Liberetto

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John Paricelli, Lars Danielsson, Liberetto, Magnus Ostrom, Music review, Scandinavian jazz, Tigran Hamasyan

I SAY jazz doesn’t as a genre, do it for me, then I hear this. Thanks to a recommendation which mentioned the magical words Scandinavian, melancholy and SHORT all together, I had a 30 sec mp3 listen and then immediately bought this. Because I do like, a lot, Jan Garbarek’s blue, spacious, melancholy sax, and Liberetto definitely also has that slightly exhausted 4 in the morning feel, which hooks me in.

The easy , sleazy, languorous piano of Tigran (who of course I had never heard of, till now, not being a jazzer) is impressive and seductive. This is definitely music for a certain mood – for me, you’ve sat up all night, talking, one of those nights where conversation is deep, smooth, easy. Everyone has had a good time, no one wants to leave, you have become too tired to make the effort to crawl away to sleep. It’s 4 in the morning, dawn is on the edge but somehow the dawning light is not yet cruel enough to show the spilled glasses, the overflowing ashtrays, the tired faces (clearly this is a long ago memory fragment – overflowing ashtrays and all), and you are at that edge where the smudged and tired faces hold a kind of beauty. You know you should leave….but maybe not quite yet.

Most of the CD is right in there in its blue smokiness. I wasn’t quite so keen on the track where Tigran moans and mumbles lyrics, Hov arek sarer djan (sorry Tigran!) I think he should let his fingers do the talking! But the foray into song aside, great stuff!

Photo of Tigran – Wikimedia Commons
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