Salvatori Productions 2024
La Bella Vita
Locating his place between the past and the future, Illinoisian master of six-string lace embraces the vibe of lullabies.
There’s a fine line between playing a tune that’s supposed to get the audience to sleep and not sounding so soporific as to spoil the listening experience, and Tom Salvatori is walking this line quite elegantly on a short, yet sweet, mini-album which follows 2021’s "Seven Guitar Miniatures" in stylistic terms while offering a different concept. The five pieces on display here pick up where the “Goodnight Lullaby” EP left off a year earlier, and, if combined, the two instrumental cycles, could form a lengthier, though hardly deeper, dive into hypnagogic state, but the American musician didn’t dare and endanger the wakeful perception of his enchanting melodies. And not only his.
Starting “La Bella Vita” off are “Mendelssohn’s Andante” and “Silvestrov’s Serenade” – two classical pieces, both originally written for violin by Berlin-based composers – that perfectly lend their unhurried vibrancy to nylon strings which allow resonance reign when a note is let fly and suspended animation of the first number and exquisite sensuality of the latter one create a magnificent contrast. So when Salvatori’s own “To And Fro” adds chiming baroque grandeur to the flow, his strum introducing a stained-glass brightness along the way, the sparsely placed sounds and mesmeric tempo get amalgamated into something almost magical, and “Riposo” infuses it all with folk motifs. And then there’s an intimate “Lullaby For Henry” bringing the record to a close via personal touch contained in the guitar-song’s very title.
So if the listener will go into a dream, it’s guaranteed to be beauty sleep, for life feels good with music like this.
*****
