Marco Betti

FROM THE RECORD’S ORIGINAL LINER NOTES

From a Wider Perspective is much more than an album title: it's an invitation, above all to myself, to focus on broader musical, artistic and human horizons.

Let's start with the musical aspect.

I've been pondering over one particular thought for some time now. The artists who deal with music through a jazz approach mainly follow two paths:

The first is to provide their own interpretation of immortal songs, in jargon called jazz standards, mostly composed in the first half of the last century, that have always represented the backbone of the repertoire of every diligent jazz musician.

The second is to compose unreleased pieces.

The former, often adopted with little poor critical consideration, has meant that the same songs are constantly being listlessly repeated year after year, and always further away from a younger public who is less and less familiar with these pieces. The attempt to overcome this timeworn situation through the composition of new music is certainly noble in its assumptions. But if you don't have the flair and necessary credentials it generates a proliferation of pages of dubious interest.

There is, however, a third possibility, but incredibly rarely undertaken: to consider whatever type of music, without any limitation of genre, style or era, as possible territory to explore according to the improvisational approach typical of jazz.

Obviously, this happens when the musician perceives a natural affinity and is able to recognize a certain fertility and richness of stimuli.

This simple leap immediately allows the artist to draw on an enormous amount of different stimuli and be able to express his taste and personality more fully, right from the very choice of repertoire.

We can also realign ourselves to a common language with that of the listeners, no longer condemned to having to belong to an elite of profound connoisseurs of the jazz tradition. On the other hand, this is what the masters of the bop era did, when they reinterpreted the very popular music of their times. Jazz is an approach, not a musical genre.

The opening of new artistic and human horizons refers instead to the recent birth of the Electric Trio, following the renewed collaboration with my dear friend and wonderful guitarist Vittorio Giuffrida, a person and artist always committed to overcoming unnecessary superstructures and harmful preconceptions.

The common passion for the psychedelic music of the late '60s has led us to turn our attention in particular to that flourishing period and to the beautiful vibrations that even today are clearly perceptible in the music that emerged from it.

This ensemble is added to the historic piano formation.

Together with me, the fantastic Alessandro Germini acts as the pivot of the Trio's two events.

The talented pianist Francesco Palmisano enriches some of the tracks present here, thus forming an unprecedented quartet.

To carry on these formations and the different possibilities they offer is a complex challenge. However, the effort has already been repaid by exciting results and this disc is a first testimony of it.

I hope it will be to your liking and allow you, from now on, to look at jazz from a Wider Perspective.

Marco Betti