Miniatures

Glauco Venier

Miniatures
Release date: 10.06.2016 ECM 2385
CD18,90 €add to cart
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The fifteen ‘miniatures’ of this modestly-titled recording include new music by Italian pianist Glauco Venier as well as adaptations of Gurdjieff, Komitas, Dufay and more. This is Venier’s first solo album for ECM, and as with his exemplary work with Norma Winstone on the acclaimed albums Distances, Stories Yet To Tell, and Dance Without Answer, his disciplined pianism always serves the needs of the pieces. Miniatures is a quiet and thoughtful disc, in which solo piano is augmented by subtle, discreet percussion. In addition to his primary instrument, Glauco plays gongs, cymbals and bells and sonorous sculptures created by artists Harry Bertoja and Giorgio Celiberti, the lightly-struck metals creating an attractive ambience, like wind-chimes in the breeze. Miniatures was recorded at Lugano’s RSI studio and produced by Manfred Eicher.
Die fünfzehn ‘Miniaturen’ dieses zurückhaltend betitelten Albums umfassen sowohl neue Kompositionen des italienischen Pianisten Glauco Venier als auch Adaptionen von Gurdjieff, Komitas, Dufay und anderen. Dies ist Veniers erstes Solo-Album für ECM, und wie schon bei seinen exemplarischen Arbeiten mit Norma Winstone auf den Alben Distances, Stories Yet To Tell, und Dance Without Answer stellt sich sein diszipliniertes Spiel stets in den Dienst der Stücke. Miniatures ist ein stilles und gedankenvolles Album, auf dem das Piano von subtiler, diskret eingesetzter Percussion ergänzt wird.
Zusätzlich zu seinem Hauptinstrument spielt Glauco hier Gongs, Becken und Glocken, sowie metallene Klangskulpturen, die von den Künstlern Harry Bertoja und Giorgio Celiberti gestaltet wurden. Die sachte angeschlagenen Metallformen. erzeugen ein reizvolles Klangambiente, wie ein Windspiel in der Brise. Miniatures wurde im RSI Studio in Lugano aufgenommen und von Manfred Eicher produziert.
Featured Artists Recorded

December 2013, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano

Original Release Date

10.06.2016

  • 1Ritual
    (Glauco Venier)    03:15
  • 2Tiziano's Painting
    (Glauco Venier)    04:13
  • 3No. 40
    (Georges I. Gurdjieff, Thomas de Hartmann)    02:40
  • 4Byzantine Icon
    (Glauco Venier)    03:26
  • 5Serenity
    (Glauco Venier)    04:24
  • 6Abstractio
    (Glauco Venier)    02:13
  • 7Prayer
    (Glauco Venier)    03:40
  • 8Gunam
    (Alessandra Franco)    05:13
  • 9Madiba
    (Glauco Venier)    02:52
  • 10The Temple - War - Litanies
    (Glauco Venier)    08:05
  • 11Krunk
    (Komitas Vardapet)    03:35
  • 12Ave Gloriosa Mater Salvatoris
    (Anonymous, Glauco Venier)    03:39
  • 13Visible Spirit
    (Glauco Venier)    02:09
  • 14Deep And Far
    (Glauco Venier)    01:38
  • 15Ce jour de l'an
    (Glauco Venier, Guillaume Dufay)    03:51
Sometimes it’s the little things in life. This album from the Italian pianist is subtitled Music For Piano And Percussion, and, using his own compositions and adaptations of ones by Gurdjieff, Komitas and Guillaume Dufay, creates a very particular space in the listener’s mind. It’s probably a church, or at least a space with a lot of air in it, a lot of history, a lot of contemplation. It’s cool, but not unwelcoming, gentle and fairly plain, but certainly not austere. And there is no congregation, just quiet music and dust motes floating in the refracted light. […] A beautiful, unassuming album which defies pigeonholing in favour of a more universal poetic, meditative goal.
Peter Bacon, Jazz Breakfast
 
This solo debut for the German label places him in a lineage that includes some of the most technically gifted pianists in modern jazz. Rather than compete, Venier takes the form in another direction, adding gongs, bells and ‘tuned metals’ as background colours, in response to which he offers simple, elegiac improvisations which owe more to texture and timbre than to linear melody. Recorded in the natural acoustics of Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo, ‘Miniatures’ is a creditably modest but hauntingly beautiful addition to the label’s solo piano catalogue.
Cormac Larkin, Irish Times
 
