By: MJ Brady
taly is a country that is well known for their wealth of outstanding musical talent, with musics that also cover every genre imaginable, Italy certainly has made some of the largest contributions to the field of progressive, classical, and many world musics. It shouldn't surprise many to know that they can boast of having some of the best electric guitarists around. I really never know what to expect when I receive CDs from solo guitarists, there are so many great players these days. But this one came as a large surprise, Alessandro Benvenuti is a player of extreme abilities, I can easily liken him to the guesting guitarists he has on the credits list, Frank Gambale, & Prashant Aswani, and the styles of these two monsters sums up my take on Alessandro, he is the better parts of both those players, he has very swift, delicate, and incredible accurate intonation, all while playing music with a purpose. The freedom that he excutes his emotional solos is rare, showing complete mastery of musical expression, and surprising dexterity. Also appearing on the CD are some fantastic musicians rounding out his bands line-up, I am assuming they are all from Italy given the members names, but they are giving Benvenuti more than workman-like performances, in fact they play with such conviction on this CD, that it has a real band feel to it, great stuff! As I stated before Alessandro's playing is right there with that of both Aswani and Gambale, yet his compositional approach is much more orientated along the lines of Greg Howe's music, particularly on the Introspection or Uncertain Terms CDs. Anyone not familar with Greg Howe's solo material should know that he is a very progressive artist, that is also an extraordinary guitarist, writing songs that have extremely technical movements, and a high standard of musicianship, oh, and some phenominal guitar playing. Such is Sonic Design, with a cooking band, and some creative progressive styled fusion songwriting, this CD is a start to finish fusion extravaganza. There is no doubt that Alessandro Benvenuti is in that top class of electric guitarists, and as his first CD, I can only hope his future efforts are up to the standard as this one. This is a must for fans of Greg Howe, Prashant Aswani, Frank Gambale.
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