03 aprile 2022

 

Dal concerto del marzo 2016 tenuto a Londra nell'ambito dello Steinway 2-Piano Festival è tratto il documento dell'ultimo incontro, ahimè irripetibile, di Howard Riley con Keith TippettJournal Four, pubblicato da NoBusiness Records con le note di Richard Williams.

Ne scrisse anche Geoff Winston per LondonJazz News: "Together they displayed an extraordinary, intuitive understanding in an absorbing, extended duo set. Perhaps the best way to describe their complex, poetic confection is as an intense meditation on the piano, defying neat boundaries, blasting Rachmaninov and Debussy with the blues, and maverick turns of phrase with technical runs of hyper-velocity. This was a harmony of exploration, guided by a sense of the primacy of the creative flow and given structure, as Riley had discussed earlier, by their experiences as composers as well as performers and interpreters. Rhythmic rolls gave way to Township jive, deep in Tippett’s experience, Joplin’s piano rags, children’s rhymes and pianistic games of of hide and seek. The layered juxtaposition of ideas was both breathtaking and absolutely rooted. A dense chordal build-up led in to the final sequence - a glorious improvised duet around Blue Monk. After the applause had died down, Tippett summed up the experience perfectly, ‘Before you ask for anything else, that’s all we know!’ That really was it - Riley and Tippett had given so generously, nobody could have asked for more."