 |
| Interview with Beppe Crovella re his album Pianovagando |
| band: Interview with Beppe Crovella |
| Album: Pianovagando |
| |
 |
| |
Interview with Beppe Crovella
regarding "Pianovagando"
His album of 57 songs for piano
The full text of the Billy's Bunker (Music Reviews) "interview" is set forth below. These questions were submitted by email and Beppe responded in writing. Some typos were corrected, but no other changes were made.
Billy's Bunker: I just finished typing out all of the comments you made in the "Pianovagando" booklet. I feel like I have been typing a copy of your diary! I recall the Samuel Beckett play Krapp's Last Tape, where a 69-year-old man listens to his diary on a wire recording. What is it like for you now to listen to this album?
Beppe Crovella: Hi Billy, basically if I listen now to my album I can re-experience the original idea of “jumpin’“ in my memories, with no rules, with no paths, simply goin’ from big events in my imaginary or real life (...but are they really so different?), living fully this sudden changes of emotions, the firrent colors and depth of these “visions”. Thank you for mentioning Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape”, there are similarities but also differences. Basically... I didn’t know it before writing “Pianovagando” but the subject of ...searchin’ more in our past is fascinating, like watching a film a second or third times when you “get something” you didn’t get in the first play, and sometimes you understand it even more. Differently from Beckett, my jump into my past is “lighter” in “drama” but at the same times full of depths of different kinds, without a real path, just picking up cards, in the big box of our life: sometimes you pick up an event that maybe changed your life and sometimes is just an “innocent” card, that by viewing it more accurately, can show its colors, sometimes in a surprising way!
Billy's Bunker: What do you think of the young man who wrote those early tunes, and the other men you were through the years? Do you approve of him? Could you write those tunes today, or would you write differently?
Beppe Crovella: Very very good question, I like it a lot! I’ve never thought about that! I tell you the truth... I really really approve everything, it’s me, it’s real me then and now. I think that sometimes “time” is an entity that we can “not think of” ... inspiration can go outside the doors of time. I tell you something that can make more clearly what I mean, because it’s very personal and can help to understand my world. There are friends of mine that after a dinner tell me how much they were different when they were very young, or others tell that they don’t even remember how they were.
On the other side I tell you, I fell that in several aspects and sometimes the deeper ones, I Feel almost the same...like when I was really young a part of me was...older. When I was 11 for example I falled in love too deeply for a 11 years old guy, I can tell it, it wasn’t my choice, it was like ...I was. I suffered a lot for a losed love for example, it wasn’t a game ...it was real suffering not so usual for a 11 years old man... I Remember very well those Emotions. If when I was 11, I experienced emotions like these ones and more, the way I experienced them in my “other ages” that means I was “sage” at 11 or maybe … I’m still a child, or maybe...both. At the end as in my music I want to be “me.” I want to give my emotions that can shake other people’s ones, everything I wrote is still me, today, and today I could write them the same way.
Billy's Bunker: Where did you spend your military service? What was the music there? Did it influence you?
Beppe Crovella: I did the military service in Salerno, in Southern Italy and after, in S. Giorgio a Cremano, near Naples and later in Turin, near my village.
I confess that I didn’t say that I was a musician because ...if they knew it I would have been assigned to the fanfare, that meant that I should have stayed there, in Southern Italy while on the contrary I hoped to come back near home.
After weeks I got my first license and ... I really remember well that moment in which I could play again my piano (that I still have ) and write “Back Home”, it came out instantly...with some tears of joy.
Later, during the military service, one day, we were in a school for the national elections and I saw a piano and I couldn’t resist and I played it. I wrote a song with my military friends... That unfortunately I don't recall now… It’s a pity… I can tell you, like many things in my life, that period in the military service that I didn't want to do, as I was a touring musician, I learnt something, about differences between people and... How much we are... similar... beings with... similar vibrations although we can appear so different.
Billy's Bunker: You write about friends in Japan. Were you influenced by the rhythm and tonalities of Japanese music?
Beppe Crovella: I wouldn’t say that Japan’s music influenced me although I’d like to know it more and “jump into it” in one of my next travelling with my piano but I’ve been very inspired by a lot of Japanese life. Even in these days,even if it’s about an year and half that I’m away from Japan I have images in my mind of old temples in Tokyo or Shogun’s residence in Kyoto. Sometime in life you know someone, you see something and even if you havent’s met them before or if you have seen them before, apart from your personal tastes and interests, you fell like it is familiar, and that’s the “sound of Japan to me, since the very first moments I spent in Tokyo... I'd like to come back soon and I hope in the second part of this year to be back there.
