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Spizz, Julian
(Firenze/ Italia)
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In General
In the course of mankind’s history, musical instruments – once they had been found or invented – always served initiallyto imitate the sound of the human voice; at least that’s what we are told by the musicologists.
In view of this theory, there is a certain strange irony to be detected in the fact that the human voice, having been imitated by instruments in nearly every culture, then set about imitating those very instruments. To draw a rather hair-splitting conclusion, the voice is thus actually imitating itself. But we’re not here to quibble.
As early as the Renaissance, compositions were written for this “instrumental” treatment of the voice, for example the Frenchman Clement Janequin’s famous piece “La Guerre” in which a kind of onomatopoeic battle painting is realized with the exclusive use of vocals.
In our own times, it is above all jazz that has hosted intensive
encounters of the singing voice with the sounds of instruments. In
their scat vocalizations, female jazz singers such as Ella Fitzgerald
(there were male voices too, but far fewer) took their orientation
from the wind section of jazz combos, imitating the saxophone
and trumpet runs. But it was the American Bobby McFerrin who
achieved what may have been the decisive breakthrough for the
basic application of the newly available electronic possibilities.
Naturally, McFerrin was not without his infl uences and models;
he had Urszula Dudziak and Jeanne Lee to look to, for example,
singers who had experimented extensively with effect devices. By
the beginning of the 1980s, Bobby McFerrin had access to the
loop and echo technology with which he was able to sing in dialog
with himself. A whole slew of vocalists followed in his wake, among
them a-cappella formations like the American “Bobs,” whose skilful
application of microphones created the illusion of an entire big
band with percussion, bass, various winds and guitars.
It was in the context of this development that, in the early 90s,
the Italian vocal trio “Trinovox” was founded, decisively adhering
to a style that combined jazz, classical and pop while refusing to
commit itself to any one of these elements exclusively.
In comparison to many other a-cappella bands, the “Trinovox”
singers Francesco Ronchetti, Riccardo Pucci-Rivola and Julian
Spizz pursued a very independent course: Their aim was not the
vocal arrangement of pop classics or jazz standards, even if they
made ample use of jazz and pop elements in their mix. “Trinovox”
revealed its literary ambitions from the very start, setting Japanese
haikus, verses from the “Song of Solomon” and poems of Lorca
and Eluard to music, vocally encircling the Mediterranean and – in
what is perhaps the culmination of their work to date – vocalizing
parts of Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”
Nor did “Trinovox” follow the typical a-cappella route from
the musical point of view either: They comfortably integrated song
forms from the Gregorian style and the Renaissance and played
with avant-garde ideas, interspersing their compositions with
mouth-watering pop passages all the while. After producing two
albums (“Incanto” and “Mediterranea,” both released by JARO),
the trio broke up. Now one of the “Trinovox” threesome is back: Julian
Spizz. The technical possibilities have expanded enormously
in the meantime. New sampling methods allow not only self-dialog
but provide the soloist with the opportunity of becoming a regular
one-man vocal orchestra. And where formerly experiments of this
kind could only be realized in the recording studio (with the aid of
complex multitrack systems), they can now be performed live, i.e.
in “real time”! Julian Spizz makes ideal use of these possibilities.
For his solo album “Incipit” (a Latin word referring to the beginning,
the starting point of an undertaking) he recorded all of the
voices himself. In concert, he is also able to realize these complexly
interlocked vocal phrases, while giving the audience insight into
the evolution of his music: One after the other, he superimposes
layers of percussion, bass and various lines of melody, constructing
a complete vocal orchestra.
In the process, Julian Spizz is able to draw from the experience
he gained with “Trinovox,” though now far exceeding those former
boundaries. He booms out a velvety doo-wop bass as the foundation
for the groove, then supplies lashing surges of percussion that
sound as if he was using a syndrum set, though they are “merely”
his own voice. Melodic structures, now wild and ecstatic, now succumbing
to a sensual passion for sound – an element probably no
Italian would ever do without! – complete the acoustic picture.
February 2004 - Christian Emigholz
Discography
Incipit (2004) JARO 4253-2 / Julian Spizz
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CDs:
Incipit - 2004
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