I'm truly happy to share with you my very first solo piano album.
After more than 45 years of music and life on stage, many may wonder: why now?
Why wait so long?
This is both a meaningful milestone and a profound personal challenge for any
pianist.
Like some of my other projects, this one sat quietly in a drawer for years.
I never felt the urgency to rush it — I wanted to approach it with depth, not haste.
Now feels like the right time.
I can only wish you a heartfelt listening experience, with the hope that these notes
may touch your hearts
Howard Mandel is a renowned American jazz journalist, author, and critic, known for
his insightful writings on contemporary and avant-garde jazz. He is the president of
the Jazz Journalists Association and a contributor to publications like DownBeat and
NPR.
“I am kind of an animal,” says Antonio Farao’, the masterful Milanese pianist whose
sophisticated first solo album, Kind of... sounds like the very opposite of rough
rooting around. Sweet melodies treated as expansive ideas, extraordinarily well
articulated, are the substance of Farao’s ten performances here, rich with emotional
nuance evoked by the refinements of his touch.
If this guy’s a beast, he’s one who
summons rare beauty.
What Farao’ means, though, is that the vitality and expressivity of his music is
genuine and spontaneous -- as he says, “without filter.” His eight original
compositions, no less than his highly individualized interpretations of the standards
“There Will Never Be Another You”, “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” and
Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight”, unfold in seemingly natural or organic yet
unpredictable ways that prove, once we’ve heard and absorbed them, to have been
inevitable, with memorable twists and turns.
In that way, Farao’s music is similar to his life story. Born in 1965, in ’70 he was
taken to a Count Basie-Ella Fitzgerald concert in Milan and his path was cast. He
began playing toy xylophone and drums before piano lessons at eight. When his
teacher told his parents they were throwing money away on his lessons since he
wouldn’t practice, he pulled a 180, buckling down to spend three hours a day just on
scales.
At age 17 he was gigging with saxophonists Steve Grossman and Lee Konitz,
trumpeters Jimmy Owens and Charles Tolliver. He entered Milan’s Giuseppe Verdi
Conservatory, largely to avoid military service, chafed at the classical faculty’s anti
jazz attitudes, but over eight years of enrollment found encouraging teachers, one of
whom, Riccardo Risaliti, got him booked at the Capraia Musica Festival.
Over the past 40 years Farao’ has worked solo, led his own groups and established
lasting collaborations with a constellation of on-tour jazz stars. He’s released more
than a dozen albums as leader or co-leader, including Eklektik, an ambitious, highly
produced multi-keyboard experiment with an international cast including Snoop Dog,
Bireli Lagrene and Manu Katché.
It’s commercial in the manner that Herbie
Hancock’s Headhunters or Chick Corea’s Return to Forever were-- and although
Farao’ is eager to do an Eklektic 2, as well as a project for piano trio and symphony
orchestra, he considers Kind of... a significant step in his evolution. A solo piano
project has responsibilities he took seriously.
“Solo, I have to do it all,” he says --not bragging, merely stating the fact. “I have to
use my left hand as a bass player, playing what the bass player would usually play. I
will say I’m still learning to play solo. You know: You never stop learning.”
True enough, but what you know already gets you further. Kind of... was captured in
one six-hour recording session and comprises all first or second takes.
That could
only happen because Farao’ is a disciplined, experienced, however inexplicably
creative, virtuoso.
Virtuoso -- a big word? Well, consider just the wondrous independence of his hands.
Often on Kind of... he spins out complex counterpoint and lays out chordal effects
that suggest two keyboard players. He says he doesn’t plan these or think at all about
his left, he instinctively lets it follow his right’s lead. That’s all the more unusual as
he’s a born left-hander, a bias his parents tried to reverse in his childhood, making
him ambidextrous. He may wield it unselfconsciously, but it’s obviously a super
power.
As his right and left hands synchronize or go their own ways across the piano’s wide
expanse, so Farao’s tenderness and impetuosity emerge in conjunctions and contrasts,
and his repertoire ranges from buoyant colors to wistful reflections. His influences
include the appropriate icons: Bud Powell, Oscar Peterson and, as he says, “Herbie
Hancock is in my heart.” Farao’s title song, of course, nods to Miles Davis and Bill
Evans’ classic Kind of Blue, and subtly alludes to Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life”.
“Que Sera”, “Pina” and “Ballad in Four” cast the lyrical auras of daydreams. “MT” is
for McCoy Tyner -- Farao’ holds the hot seat of the McCoy Tyner Legends tribute
band. “Gospello” sports bluesy dance connotations and glissandi in which each note
gets its own crisp attack.
“Around” strikes me as Tristano-like, whereas “Round Midnight” is, as Farao’ says,
“an important song, difficult but beautiful, a test for any pianist.”
He aces it, at very
f
irst up high, tiptoeing, but soon tripping confidently through dizzying passages,
generating figures that refuse to settle down until they’ve danced on every ivory key.
“I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” ends Kind of... on an uplifting swing, because,
Farao’ says, “I wanted to play some straight piano. I heard McCoy’s version of this
tune and liked it. “
Needless to say, the pianist makes “Time” his own, as he does “Round Midnight” and
“Another You.” His compositions and improvisations reveal ever more about music,
how song lines and rhythm flow, delighting us further, but a single listen makes it
clear: Antonio Farao’s Kind of... is simply great.
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