Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Sponza, Mike
Label: Epops Music
Release: 2014
Length: 77:10
Rating: 4.5/5
What can you say about the doings of Trieste bluesman Mike Sponza, a man who’s always busy and wired with hyperactive energy? His career has always been tightly bound up with working alongside Slovenian musicians, and he’s an old familiar face on Slovenian stages too. You’ll often spot him in the company of Primož Grašič, his old friend and one of the most technically gifted musicians Slovenia has ever seen, if not outright the country’s first jazz guitar. Grašič, who has also earned his bread for years in the Big Bend RTV Slovenija orchestra, is a guy who knows how that machine works down to the pinky of his left hand. Sponza had an idea: bring an orchestral component into his own songs. He found his support, of course, in Primož, whose orchestral arrangements gave Sponza’s original catalog exactly what Sponza was looking for.
The setting of Trieste’s central square, Piazza Unita ‘dItalia, seems more than ideal for a big concert spectacle. Mike Sponza planned just such a show with his regular backing band. The main focus of the spectacle was presenting Sponza’s original songs, dressed in a fresh outfit of new arrangements brought to them by the versatile musical genius Primož Grašič. Grašič was also conducting a 40-piece orchestra of Slovenian musicians called the Central European Orchestra, so this night he couldn’t grab his guitar and join Sponza, as he usually does when the two share the stage in smaller club venues.
Sponza gets the point of a spectacle, so he invited two fascinating soul blues singers as special guests on lead vocals, Lara Barucca and Lela Kaplowitz. The special star of the night, though, showed up as the third guest vocalist: none other than Ian Siegal, the British star and one of the heroes of modern British blues, who has been Sponza’s friend and musical partner for years. The two take on the song Fire, which they wrote together back in 2008 while Sponza was wandering around London, and which is basically considered their first officially recorded studio collaboration.
It’s clear to Sponza that he could never have pulled this project off without Grašič. With incredible wit, Primož breathed a whole new dimension into Sponza’s original material. In its live incarnation at the »Barcolana Music« festival on 10.10.2013, right in the middle of Trieste, it gets even more drive, sonic breadth and glow, stretching out with jazzy variations and a few dashes of neo-classicism. In the perfection embodied by the superbly chosen details that fertilize Sponza’s numbers, Grašič’s remarkable musical genius sparkles, and it has to be said that on Slovenian soil he too often stays unfairly overlooked, ignored and far too underappreciated. Of course, the soloists add some special seasoning in individual tracks too, above all Matej Kužel’s tenor sax, Goran Moskovski’s percussion and Neven Frangeš’s piano. Interestingly, Sponza’s guitar solos end up somewhat in the background, precisely because of the exceptional dynamism of the layered orchestral arrangements. Still, it’s clear throughout that Sponza is the central figure of the spectacle, since his tremendously beautiful, pleasant and warmly felt voice steps to the front, one with a carefully packed-in pinch of erotic Tom Jones.
The 77-minute concert experience is stuffed with outstanding performance fire, passion and emotion, which the emotional Sponza only intensifies in his longer speeches between songs. The stage chemistry between the hard-hitting blues rock quartet commanded by Sponza and the responsiveness of the orchestra, steered with a baton by the seasoned Grašič, is outstanding. The CD comes with a concert DVD, which will especially delight those of you who happened to witness this one-of-a-kind concert spectacle live that night. With this remarkably mature and ambitious document, Mike Sponza, one of the leading visionaries and ambassadors of the sound of modern European blues, cements his reputation as one of the most respected blues musicians of the old continent.
Lineup
Mike Sponza – guitar, vocals
Matej Kužel – tenor saxophone
Mauro Tolot – bass guitar
Moreno Buttinar – drums
&
Central European Orchestra directed and conducted by Primož Grašič
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Lara Barucca – vocals on track no. 4
Ian Siegal – vocals on track no. 7
Lela Kaplowitz – vocals on track no. 8
Production
Primož Grašič & Moreno Buttinar
Tracklist
1. Is This the Love (7:36)
2. Running On Empty (4:49 )
3. You (7:08)
4. Rather Than Being Free (6:55)
5. Kakanic Blues (7:22)
6. It’s Hard to Be On the Road (4:52)
7. Fire (5:12)
8. I Came to Hear You Saying Goodbye (4:10)
9. Innocent Criminal (4:40)
10. S.G.W. (5:18)
11. Out of My Mind (4:51)
12. Anxiety (2:48)
13. Lighthouse Keeper (7:54)
