Kazda & Indigo Strings
Play The Music Of Nino Rota
The music on our new CD features arrangements of film music by the great Italian composer Nino Rota.With the exception of 'Un eroe dei nostri tempi' from the film of the same name by Mario Monicelli, 'Valzer del commiato' from the film 'Il Gattopardo' by Luchino Visconti and 'Perugia' which is my homage to the beautiful city in Umbria and its legendary jazz festival, all the pieces on this CD were composed by Nino Rota for films by Federico Fellini. . Rota's compositions are the perfect musical transposition of and addition to Fellini's fantastic images. The music is at times romantic, at times kitsch, then again satirical and grotesque, or full of sadness, at other times buoyantly cheerful or all of these attributes rolled into one, just like life. In working on the arrangements of the melodies for Amarcord, La dolce vita, Il bidone and others, the appeal for me lays in translating all these adjectives into my own 'vocabulary' and adapting them to the scope of our band. The aim is not to reenact the pieces, but rather to take Rota's compositions as a blueprint for our own music. The sometimes superficial banality of Rota's tunes humorously exaggerates the action and atmosphere in Fellini's films until they tip over into the absurd. Yet it is precisely this apparent triviality, which contains so much truth that sparked my imagination and prompted me to improvise and engage with the sound of these wonderful compositions.