PREZIOSO (vinyl)

Description

THE POSTHUMOUS ALBUM BY GIANMARIA TESTA - - - - - JAZZ POET, SENTIMENTAL AND COMMITTED --- (L'Obs) ---. Gianmaria Testa, the most French-speaking of Italian singers, should have celebrated his 60th birthday on October 17, 2019 if he had not passed away prematurely in 2016. 'Prezioso', which means precious in Italian, is therefore his last posthumous album, an unexpected album, and therefore certainly the most precious of all. It is Gianmaria Testa's final gift, made up of unreleased songs mostly recorded in 'voice-guitar' form in his house in Piedmont for future albums or other artists who frequently called on him for the quality of his writing and his refined melodies. As unique and indispensable as Léonard COHEN or Paolo CONTE, Gianmaria Testa's voice fills the space left by his absence with this miraculous album; "Prezioso" is rarely an album with such an obvious name. Testa needed nothing more than his beautiful gravelly voice to touch people's hearts. One thing is certain: this ninth album is the most minimalist of all and he himself had rarely been so moving. " --- TÉLÉRAMA ---." At the time he sings them, in 2014 and 2015, the singer-songwriter is already ill, which explains the voice that is sometimes a little tired. "I hate posthumous work, I didn't want a tribute, but an album that could restore the image of a living artist, something with flesh," explains Paola Farinetti who, with sound engineer Roberto Barillari, did enormous post-production work so that these songs would gain value. The "flesh" of a deep, veiled voice, evoking that of Leonard Cohen, is however still palpable intermittently on this stripped-down, imperfect but touching record, as on "Povero tempo nostro". More than a voice, Gianmaria Testa belonged to a disappearing species, that of the committed lyric singer. In "Povero tempo nostro", a somewhat biblical song, this musician close to the Italian far left speaks of the emptiness of our time. "Poor are the times in which we live, which are times of meager humanity," translates Paola Farinetti, who insisted that "Merica Merica" be included, a song about the great waves of Italian emigration at the beginning of the 20th century. "Right now in Italy there is a minister, Salvini (Matteo Salvini, Minister of the Interior) who has closed the doors to immigrants. Gianmaria, if he were still alive, would surely have done something artistically in the face of this inhuman situation we are living in Italy right now," explains the singer's widow, who was a fervent defender of the migrants' cause. Also featured on "Prezioso" (released by Bonsai Music) is an Italian version of Brel's "Plat pays", becoming "Questa pianura" ("This Plain") " --- excerpt from the AFP dispatch ---."An album is not the mathematical sum of songs lined up one after the other, but must follow an idea. That direction, here, is the voice, I sacrificed the guitar" ---Gianmaria Testa --- ITW Libération." It is a posthumous album emerging like a hidden track when we thought we had heard everything. Eleven unreleased tracks by Gianmaria Testa, who died in 2016. " Demos, working projects " warns Paola Farinetti, his wife, in the liner notes, at the initiative of this release. Love songs (the enveloping, "Una carezza d'amor") or ironic ones (Post-moderno rock, to mock addiction to social networks and all things digital), reinterpretations and adaptations (Questa pianura, Le plat pays by Jacques Brel adapted into Italian by Sergio Bardotti). Some, intended for future albums, mostly performed with his guitar as the only accompaniment, sometimes joined by a clarinet, a double bass, a voice (the Brazilian Bia or the Italian Giuseppe Battiston), these songs stand on their own. If no one had told us, we would never have thought they were "work in progress", mere sketches. " --- Patrick Labesse, LE MONDE ---.