Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Saturday 16th May 2015
Artisti e Solisti Associati Inc., under conductor, Daniel Ciurleo, presented
Canzone De Mio Padre (Songs My Father Taught Me), at the Vogue Theatre
There were two or three other non-Italian/Australians in the Vogue Theatre for the matinee performance but, honestly, anybody who enjoys full throated singing, and a swirling orchestral backing, would have been as a delighted as I was.
Daniel Ciurleo founded the Fusion Pops Orchestra a few years ago and returned to the podium for a concert of popular Italian songs of the forties and fifties and thereabouts.
Ciurleo chose the program, recruited the fifty four musicians and two tenors who performed it and wrote all the arrangements tailoring them to specific individual players. He revels in orchestral colours, loves sweeping strings, and knows when to add crunchy percussion to add contrasts. Personally I'd have liked moments of fewer players to act as contrast, and wanted a bit more from the French horns, who seemed only to add a bit of extra colour to the lower orchestral strings.
Apart from the arrangements of themes from
The Godfather, at the start of the second half, everything else was a chance to hear, either separately or in duet, two very fine tenors. I've known Tasso Bouyessis since, he recently reminded me, 1985, and have watched him grow as a performer. He brings to his music a real sensitivity of the emotional impact of the work he's performing, and this was evident in
Torna by Vento and Valente, though he could sing out in his performance of the ever popular
Volare by Modugno and
l'Ultima Canzone of Tosti.
I can't recall when the Gilbert and Sullivan Society presented Patience in a flower power production apparently set in the cloisters of Adelaide University, but that was the last time I heard David Visentin sing. He was a neat performer as the poet Grosvenor and has grown into an impressive tenor during his years interstate. His voice is baritonal in timbre with an attractive grain, and his top notes are all you expect from the genuine Italian tenor article. He wrung all the emotion he could find in the arias he was given and, in one of them, delivered a marvellously characterised performance of a song with a really curious history.
Tammuriata Nera was written by the superintendent of a Naples maternity hospital who noticed that, in 1945, some months after American troops, predominantly African American, has liberated the south, quite a few babies were born who weren't entirely European in origin. The audience roared.
The two tenors joined in a couple of duets, and there were encores. The first was a rousing performance of
O Surdato 'nnamorato, the anthem of the Naples football team, and a sing along version of
Funiculi Funicular, which always reminds me of Noel Coward's song about Mrs Wentworth Brewster.
Daniel Ciurleo is certainly a musician to keep an eye on. His performance is driven by immense self-confidence and the confidence of the members of Artisti e Solisti Associati Inc.
He is planning, with his supporters at ASA Inc., especially Grace Coppola Gorman, to take
the concert to Melbourne and Sydney later this year, and is planning another extravaganza of contemporary music for Adelaide as well.
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