This recording is the result of the admiration the Italian quartet shares forMichel Petrucciani.
The French pianist was a music sensation at an early age. Petrucciani was classically trained but his love for Duke Ellington and the jazz tradition quickly took over, making him one of the most talented young jazz pianists of his generation.
Petrucciani's career took off when he decided to move to the United States and he started playing with saxophonist Charles Lloyd.
His reputation within the American jazz circuit escalated,allowing him to perform with some of the jazz greats such as: Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Jim Hall, Dizzy Gillespie, Steve Gadd
Eventually Petrucciani made it internationally. He recorded a total of 32 albums as a band leader and toured in different parts of the world making a reputation for himself as a pianist of extraordinary elegance, conveying charismatic energy through his many memorable compositions.
The CD 'Celebrating the Music of Michel Petrucciani' is a collection of 9 of his most renowned compositions which include: September Second, Rachid, Looking Up, Cantabile, My Bebop Tune..
We decided to keep things simple; Petrucciani's compositions are already well arranged and didn't need embellishing - however, we discussed adding some new endings. The sound of our music compared to that of Petrucciani differs in the instrumentation: the sax takes the melodies (all in the original keys) and is backed up by the fantastic Michele Di Toro, whose passion for the piano leads him to play with similar exuberance and energy, Attilio Zanchi and Tommy Bradascio both have a solid understanding of the American and European jazz tradition and all these talents fuse together give the right balance to Petrucciani's compositions.
Petrucciani was a big fan of Frederic Chopin so we decided on the tune of 'Even Mice Dance', inspired from a a Chopin's Prelude Number 20, having Michele play the Prelude, improvise on it and then have everyone join in with the theme.
Tommaso Starace decided to write a composition dedicated to the French pianist and gave it the title 'Marvellous' which is one of the titles of Petrucciani's albums dedicated to the lifestyle he loved too much.
It was important for the recording to have the presence of two celebrated musicians as guests. The quartet decided to invite the fantastic Italian trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso and the UK vibraphone virtuoso Roger Beaujolais to perform on a few tracks of the album, adding even more colour and personality to Petrucciani's compositions.
The CD was recorded in August 2011 at the Arte Suono studio near Udine, Italy and is distributed by Universal/EmArcy..