Product DescriptionFilm Noir with its darkly-lit settings, where crime and dangerous liaisons take place with a soundtrack of brushstroked drums, walking bass, hushed-tone piano, shimmering strings, and most important that sexy, silken saxophone, is cinema s most jazz-friendly genre. The celebrated Argentine-American composer/conductor/arranger/pianist Carlos Franzetti a global scientist of sound who s worked with everybody from Paquito D Rivera, to Jane Monheit, and in jazz, Latin and classical idioms delivers an impressive and impassioned collection entitled Film Noir.
Recorded in Prague, backed by the fabulous City of Prague Philharmonic and lead soloist and ex-Buddy Rich sideman Andy Fusco on alto saxophone, Franzetti updates and reinterprets the film themes of Neal Hefti, Herbie Hancock, Johnny Mandel, John Barry, Burt Bacharach, Bernardo Bertolucci, Lalo Schifrin, Franz Waxman, and David Raskin.
On these eleven compositions the film composers have chosen their melodic statements to be played by a saxophone, Franzetti writes in the CD liner notes. Obviously, most of those scores were jazz-oriented and related to the Film Noir genre of the 40 s and 50 s where the sensuous sax melodies are accompanied by a large string orchestra. So the ingredients and the material were finally in place. With our producer, Lorenz Russo, we discussed the repertoire, we chose the City of Prague Philharmonic as the orchestra for these sessions, and off we went to Europe with a suitcase full of music manuscripts and very high hopes.
Under Franzetti s leadership, the results of this project have gone far beyond his expectations. With Fusco s supple sax lines, which suggest Charlie Parker and Johnny Hodges with equal temperament, buoyed by the sensitive rhythm section, you can almost see the characters, plot lines, and scenes on the sonic canvas. Save for an intimate quartet reading of Herbie Hancock s Still Time (an inverted version of Bud Powell s Time Waits ) from Round Midnight, the rest of the tracks feature the leader s sophisticated string arrangements for ballads like Schifrin s The Voyage of the Damned, Bacharach s Alfie, Waxman s A Place in the Sun, Raskin s The Bad and the Beautiful, Barry s Body Heat, Hefti s Girl Talk, from Harlow, Bertolucci s Last Tango in Paris (1973), and Mandel s I Want to Live. The Latin-tinged selection, Tango Fatal, which closes the CD, was from a Franzetti-composed ballet, commissioned by Lorenz Russo and used in several films, including Edgardo Cozarinsky s Dans le Rouge du Couchant.
