Perfect Partners

Jazz
Barbican
The Times
April 2004

IT’S fair to say that one of the guest stars, Marianne Faithfull, must have spent almost as much time doing up the zip on her flouncy Prada gown as she did performing in this tribute to the film composer Nino Rota, the “perfect partner” of Federico Fellini. No sooner had she sauntered out to add wordless vocals to the sequence from La Dolce Vita than she disappeared into the wings again, leaving Roy Nathanson and the rest of the musicians to deliver a decidedly hit-and-miss pot pourri.

It was, to be honest, that kind of evening, full of intriguing contrasts and maddening self-indulgences — much like a Fellini film itself, you might say. The producer Hal Willner has always been something of an outlaw in the jazz world, and this celebration was every bit as uncompromising and eccentric as the album, Amarcord Nino Rota, assembled by Willner almost a quarter of a century ago. He was helped on that occasion by musicians including Jaki Byard, Carla Bley and a young Bill Frisell.

Willner recruited an equally impressive cast of performers and arrangers for this updated version, with Mike Gibbs, Brian Eno, Andy Sheppard, Beth Orton and Pere Ubu’s David Thomas among those lending a hand. It was Bley, however, who stole the show, generating just the right combination of romance and burlesque in her inspired suite from 8 ½, the musicians evoking the loose-limbed mood of a street band.

After the interval, Bley’s daughter Karen Mantler delivered a playful deconstruction of the Godfather theme, trombonist Gary Valente giving the melody a decidedly sardonic twist. David Thomas’s electro-guitar and percussion approach to Satyricon was much more laboured, while Sheppard’s duet with the pianist Geri Allen twisted and turned to no great effect either.

Fellini and Rota would have enjoyed the sly humour in Kate St John’s arrangements from Orchestra Rehearsal.

All credit to the Barbican for mounting such an ambitious show. By the end, however, the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach took its toll. I couldn’t help reflecting that the most atmospheric Fellini tribute album to come my way — Caetano Veloso’s live set Omaggio a Federico e Giulietta — achieved its goal with the help of just four or five musicians. Willner’s project covered much more ground, admittedly, but the poetry sometimes was lost in the crowd.