Auf seinem neuen Album erkundet er in 18 Miniaturen für Klavier die Klangwelt seiner Kindheit. Gelegentlich verwendet er auch Schlaginstrumente wie Gong und Glocke. Zu den eigenen Improvisationen kommen eine Melodie von Alessandra Franco sowie Kompositionen von Komitas Vardapet und Georges Gurdjieff hinzu. Wir bewegen uns in einer Art musikalischem Notizbuch, das niemandem zugedacht ist und deshalb so innig wirkt. Gern stellen wir uns vor, wir würden diese meditative Musik in einer kleinen norditalienischen Kirche hören, im halbdunkel, hinter dicken, kühlen Mauern, ganz allein.
Manfred Papst, NZZ am Sonntag
 
Le pianiste italien mêle avec bonheur courtes improvisations abstraites et pages mélodique. Quelques emprunts à d’autre compositeurs complètent le programme d’un album à la frontiere du jazz.
Pierr de Chocqueuse, Jazz Magazine
 
Venier’s musical influences span a large spectrum from jazz, to the time played organ in church and studied the instrument at the conservatory at Udine. The fifteen pieces of the program blend these influences into a cohesive whole, mostly improvised but also featuring compositions by Gurdjieff and Komitas. The music itself evokes the visual and meditative, the pianist crafting each miniature methodically and with careful attention to melodic information. […] Glauco Venier through the inclusion of the various percussion instruments has created a rich soundscape that joins the improvised music, sacred, and classical worlds together. When listened to intently, the music consistently reveals subtle details, but when used as background, the music shines for it’s deeply reflective meditative qualities. A fine album that can be enjoyed from a number of different perspectives.
CJ Shearn, Jazz Views
 
Manchmal schwebt über ‘Miniatures – Music for Piano and Percussion’ der Geist Erik Saties, andere Schattierungen erinnern an Chilly Gonzales’ minimalistisches Meisterwerk ‘Solo Piano’. Und dann wird es plötzlich wieder modern, fast experimentell. Diese Mischung macht Veniers Klangwelt so eigen, so besonders.
Tobias Schmitz, Stern (Five Stars)
For Friulian pianist Glauco Venier, Miniatures – his first solo album for ECM - is a kind of journal or diary, atmospherically reflecting upon early memories, early experiences of music, and in turn casting its own quiet spell:
 
“I grew up in a very small village in northern Italy, and I’m still living there. The Adriatic Sea is nearby, then rivers, lakes, hills. There’s a lot of silence.” There were no brass bands, he explains, in Gradisca di Sedegliano. “My approach to music, when I first discovered it, was through the organ in the local church. And I fell in love with that sound, and with the composers of music for the organ…I have memories, good memories, of playing the organ in the church, in the dark, through the cold winters.” He went on to study organ at the conservatory of Udine, immersing himself in the world of the Italian Renaissance and baroque composers and then working onward through the history of music for organ, concluding his studies with the works of Olivier Messiaen. Before jazz became the focus of his life, he emphasizes, there was church music. “And I think you can hear that in this recording, even if I’m playing modern chords or improvising, in the approach and the feeling, an influence from older music is there.”
 
Several strands of influence are in fact woven together in the modestly-titled Miniatures whose eighteen tracks are episodes in an unfolding narrative. Although we hear mostly solo piano, the recording seems outside ECM’s solo piano tradition. “I was very aware of the great piano recordings made at this label,” says Glauco, “and it was natural to try something different.” Venier is a friend of Udine painter and sculptor Giorgio Celiberti, and had been invited a few years ago to contribute to a documentary about the artist. “He said ‘Let’s just put a piano in my studio and you can react directly to the artworks.’ So that’s what we did. He also had some tuned metal crosses he had made, suspended on strings…” From these, Glauco drew bell-like sonorities. “Manfred Eicher saw this part of the film around the time we were mixing Stories Yet To Tell with Norma Winstone and said, ‘That’s a nice idea. Could you find a few other things, to develop it?’” Venier turned to the work of Harry Bertoia, another artist originally from the region, who - decades before the vogue for ambient music - had specialized in what he called ‘somnambient’ sound sculptures. Some of these were added to the instrumentarium for Miniatures. “I thought they could provide an evocative element for free music playing.”
 
Much of Miniatures is improvised, but Glauco also brought in material, sometimes from different musical environments. “Gunam”, for instance, is a tune from singer-songwriter Alessandra Franco which Glauco had played with the author on her own album, while the Komitas and Gurdjieff pieces derive from arrangements he had drafted for the trio with Norma Winstone and Klaus Gesing. One context informs another. “Between the percussion music, the tunes from other situations, and free playing I had a lot of material prepared, at least in my mind…these three elements I felt, could account for maybe 50 per cent of the album, and the rest would be up to the spirit of the moment…”
 
The plan now is to take the Miniatures concept into specially-selected spaces for live performance. “It would be nice to play acoustically in rooms with some natural reverb,” Glauco Venier says. “Small churches would be perfect, I think.” It’s a matter, perhaps, of returning the music to its creative wellspring.

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