Richard Abrams; and Michael Sahl's languorous arrangement of Valzer (parlami di me), with painstakingly tracked guitars from Blondie's Chris Stein and a lazily crooning Debbie Harry.
Amarcord Nino Rota At Discogs
After this, Satyricon gets a suitably wayward realisation from the prolific composer/multi-instrumentalist David Amram (who provided some bright spots in the patchy Jack Kerouac album on Rykodisc), featuring double ocarina, whistle, shanai and flute, immersed in percussion and bass.
A brief, scary horn fanfare from Freeman leads into Steve Lacy's soprano sax improvisation on the theme from Fellini's Roma, accompanied solely by a gong. Rarely has 'difficult listening' felt so good. Willner covers several early Fellini movies in one swoop with William Fischer's jazz medley of Rota's themes for The White Sheik (1952), I Vitelloni (1953), Il Bidone (1955) and The Nights of Cabiria (1956). This small-group feature for tenor saxophonist George Adams hints at the neo-classical adventures to come for the Marsalis brothers, and makes the most of Ron Carter's swinging, melodic bass.
Fischer's ensemble draws on jazz roots as deep and thorny as those of Jaki Byard, who brings the album to a contemplative close with La Strada. Where Rota's orchestrations and Fellini's grotesques belong to another age, Byard's interpretation, like the entire album, is both immediate and timeless. Maybe that's because it's expressing something that only music - rather than cinema - can ever articulate.
Three films with Nino Rota soundtracks, White Nights, La Dolce Vita and 8 1 / 2 are in the NFT season on Marcello Mastroianni (until August 30).