Gianni Lenoci

Johnny Richards

Build a Friend

New Jazz and Improvised Music Recordings NEWJAiM6

Two distinct solo piano recitals cunningly illustrate how adaptable the instrument’s mechanism can be when turned towards particular programs. Build a Friend offers 15 improvisations by the UK’s Johnny Richards, who has spent the past decade since graduating from Leeds Conservatoire establishing himself with various bands in the area. Besides working with the likes of Gianni Mimmo, Italian Gianni Lenoci taught music. Sadly he died at 56 in September 2019, a little more than three weeks after this festival recording.

It’s tempting to read an augury into the slow paced echoing pumps Lenoci brings to his version of “Goodbye”, the CD’s penultimate track. But his capacity for interpolating adept timbral augmentation without abandoning the melody is better showcased on his extended versions of the other tracks. He stretches “All the Things You Are” so that bottom board echoes and jagged near tack-piano emphasis recast the familiar tune so that it appears to express simultaneously the familiar narrative and contrfacts of itself. Related to someone with whom he studied, his version of Paul Bley’s “Blues Waltz” subtracts the waltz substituting a jangling Country Blues-like primitivism. Vibrating the piano’s actions at its height he plinks keys and snaps strings and quotes “Camptown Races”. Yet in the turnaround he retains the piece’s innate Blues feeling, expressing swing as he breaks up the narrative. Perhaps inadvertently burnishing his own legacy he lets out all the stops during the almost 16½ minutes of Carla Bley’s “Ida Lupino”. With the melody appearing, reappearing and reprised throughout, be builds a countermelody with metallic sweeps, percussive key slapping as well as teases and tickles in the piano’s highest register. Accenting what he wishes, his theme variations with single key clip or glissandi are complementary as well as contrasting.

The major variance between A Few Steps Beyond and Build a Friend can be noted in the titles. No matter how far he roams, Lenoci is firmly lodged in Jazz piano heritage. Richards’ 15 mostly brief tracks are pure improvisations. Preparing the strings so that solid and sometimes unyielding items judder upon them, while plucking and stopping the strings as well as scratching and banging the keyboard, as he plays, Richards’ piano is a sound source as well as an expressive musical instrument. He hasn’t completely jettisoned the Jazz tradition though. “Inside out Thought” shows that he can create a honeyed balladic introduction and wander over the narrative with carefully chosen notes. And “10% Viscount Swing” is unadulterated movement. It sound as if it’s played on a clavinet, with a groove as powerful as a John Lee Hooker foot stomp.

Mostly though, the tracks are studded with clinks, clanks and variations on wood and wire, leaping in and out of the bass and treble clef. He swiftly outputs textures that sluice from elevated tinkles to subterrestrial repercussions and back again. An organ-like tremolo riff sweeps across the keyboard on “Depressed Circus” in the same manner as repeated string glissandi on “Protest the Quirk (Tonal Victory)” emphasize the harp part of the instrument’s piano harp. Some tracks involve every part of the keyboard, other concentrate on isolated single note expositions and still others – probably helped by laying a cymbal on the strings – make their points through bell-like chiming. As comfortable with bottom tones as high-pitched ones, he creates dark, distinct statements on tracks such as “Hell is Rehydrating” and “Darts II” by emphasizing pedal work and soundboard echoes while driving timbres forward towards moderated overlays and shuddering silences.

A final statement and a mid-career application, each disc is worthy of examination and more proof of the piano – and an artist’s – flexibility.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Build: 1. Lorraine 2. All the Things You Are 3. Blues Waltz 4. Ida Lupino 5. Goodbye 6. Latin Genetics

Personnel: Build: Gianni Lenoci (piano)

Track Listing: Few: 1. Farwell to Calm 2. The Moths 3. Inside out Thought 4. Acrobat Grin 5. Darts 6. Depressed Circus 7. Build a Friend 8. Unfasten My Brain 9. Hell is Rehydrating 10. Darts II 11. The Faded Memory of a Town 12. 10% Viscount Swing 13, Protest the Quirk (Tonal Victory) 14. Bob Rock’s Clone Factory 15. Attentions

Personnel: Few: Johnny Richards (piano)