Marco Betti

FROM THE RECORD’S ORIGINAL LINER NOTES

It took nine years, nine long years, to achieve this debut record.

Why did it takes so long? I really didn’t believe I had enough valid, honest and personal musical material to justify a recording.

The Trio has always had a strong live vocation. These years were spent building a solid and extensive repertoire that would allow us to achieve the objective that has always been at the center of my activity: reaching out to the body, the heart and the spirit of as many people possible, trying to convey to them my love for Music.

The difficult art of live performance requires peculiar talents: the naturalness that can be obtained only after hundreds of gigs; real empathy to build up a relationship of complicity with your audience; a natural balance between exhibitionism and humility. And, above all things, Music capable of generating emotions to the listener. Over the years I believe that I have become a valid exponent of this art.

But what happens when the group finds itself all alone? When the only spectator is the sound engineer and there is no relationship with an audience - the only real fuel of live Music? What happens when silence falls and the tapes begin rolling? Few factors remain: the power of the composition, the effectiveness of the arrangement, the intensity of the interpretation, the interplay between the companions. The Music shows itself naked for what it is and presents you with the bill.

The turn of events occurred two years ago while I was preparing one of the many gigs of our show “A Night with the Jazz Giants”, which for years has been a regular monthly event at the Jazz Club Torino and later in numerous other venues in the main cities of northern Italy. For that occasion, the choice of the program fell on Duke Ellington and the Music of his famous Orchestra.

In front of the stature of the Master, it became immediately clear that the only way to render fitting homage to his Art was to give my personal interpretation of his Music - narrate myself through his music. This might come across as an obvious concept, but it is not enough to have formalized it: you have to perceive the immediate matter of urgency. The outcome was a program of superior quality with respect to what we had been presenting up to that point.

Since then this urgency has never abandoned me and I have tried to channel our efforts in each piece of music I decided to take on and play, right up to challenging myself with the difficult practice of composing.

This album, entirely dedicated to the work of Duke Ellington, wants to celebrate the inspiration that we can and must draw from the Masters of the past, musical fathers that show us the way through their immortal legacy and their brilliant example of artistic integrity.

Marco Betti