aaamusic | On 18, Jul 2011

GIORGIO TUMA
IN The Morning We’ll Meet
Elefant
ER-1156
Release Date: August 2011

Burt Bacharach, Ennio Morricone, Brian Wilson… these are but three musical masterminds whose names need no introduction. Giorgio Tuma, however, perhaps does.

Tuma is an Italian songwriter, singer and instrumentalist who creates vignettes, paintings, textures and stories in music, unlike anything else you’ll hear in 2011. With third album In The Morning We’ll Meet he unearths a yearning for times gone by and fantastical flight.

In 2002 the young Italian had a Damascene moment after hearing Stereolab. Through their soft focus and minimalist approach pop took on a new meaning for Tuma. Immersing himself in the forlorn folk of Nick Drake and Tim Buckley, the evanescent vocals of The Free Design, the bossa-inflected melodies of Astrud Gilberto, Italian film scores and Broadway Musicals he was stirred to compose songs of his own. First album Uncolored (Swing’n’Pop Around Rose) was released on a small Italian indie in 2003, with backing from collective Os Tumantes (no points for getting the Os Mutantesreference). In 2008 a deal was signed with respected Spanish label Elefant who released the highly praised follow up My Vocalese Funfair, which allmusic.com called “just magic” – rewarding it 4.5/5 stars.

“In the Morning We’ll Meet is an album of folk-jazz sung in English, but watered with typically Italian melodies,” Tuma says of his latest outing. “I tried with this album to describe the concept of ‘innocence’: childhood memories, the dream, the start and finish of an important love story, the sensation of hearing Pet Sounds, sitting in a room on December the 24th with only the Christmas tree lights on, the whites and blacks of the splendid Vittorio De Sica movies… splendour and hope.”

Farmore thoughtful than his two previous efforts; the sunshine ray of hope element is now dappled and autumnal, with a nostalgia that is so common in the jazz of Chet Baker or the compositions of Ravel. “It’s less pop than its predecessor and there aren’t any Brazilian influences either. As the album progresses the songs become more melancholic and complicated,” says Tuma of the album’s sense of mood.

To achieve the artist’s vision an incredible list of collaborators were involved, including Michael Andrews (who was responsible for the brilliant scores to Donnie Darko and Me, You And Everyone We Know), Lori Cullen (the Canadian jazz-folk singer who has released three splendid albums, the last of which was produced by Chris Dedrick – the mentor of the legendary THE FREE DESIGN), and Susan Karolina Wallumrød (who hassung with greats like Bonnie “Prince” Billy and issued three albums with her own group SUSANNA AND THE MAGICAL ORCHESTRA).

From the cinematic heaven of ‘Imaginary Soundtrack For Yuri Norstein’ (dedicated to the rustic Russian animator) to the soft-pop Roger Nichols & The Small Circle Of Friends-like ‘New Fabled Stories’, the heart wrenching harmonica led ‘Noel 1981’ to the fragile jazz of ‘Apples RvIIII’ and the trippy Syd Barret sounding ‘Eyes Full Of Bitterness’ In The Morning We’ll Meet features a stunning array of dreamy music, destined to steal your heart.

The album in the words of Giorgio Tuma:

1.- A ghost in our way
Lori Cullen’s arrangements and Giuseppe Calignano’s synthesizers welcome the listener instrumentally, between dreamy accents and smoky evanescences, discovering that everything in Giorgio Tuma’s magical world is exciting.

2.- Imaginary Sounbdtrack for Yuri Norstein
If we were already talking about a magical universe, now this is telling us about another emotional conjurer, in this case, using audiovisuals as its magic wand. The innocent and fragile figures of the host, Yuri Norstein, evoke so many of the feelings that Tuma’s melodies awaken in us. Ultimately, there is a lot of imagination and fantasy in all of it.

