THE PIANO ROOM – The breath feel

A few musical bars thrown in, less than a hundred seconds into the new album “Breath Feel”: here comes the magical spell of a pure contemporary progressive sound, courtesy of THE PIANO ROOM project. Minds and ears experience far off lands: a double bass driven jazz waltz morphs into some classical piano arpeggios – of Rick Wakeman / The Six Wives Of Henry The VIII‘s memory – while a rocking drum kit gets on fire beside the powerful and arcaic Mellotron.  Mind you, there’s not any prog rock fetish here: chord progressions and rhythmic odd signatures always feed lyrical melodic lines in “Breath Feel”. That’s why, for instance, the stormy instrumental section of the album title track – pure ‘70’s symphonic rock played with The Who energy – is just a long interval between the song’s intro and outro sang by an operatic (soprano and tenor) duo. And that’s why, half way through “Haendel With Care”, a Morricone styled carillon anticipates the next jazz rock ordeal, reminiscent of early italian prog stars as Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso.  As in the previous album “Early Morning”, the sound palette of “Breath Feel” alternates pastoral 12 string acoustic guitars with swinging grooves led by piano, double bass and drums: now early Genesis or King Crimson, other times pure Hollywood funk, as in “Grusin”, track dedicated to the great jazz scorer Dave Grusin.  Well oiled and perfected on stage, THE PIANO ROOM is a trio founded by Francesco Gazzara (piano, mellotron, organ, moog, guitars) with Luca Fogagnolo (contrabbasso) and Giuliano Ferrari (batteria). Two great operatic singers are guesting in “Breath Feel” and “Little Girl”: english soprano Saffron Jones and italian tenor Gianluca Paganelli.

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