November 4th, 2008
Adios — Yma Sumac
There is only one word that can express our loss — WOW.
Click on this link below for one of the best videos on YouTube of the late Peruvian goddess:
May 29th, 2008
Viva Vanoni
Recently I traded in my old Volkswagen Golf from 1998 (after nearly 200,000 miles of high performance) for a 2008 VW Rabbit. So far so good. But what I love most about it is the fact that it comes with a 6-CD changer. My last car didn’t even have a cassette tape player! So I am finding a million excuses to hop in my car (despite the soaring gas prices — $4.21 a gallon in Red Hook!) in order to listen to my old CD collection. For years my disks have just lain in the closet since I never have time at home to listen to them anymore. 
Now with the Rabbit as my own deluxe stereo system, I can listen to Schreker’s Der Ferne Klang in its entirety and in what amounts to glorious surround sound.
While scouring my collection of beaten-down old CDs, I uncovered one that I hadn’t listened to since my first apartment (of my own) in Manhattan twenty years ago. It’s one recorded by Ornella Vanoni. Ornella who? I can hear you saying. Most of my American friends have never heard of this magical singer. While Ornella Vanoni may not have the pipes of a Barbra Streisand or even of Mina, the great Italian chanteuse, she makes up for it in expressiveness. Her voice is dry and pointed, almost breathless at times. There’s a pained angst at its heart; an almost neurotic cri de coeur emanating from its center. It’s a broken voice — that of a slightly lost soul amidst a chorus of oversized and over-emoting blowhards. Ornella Vanoni aches with poignancy and passion.
I know very little about her. Before the days of the internet, I used to listen to her CDs and wonder who she was. I couldn’t read the jackets of her recordings because they were in Italian. It was hard 20 years ago to find any of her music in American stores. Tower Records was the only place I could find that had decent imports. 
But over time I collected several of her albums. I have since learned that she was born in 1934 in Milan. She started her career in the early 60s as a theatrical actress performing Bertholt Brecht. Vanoni began to sing in public, specializing in a mixture of folklore and dramatic pieces. While her voice was untrained and had no operatic qualities at all, she managed to bring a theatrical expressionism to lyrics that made up for the slightness of her voice. Throughout the 60s, she had hit after hit in Europe and won the Napoli Festival in 1964. She made her mark in the Sanremo festivals where many of her best-known signature songs were introduced.
Perhaps her greatest album is the Brazilian-inflected one she did in 1976 with Vinicius de Morae and Toquinho: 
including the marvelous rondelay “La voglia, la pazzia, l’incoscienza e l’allegria”. My father, who was something of a Brazil nut, was floored by this album which featured classic bossa nova tunes recast with an Italian flavor.
No doubt most people will find her an acquired taste. She lacks the lungs of a Piaf; the intensity of Ute Lemper; the versatility of Caterina Valente. But what Vanoni has that all these other vedettes of vinyl are missing is vulnerability. She’s painfully real. And deliciously unique.
Below is a link to YouTube where you can watch several videos of this vivacious vixen. 
