Italian guitarist Giacomo Baldelli releases “New York City Tracks”, an album of electric guitar versions of great pieces of American minimalism and post-minimalism.
The guitarist Giacomo Baldelli (Reggio Emilia, 1982) has just released on the Italian label Halidon his album New York City Tracks, in which the instrumentalist has wanted to pay tribute to New York, the city where he has lived since 2014. Considered one of the most complete interpreters of the new generation of guitarists, Baldelli has specialised in the exploration of 20th century works for guitar, as well as developing a new guitar repertoire for the 21st century. After working in 2015 on his interpretation of Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint (1987) he became increasingly interested in minimalism, the absolute protagonist of the album released today, which consists of Garcia Counterpoint (2015), by Bryce Dessner (guitarist of The National), a track included in Day of the Dead, a tribute album to The Grateful Dead; Warmth (2006) by David Lang (Pulitzer Prize winner for The Little Match Girl Passion and winner of a David di Donatello for the score of Paolo Sorrentino’s film Youth), Music in Similar Motion (1969) by Philip Glass and Dream (1948) by John Cage.
As on his first album, Chitarra italiana XXI secolo, in which he performed Italian composers of the time, such as Luca Antignani, Maurizio Ferrari, Gaetano Nenna, Carla Rebora and the late Fausto Romitelli, on this occasion Baldelli wanted to “reinterpret (and in a couple of cases rearrange) the pieces that could best express a certain New York sound”, as he told the Bolognese newspaper Il Resto del Carlino.