Perfect Partners: Rota & Fellini

Barbican, London
By Keith Shadwick
30 April 2004
The Independent

Hal Willner is a maverick producer with taste, and his "Perfect Partners: Nino Rota & Federico Fellini" brought mouthwatering updates of Rota's music to the Barbican.

Marrying Rota's absorbing film scores with jazz arranging and performing practices may not seem the most obvious thing to do, but Willner knew who to turn to in achieving his aims. The arrangers alone included Carla Bley, Michael Gibbs, Roger Eno, Kate St John, Karen Mantler, Roy Nathanson and Steve Beresford. Seated among the congregation onstage were Geri Allen, Guy Barker, Andy Sheppard, Gary Valente, John Etheridge and BJ Cole, while the guitarist David Thomas led a bizarre electro-trio in an all-out assault on the unearthly music from Fellini's weirdest film, Satyricon.

The first half opened with a nostalgic duet between the pianist Allen and accordionist Rob Burger, fashioning bitter-sweet sounds from Rota's music for Fellini's Amarcord while a single still from the film was projected onto a giant screen. This visual presentation was repeated throughout the show, identifying the film for each piece and showing a typical still.

Allen appeared more than once, alternating her playing between the disciplined reading of a score and the imaginative rendering of melodies and accompaniments. Particularly noteworthy were two pieces that flowed together: a duet with Sheppard featuring the theme from Fellini's Roma, and a solo piano rendition of the theme from La Strada, where her wonderfully fluid technique and her rich harmonic imagination came together with a bang.

Other memorable moments included the visual impact of Bley, resplendent in a white trouser suit, and her daughter Mantler, in black cocktail dress, sitting at opposite sides of the stage during Bley's arrangement of 8 1/2 and Mantler's equally atmospheric setting of Rota's music from Coppola's The Godfather. Together, they looked like their own version of a journey through time.

A decidedly reticent Beth Orton appeared briefly to sing some Italian lyrics to the music from Casanova, and Marianne Faithfull made a fleeting appearance during the long suite made up from the La Dolce Vita soundtrack.

But alongside Allen and Sheppard, the other stars of the evening were the irrepressible trombonist Valente, whose every instrumental snort and smear sent ripples through the audience, and the oboist/cor anglais player St John, whose every note was a sound to savour.