To Some Place New is a patient, assured debut from a composer who already knows what she wants to say — and an ensemble that doesn’t accompany the compositions so much as inhabit them.
Self Released
Milena Granci – Piano, Compositions; Aitzi Cofre Real – Vocals; Harry Toulson – Alto Saxophone; James Pettinger – Accordion; Ali Watson – Double Bass; Ollie Peszynski – Drums; Choir track 1: Everyone, backing vocals track 4: Aitzi and Milena
Every track on To Some Place New has a vocalist who never sings a word. That alone tells you something about what Milena Granci is after — the voice is just another instrument, another color in a landscape. Her debut moves with the quiet authority of a film score — not background music, but music with somewhere to be.
Granci is a French-Italian pianist and composer who moved to London to study at the Guildhall, and To Some Place New is her first record. She’s made no secret of not wanting to sound like a jazz band, and she doesn’t — jazz is the skeleton but folk, classical and something close to chamber music keep pushing through the skin. An accordion turns up where a guitar might — not pushing the bellows-and-polka sounds you might expect, but thinking like a horn player, quiet and melodic.
Granci’s piano playing is fluent and assured — on “When You Feel Like It” her right hand rolls out lines that feel almost conversational, left hand anchoring the bass — but it’s her writing that stands out. “Floating” makes the case early: a repeating piano phrase that evolves and returns, the sax and voice arriving at the same tone from opposite directions, bass notes resonant and woody, drummer Ollie Peszynski’s stick work precise and selfless, never pushing the music somewhere it isn’t already going. She has a gift for placing musicians so they illuminate each other.
The titles — “A Journey Home,” “To Some Place New,” “Different Road” — all point in the same direction: somewhere else, somewhere new. “A Journey Home” starts tentatively, then expands, the piano lines becoming more fluid and lyrical as the piece finds its feet. “To Some Place New” wakes up slowly, a sleepy wordless sigh that gathers itself until everyone joins in to carry it to the end. Granci writes music that moves the way landscape does past a train window — each view dissolving into the next until you realize you’re somewhere completely different from where you started.
Eight tracks of wordless vocals might test some listeners — by the final track you may find yourself wishing someone would just sing a line. But that’s a small impatience against the larger pleasure of the record. To Some Place New is a patient, assured debut from a composer who already knows what she wants to say — and an ensemble that doesn’t accompany the compositions so much as inhabit them.
