Following the success of his genre-defying album Reflections, Italian pianist Marco Fumo presents a similarly fascinating and thought-provoking programme that places keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti alongside pieces by William Grant Still, Duke Ellington, Chick Corea, Manuel Saumell and Ignacio Cervantes. These works have been carefully ordered to be heard in pairs or small groups, creating a sense of timelessness so that we hear repertoire not usually brought together: the innovations of Scarlatti heard in a fresh new context alongside 20th-century jazz and Cuban dance.
Marco Fumo specialises in what he calls this ‘global outlook’, embracing music as far as is possible without classifications, genres and temporal and stylistic distinctions, thus creating the possibility of listening to composers who are distant in time and in their way of expressing themselves as if they were contemporaries, and of bringing them closer, comparing them and listening to them together.
Marco Fumo has always aimed to embrace good music of any genre without distinction, interested more in its innate qualities than in categorisation. Fumo is considered to be one of the best interpreters of Afro-American piano repertoire; after an early career in classical music, he studied early ragtime, analysing the origins of and influences on early ragtime piano. For over a decade he collaborated professionally with Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone.