Billy's Bunker: Are you a jazz musician on this album?
Beppe Crovella: There is a jazz approach in the sense of freedom, of really playing each tune quite differently every time, and by using certain harmonies, or even certain melodies, but at the same time this CD has classical, rock elementes as well as popular music, that came form old traditional Italian music, and i like to think that sometimes these “root elements” tend to mix and fuse into themselves.
Billy's Bunker: Some of the tunes and ideas remind me of Thad Jones / Mel Lewis. Are you influenced by such pieces as "A Child is Born"?
Beppe Crovella: I’ve never thought of that but in a certain way you're right, sometimes my music... Looking at it form outside could de defined like an equation John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” with some added melancholy = Thad Lewis’ “A Child is Born”. 3/4 is a very expressive “time” that really has been a stable part in my life, my father (Hello John, can you still hear me form the sky? ...I’d like you could...) ...And my brother’s involvement with jazz, arti & mestieri’s many flirts with 3/4....even dancing it!
Billy's Bunker: Over the Ocean reminded me of Maiden Voyage by Herbie Hancock. Were you thinking of that at the time?
Beppe Crovella: Compliments! You’re right Billy...I knew that Paul McCartney composed “long and Winding Road” thinking of composing a tune for Ray Charles in Ray’s styles, and ... Over the ocean I was in “Maiden Voyage's” mood... I desired something on that mood and that tune came out!
Billy's Bunker: The songs on this album are often extraordinary jazz ballads. Have you recorded any of them before? Were there ever lyrics added to the tunes? (Could you send some of the lyrics, if there were any lyrics?)
Beppe Crovella: Thank you Bill. No I didn’t record them before, and I wrote lyrics for “Rain on Chet”, I will send them to you. I hope to have it recorded one day sung by me or by someone else. I love Chet Baker, I love that “subtle way of feeling melancholy in jazzy moods”
Billy's Bunker: Did you find this album overwhelming? (There is so much of your life represented on these 57 cuts.)
Beppe Crovella: Honestly I haven’t thought about that but I ...know my self too well on this sense ... I like to put all that I can in what I‘m doing, all myself,
you know what make me decide to become a musician was the fact that nothing could give me “that kind of intensity” that music gives me and ... I don't like to leave anything outside... It’s Beppe, it’s me!
Billy's Bunker: What does the name Pianovagando mean? What does it mean to you?
Beppe Crovella: It is an invented word (I like to create new words) that means travelling with piano, in my memories, to me the piano is my 'car' or my 'horse', my diary, my mirror, my portrait.
Billy's Bunker: What was your intention in the way you played these short tunes for this album? Was there less embellishment than you would have added to an interpretation of a jazz standard? Was it your intention to present the songs simply?
Beppe Crovella: It was a precise choice, basically they aren’t just short tunes, they are “complete themes”, but without improvisations, without variations, just the essence of an (I suppose) inspired composition. With all these times I could have done 5 or 6 albums but I really wanted so many compositions “all together”. “Pianovagando” is mainly a composer’s album, with a jazzy approach, a classical/rock/folk approach.
Other times like in my Solo concerts in Tokyo (on you tube) I like to play completely improvised tunes starting from zero, like … A bird flying with no directions just...flying and... knowing that I’ll arrive at some places
Billy's Bunker: There may be other questions, but I am swimming in the wealth of musical ideas of the album, and I find your comments in the booklet reveal most of what I might ask. If there is anything you would like to say to the listener, please send that to me and I can put it in the review.
Beppe Crovella: What’s next in my piano adventures? Basically I’m at a Crossroads, as I have 3 main directions for my piano adventure.
1. PIANOVAGANDO number 2. I mean an album that follows the same “artistic strategy”.
2. A Thematic CD: differently from Pianovagando, to choose a main theme and building an album around that concept.
3. FREE – A totally improvised album
Thank you very much Billy, I really appreciate your work.
Now I have a meeting and after that I’ll see Stefano Bollani in concert
Click on the image below to read the review of Pianovagando.
You may also be interested in Beppe Crovella's reflection on the music of
Soft Machine.
(click the image below)
 |
| |
|
|
|
| [ home ] [ reviews ] [ blogs ] [ quotes ] [ shop ] [ contact ] |
| Copyright © 2006-2010 Billys Bunker |
|
|