Zoe Pia - Shardana (CALIGOLA RECORDS 2018)

his is a debut album – and what a debut! – for the young Sardinian clarinettist and composer Zoe Pia, who has developed a project within the F.Venezze Conservatory of Rovigo, attended after her graduation in Cagliari, where she first specialized in chamber music and then enrolled in the Jazz Department directed by Marco Tamburini. Right at Venezze Conservatory the clarinet player has found the musicians (and friends) capable of co–interpret her music with passion, and of inserting in the project tones and colours unexpected even for those familiar with the vanguard. Roberto De Nittis, keyboards, Glauco Benedetti, tuba – now much more than a promise of the young Italian jazz – and Sebastian Mannutza, also Sardinian and from the classical world, violin and drums (brother of Luca, an affirmed jazz pianist), have been more than just partners and reliable instrumentalists, contributing proactively to the success of the recording.

The idea of combining the technique of “soundscape composition” with the contemporary language has allowed to pay homage to the unforgotten singer Andrea Parodi, but also to tell through music the energy hidden in the graves of the giants of Sa Dom 'e S’Orcu, or mysterious characters as S’Accabadora, the tradition of the Mogoro procession (Oristano), her hometown, the history of the people of the Mediterranean, the mystical Domus de Janas (sort of Sardinian version of elves) and the traditional Sardinian dance in the joyful closing Ballendi su Ballu. In the hands of Zoe Pia the Launeddas assume, among other instruments, a totally personal garment, the result of careful research of unexplored tonal possibilities of the precious millennial instrument. «Shardana», as Paolo Fresu commented in the brief but sensible liner notes, “… is the right and desired balance between rationality and madness, passion and feeling, root and flower… a courageous engagement of languages, repertoires and sounds between today’s jazz, improvisation and ethnicity “.