Carlos Cipa & Sophia Jani :: Relive (Denovali)

Cipa and Jani operate like eager piano scientists, performing an innovative, emotional and delicate procedure.

One of the great things about the people operating Denovali, is that they don’t bind the imprint to one genre, they don’t search after a specific sound. If it’s good and they like it, they will release it, no matter the sound, no matter the style. This way of working allows us to benefit from a very colorful and constantly growing musical catalog. I have heard many Denovali releases and still never know what will come next from this prolific German imprint. Dark jazz, modern classical, electronica, ambient, experimental, folk, trip hop, post-rock; it could be anything.

Denovali starts off the new year with a set of four lovely releases. I chose to write about the two that enchanted me the most. The first one out of the two is this beautiful two-piece collaboration record aptly named Relive. Carlos Cipa and Sophia Jani have joined forces in order to write two piano pieces for four hands, and perform them at the Denovali Swingfest 2013 in Essen. The performance was successful, and later on Cipa and Jani got together to play and record the two pieces in the exact same form they performed them on the Swingfest stage. Relive contains that documentation. Piano pieces for four hands can be quite interesting, but, nowadays it’s not easy to sound attractive on the piano, it is actually quite easy to sound conventional, but in order for a piano piece to shine with originality, in order for it to be moving, the person writing and playing it has to own a few qualities. Fortunately, Cipa and Jani have been blessed with talent, expressive touch and out of the box thinking.

So what is so special about Relive? Plucking, beating and bowing, Cipa and Jani intriguingly explore the many wonders of the piano. Even though not in the exact same way, experiments of this kind have been done by others before, but like all the Denovali artists I have investigated, Cipa and Jani do not copycat. Instead, they take the flame of piano based music to new heights of creativity and charm. The two pieces are completely organic and can be played live without using any electronics. This kind of natural exploration is something I really appreciate and fascinated by. Cipa and Jani operate like eager piano scientists, performing an innovative, emotional and delicate procedure.

The two lengthy pieces, “Anouk’s Dream” (13:32) and “Whatever a Sun Will Always Sing” (9:43) are cinematic, fluid and penetrating. Notes dance and shimmer gracefully, at times fading away into a mystic space, leaving atmospheric trails of alluring mist behind them. A gentle Einaudi scent flows here and there in the finely woven threads of both pieces. Cipa and Jani refresh the genre in a spellbinding, panoramic way. This is heartwarming music that comes to us just in the right season, created by two promising young artists and must be a part of any modern piano music collection.

Relive is available on Denovali.