American Feeling

Despite the loss of ideals and the rapid rise of fascism, the global culture of the 1920’s-1930’s witnessed an outstanding new development in music: the emergence of Jazz. It took American and European culture by storm, winning the hearts and minds of all social classes. Various classical composers such as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Igor Strawinsky, George Gershwin and Paul Hindemith introduced jazz rhythms and orchestration techniques to their compositions. The outstanding musicians Duke Ellington, Lewis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and Ella Fitzgerald made jazz immortal with their everlasting works. Nowadays, Jazz and its subgenres enjoy incredible popularity among contemporary composers and performers, including musicians who focus mainly on art music.

The contemporary composer Ilio Volante successfully combines jazz and classical techniques in his compositions. His instrumental piece «American feeling» features many typical jazz characteristics: syncopated rhythm, rich and vivid harmony, brilliant melodic passages, rapid tempo. Along with classical instruments, such as saxophone, trombone, trumpet and percussion, Volante uses electric and bass guitars, uncommon for Jazz music of the 1920’s-1930’s. Still, despite the vivid improvisational elements for solo instruments, «American feeling» is "easy" on the ear.

Ilio Volante combined in this piece the best traditions of classic jazz and the relaxed and easy character of modern pop music, so that this composition would be appropriate both for a concert program, and to dance events or TV shows as background music. The "joyful" major and rich dynamics together with the rapid syncopated rhythm transfer us to the world of neon lights, luxurious cars, gorgeous dresses and sparkling diamonds distinguishing the time of the "Roaring Twenties".