Busy Butterflies
1. Busy Butterflies [20:30]
2. Ravenoville Plage [6:42]
3. Humble Sonata [5:14]
4. Dense-Dance-Evidence [5:49]
5. More Than One Turn [3:21]
6. Oracle’s Regret [2:39] CD BONUS ONLY
Gianni Mimmo _ soprano saxophone
Alison Blunt _ violin
Music by Alison Blunt & Gianni Mimmo
Recorded on 6th May, 2019 at Chiesa di Santa Maria Gualtieri, Pavia, Italy
Sound Engineering, recording, mixing _ Lorenzo Sempio, Interplay Recording Studio, Milano, Italy
Mastering _ Maurizio Giannotti, New Mastering Studio, Milano, Italy
Cover artwork _ Ruth Van Haren-Noman “fortune-molik”, 2012, oil on canvas
Photo _ Stefano Galvani
Liner _ Daniel Barbiero
Graphics _ Nicola Guazzaloca
Production _ Gianni Mimmo for Amirani Records
Special thanks to Bruno Cerutti for his logistic support, Achille Gabba and Cecco Aroni Vigone for their intense listening and to Reciprocal Uncles in flesh and spirit without whom we might never have been inspired to collaborate.
The 180gr. Vinyl LP version of this album is available in a 100 hand-numbered copies limited edition.
To watch two butterflies in flight is to see a complex intertwining of zigs and zags, dips and weaves, as each—seemingly erratically--rides the turbulence its wings create to carry it along. Together they trace an unchoreographed but nevertheless coherent set of variations on the line as they move with, against and through each other’s paths.
The intricate pattern of two butterflies’ interwoven flight paths stands as a fitting analogue for the nuanced complexity of Busy Butterflies, the second duo recording by soprano saxophonist Gianni Mimmo and violinist Alison Blunt. As in Lasting Ephemerals, their first recording as a duo, Busy Butterflies captures the intuitive chemistry that is the foundation of their collaboration. That chemistry is not only replicated here, but refined and redoubled.
Throughout this recording Mimmo and Blunt’s voices move together in the free invention of melodies, countermelodies and emergent harmonies. Theirs is an essentially contrapuntal music of subtle timbral gradations—polyphony crafted in-the-moment and chords arrived at for their sonority rather than their functionality. Counterpoint dominates the magnificent, long title piece as well as “Dense-Dance-Evidence” and “More than One Turn,” the latter featuring an almost Baroque manner of phrasing. “Humble Sonata” is an essay in harmonic sonority, while Mimmo and Blunt’s essential lyricism comes out in the quasi-modal “Ravenoville Plage” and in the hymn-like, quiet gravitas of “Oracle’s Regret.” The unique pairing of soprano saxophone and violin adds an intriguing element of timbral contrast to the mix--something emphasized by both musicians’ use of extended techniques. In Mimmo and Blunt’s hands these techniques serve to intensify, rather than conceal, their instruments’ intrinsic identities: the clicking of keys, plosions of air and multiphonics on the one hand, and the extreme bowings, harmonics and snap pizzicato on the other, announce that this is a saxophone, this is a violin, and neither is to be taken for the other, even when converging on the same note.
Much like, in fact, two butterflies maintaining distinctive tracks even while traveling in the same direction together.
Daniel Barbiero
Silver Spring, MD
October 2019