Andrea Bocelli returns to pop

The album is titled Cieli di Toscana. It quite likely means The Skies of Tuscany in Italian. Cieli is heaven or sky and Tuscany is the place where tenor Andrea Bocelli was born. This is the title of the latest album from the Italian tenor and it is a most important one. This is because after a series of heavy music outings these past months, including his first complete opera, Puccini’s La Boheme and the Verdi Requiem, Bocelli returns to the genre that made him a star, pop music.

Bocelli has the sort of tenor voice that stops operas. He was born with that and in Italy, that means getting classically trained for a singing career. He is therefore classified as a classical tenor. At the same time though, Bocelli has a flair for doing light pop melodies that Bon Jovi might sing as a power rock ballad or that R. Kelly might do as R&B. And that was just what he did with his first big hit, Con Te Partiro. The soaring love song became a worldwide hit performed with equal enthusiasm by rock acts in chic Paris cafes or cantopop bands in Hong Kong.

Other pop hits followed like the duet version of Con Te Partiro, Time to Say Goodbye with Sarah Brightman and The Prayer with Celine Dion, plus of course, the phenomenally successful Sogno album. While all these were happening though, the world of classical music was asserting its claim on Bocelli. There were the albums Aria, Sacred Arias, Verdi, La Boheme and Verdi Requiem. It was fascinating to listen to Bocelli taking on more and more challenging materials and for a while there, it looked like he had no plans of singing pop music again.

Well, I thought wrong. Cieli di Toscana is here. Two songs in this album E Mi Manchi Tu by Czech composer Zdenek Bartak and Resta Qui by the young Italian songwriter Matteo Musumeci were the first and second prize winners in the Premio Bocelli competition. This was a music tilt for songs written expressly for Bocelli. Both live up to the Bocelli trademark and although pop, retain a kind of grandeur.

The ones showing great chart potential though are Se La Gente Usasse Il Cuore and the album’s first cut, the soaring Melodrama. Check out too Si Volto for a mellow, almost folksy Bocelli, L’ Abitudine, a duet with Helena and L’Incontro, which features an introduction poem read by Bono.

Add this to your Christmas wish list.

Not many Christmas albums

Looks like it will be slim pickings as far as Christmas albums are concerned this year. The only major release I had heard about is a new Barbra Streisand Christmas album which is not yet available here. This is so unlike the previous years when the likes of Christina Aguilera, Kenny G., and even the three tenors, Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti all came up with their own collections of Christmas songs. Even local producers seem to have chosen to abstain from Yuletide releases as it has been very quiet on that front until now. And it is already the second week of November!

Anyway, the only new Christmas release I have come across so far is Making Spirits Bright, a production by Lee Ritenour and Bud Harner for Verve which the radio station Joey Rhythms 92.3 has chosen to sponsor. It is a great treat. Mellow and easy with a muted sparkle that warms the heart, the album features some of the greatest jazz artists of our times performing Christmas selections. And they do it beautifully.

For something sweet and deceptively simple, there is Diana Krall singing Jingle Bells. For something rarely and Christmas with an Iberian touch, there is Suite de ’Nuestra Navidad made up of La Anucniacion and La Peregrinacion composed by Ariel Ramirez and performed here by a group led by Dave Grusin on the piano.

Other cuts are Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas with Ritenour on the guitar; I’ll Be Home for Chirstmas sang by Will Downing; The Christmas Song with Joyce Cooling on guitar and vocals; This Christmas with Gerald Albright on sax; Silent Night by Al Jarreau; What Child is This? With guitarist Marc Antoine; God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen with Richard Elliot on sax; The First Noel by David Benoit; Here Comes Santa Claus with Jeff Golub on guitar; and I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus with Joe Sample on the piano.

There are now only 42 days to go until Christmas day.