AN ELEGY TO LIMIT | LOSING | REDISCOVERING

*Note by Stefano Lentini

I can’t quite explain myself why this EP has remained unreleased until today, especially considering the immense energy and dedication that went into its making. It was 1998. I had just returned to Rome after a few months in London, convinced that the time had come to record my first studio album: a collection of pieces I called Poem Lieder Suite. In that name I tried to weave together poetry set to music—of which Emily Dickinson was one of the purest voices—the enchantment of the Schubertian Lied that had fascinated me so deeply, and the Suite (or medley), a recurring structure in English and Irish folk with medieval and Renaissance echoes, which I had discovered through the extraordinary records of John Renbourn and Pentangle.

A couple of years earlier I had been lucky enough to meet John, after a concert at Rome’s historic Folkstudio—the same venue that had also hosted my very first guitar performances. From that evening on we stayed in touch, until 2015, the year of his sad passing. John left a mark on me that will never fade: first through his handcrafted acoustic guitars—a Franklin, the first I ever touched, and later a legendary Ralph Bown—but above all through his touch, his very substance, his fingerpicking that was deeply musical, virtuosic in essence yet never showy. I followed John through countless concerts and shared with him a few unforgettable nights, with fleeting and, for me, unforgettable improvisations together.

In those years the guitar was my temple, the place where all music was born and flowed: changing the strings was a rite of rebirth, and open tunings were the boundless space of research and discovery. It was in that landscape that this EP came to life, and today it is released exactly as it was conceived. The album itself has its own peculiar story: shortly after recording it I sent it out to various record labels. One replied immediately, with great enthusiasm—and it happened to be perhaps the best I could have hoped for at the time: Naim Label, which then was releasing artists such as Charlie Haden and other luminaries. I worked for a short time with their artistic producer, but in the end I wasn’t able to bring it to completion, and the whole thing slipped away.

Not managing to catch that train—a train that might have taken my music in a completely different direction—was a formative experience. Facing those limits taught me a great deal. Reflecting on it, year after year, has returned insights, new perspectives, and the strength to start again. Perhaps this EP, today, is also an unconscious and ancestral tribute to the threshold—to that fragile point from which one can begin anew.


******


TRACKLIST:



E.D.
Ye Mariners All
Miss Gloom
Medley: 1948/Dieppe/Saint-Lô
Maggio
Trasmundo



total runtime: 24 minutes


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