3.- Marzapane Rota
“Tan dulce y añejo como el mazapán… pero éste es muy especial… hecho con los mismos ingredientes de la prestigiosa pastelería italiana Rota” (So sweet and aged, like mazapan… but this is very special… made with the same ingredients as in the prestigious Italian bakery, Rota). And behind Claudio Prima’s Organetto we find the sweet and aged melodies of the great Rota, and that inimitable fresco he composed for “Amarcord”. To say “the chills” is not saying enough.

4.- New Fabled Stories
Probably the clearest single on the album, and one the songs where that sun that Tuma pulls out of his hat and that belongs only to him shines, and gives a special coloring to all of the figures that move through his songs. Bacharach style trumpets, summery harmonies, luminous melodies. How can you not feel good while listening to songs like this one?

5.- Raymond Bleeps
Giuseppe Calignano is a type of impossible mix between Pascal Comelade and PARADE. His toy synthesizers are the medium that Tuma’s friend needed to color his musical dreams with stars.

6.- Noel 1981
The harmonica of Marco Tuma, the brother of our star, gives a tone of distressed melancholy to this beautiful Christmas memory. The snow never stops falling when you evoke your earliest memories of Christmas.

7.- Innocenza Cetra
“My brother Pierluigi introduced me to the music Maurice Ravel five years ago. This song is my little Ravel styled pop symphony, but it is also full of the imagery of Vittorio de Sica’s black and white films, and of Alessandro Cicognini’s soundtrack for “Miracle in Milan”. Ravel, Cicognini and De Sica: the work of these geniuses is full of Innocenza”. He says it all.

8.- An Enchanting Blue
The elegant blue of Chet Baker, the charm of Sinatra, the colorfulness Bacharach… who doesn’t go to pieces when the wind lifts the songs up to the bluest skies in the world? The blue is a cloak, is warmth, the light sleep, the sweetened bitterness…

9.- Oh Marc, please, let me fly with LV
John Lennon tells us about the first time he felt sad, Louis Armstrong’s trumpet plays its last blues for him, the sun orbits around them… As the last line of the song prays, after all of this, we will all have a change of mood at the same time.

10.- Old Old Kiss
The album’s central piece, full of sadness, but hiding the silver lining of hope. Michael Andrews dresses up a melody that came into being on an old guitar with barely three chords and he turned it into an emotional tour de force, devastating, brushing up against exhaustion, which ultimately dissipates the storm with that “In the morning we’ll meet”, sung by Michael and Lori together. The end of the song seems to give meaning to the whole album, and that vital push we needed.

11.- Isaia
If before we were talking about Ravel, now it’s Satie and her Gymnopedies’ turn. The piano evokes a very special person, with a mix of sadness and heat, in little more than a minute.

12.- Apples Rvlll
“When I wrote this song, I thought about John Coltrane’s masterpiece, “A love supreme”, and the incredible chords in Berman Hermann’s scores, with a voice that approaches Tim Buckley’s”. Miss Wallumrød does a prodigal job on the vocals, between the quality of Billie Holiday and the elegance of Minnie Ripperton. Marvellous.

13.- Eyes full of bitterness
A small piece of folk that is evidence of Tuma’s love for Nick Drake and his way of making nostalgia and melancholy the most beautiful feelings that exist.

14.- Sitting on the little church steps
“This song revives a splendid moment. It is trying to describe, musically, the feeling you have when you’re sad but you have someone near you who can help you with their love. Together, embracing, sitting on the little church steps, looking at the sea”. As if he were describing the sunrise, this song is a mood in and of itself. At first, Tuma dims the light of his own sun, and then little by little he returns it to its full power, giving it that subtle but boundless strength that overcomes everything.

15.- Raymond Bleeps 2
Giuseppe Calignano opens the final coda of the album with another one of his synthesized dreams.

16.- When I sing your words all around us is magic
Could this be the private dedication that Tuma makes to his friend Alice Rossi, his private Hal David? In any case, night is coming, placidly, the stars rule the sky, and the bittersweet flavour of the end of the day reaches perfection with whatever it is that awakens in you when an album that has excited you, getting into your bones, ends,