Maria Pia de Vito – Voice
Huw Warren- Piano
An exciting combination of original music,improvisations and haunting songs. Mixing a telepathic sense of interaction with an even greater sense of fun and adventure; the poetry of the Neapolitan dialect makes this project an unique duo on the World jazz stage. They have recorded 2 albums on the Parco Della Musica label Dialektos (with Gabriele Mirabassi) and O Pata Pata (with Ralph Towner).
“… Performing material from their superb 2008 recording Diálektos, which explores their mutual love of jazz, Brazilian and Neapolitan music, I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw a live performance in which two artists were so completely attuned to each other, whether negotiating the trickiest unison passage or breezing through the catchiest Brazilian riff.
Huw Warren’s ‘And the kitchen sink’ set the remarkably high benchmark which was thrillingly sustained throughout the entire set. Employing scat, vocalese and a wild improvisational freedom, De Vito demonstrated why she’s one of the most versatile vocalists around. Composed by Italian pianist Rita Marcotulli, Warren’s muscular block chords in the Brazilian-infused ‘Miguilim’ provided the perfect foil for De Vito’s increasingly virtuosic flights of fancy. The song’s extraordinary centrepiece saw Warren beating out a primal rhythm on the piano’s strings and body. Throughout the album’s title track – a rich farrago of sounds, moods and emotions – De Vito was incredible to watch, gesticulating every movement of the melodic line with her hand as if conjuring spirits. Warren’s ‘Whistling rufus’ was a dazzling game that juxtaposed chunky Stravinskian ostinatos in the piano with skittering melodic unisons. In a magical encore, De Vito (who doubled here on the mbira) sang each word as if she was digging it out of the ground, such was its granitic power. ” – Jazzwise
Huw Warren’s ‘And the kitchen sink’ set the remarkably high benchmark which was thrillingly sustained throughout the entire set. Employing scat, vocalese and a wild improvisational freedom, De Vito demonstrated why she’s one of the most versatile vocalists around. Composed by Italian pianist Rita Marcotulli, Warren’s muscular block chords in the Brazilian-infused ‘Miguilim’ provided the perfect foil for De Vito’s increasingly virtuosic flights of fancy. The song’s extraordinary centrepiece saw Warren beating out a primal rhythm on the piano’s strings and body. Throughout the album’s title track – a rich farrago of sounds, moods and emotions – De Vito was incredible to watch, gesticulating every movement of the melodic line with her hand as if conjuring spirits. Warren’s ‘Whistling rufus’ was a dazzling game that juxtaposed chunky Stravinskian ostinatos in the piano with skittering melodic unisons. In a magical encore, De Vito (who doubled here on the mbira) sang each word as if she was digging it out of the ground, such was its granitic power. ” – Jazzwise
Maria Pia de Vito is an Italian classical and jazz singer who has worked in the UK with Colin Towns. Huw Warren is a pianist, accordionist and composer who plays his own contemporary music and also participates in improv dialogues with stars such as violinist Mark Feldman, the sometime John Zorn collaborator. This conversation between De Vito and Warren explores plenty of the latter’s witty and pungent pieces through the former’s lyrics, sung in Neapolitan and English, and pieces by Chico Buarque and Hermeto Pascoal. If it all sounds like fashionable world-jazz, just hang on – this is an album swelling with subtle surprises. The melodies are often delightful; Warren is effortlessly relaxed as a jazzy groover and audacious as a sound-source; and De Vito can be unobtrusively mellifluous at straight delivery of a beautiful theme. They both love Brazilian music – De Vito sounds like a drummer playing brushes behind Warren’s piano on Miguilim. And on the lovely Si Fosse n’Auciello, and the lamenting Jesce, Giovanni Mirabassi’s whispering clarinet comes in as a hypnotic bonus. John Fordham The Guardian