Album Reviews

Marcello Pellitteri

Aquarius Woman

Artist:     Marcello Pellitteri

Album:     Aquarius Woman

Label:     Marpel Music

Release Date:     10/01/2016

70

Infused in most of John Coltrane’s totemic accomplishments was a purer sense of searching, for connection, for spirituality. I sense that same spiritual charge here in the shifting music of drummer Marcello Pellitteri.

Surely not as well known or as heralded as many with whom he has shared the stage (Woody Shaw, Jon Hendricks, Paquito D’Rivera, Wynton Marsalis and others, just to drop mic for the moment) Pellitteri’s music comes from the connective tissue of gratitude, loss, and love of life that all our best efforts ring forth from. As was his last outing, the emotive Acceptance, Aquarius Woman musical manifestations are dedicated to the memory of his young daughter Veronica, who passed too early at 23.

Throughout groove, ballad, orchestration, hard bop, spoken word and all in between (including a Latin-influenced take on Stevie Wonder’s “Ribbon In the Sky”), Pellitteri surrounds himself with his daughter’s memory and a wholly invested crew of trans-Atlantic players, including Orazio Maugeri on alto sax, bassist Gabrio Bevilacqua and pianist Salvatore Bonafede. For those who feel today’s music is but a soul-less commodity, here’s your starting point of reconsideration.

-Mike Jurkovic

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