| Jazz |
Daydreaming, My Beloved Father Giovanni: Carla Marciano’s most personal statement yet.
There’s a particular kind of grief that doesn’t announce itself as sorrow, it shows up instead as gratitude, as a persistent, half-lucid state somewhere between memory and presence. That’s the emotional territory the Italian saxophonist Carla Marciano stakes out on Daydreaming, My Beloved Father Giovanni, her sixth album as a leader and, by a wide margin, her most deeply personal. Written in the aftermath of losing both parents and recovering from a serious road accident, the album could easily have leaned into pure lament. Instead, Carla has built something warmer and considerably more interesting: a record about what actually survives loss, rendered through some of the richest, most fully orchestrated writing of her career.
Marciano’s story has always centered on her father. Giovanni, a doctor by profession who also played guitar and sang, was, in her own words, her true music teacher, the man who first taught her to dream and to chase those dreams with real courage. That formative bond runs through her entire catalogue, from her 2003 Coltrane-inspired debut Trane’s Groove through acclaimed releases on the legendary Black Saint label and 2019’s widely praised Psychosis – Homage to Bernard Herrmann, but on Daydreaming it finally becomes the album’s explicit, central subject rather than a background influence. It’s worth noting just how significant a voice Marciano already is in European jazz: one of the very few specialists on the notoriously difficult sopranino saxophone, a musician whose alto playing has drawn comparisons to some of the instrument’s greatest names, and an artist whose career has taken her from New York’s Symphony Space to Siberian concert halls to, most recently, Nairobi’s Afrolect International Jazz Festival as the sole international guest.
What sets Daydreaming apart from Marciano’s earlier quartet records is its scale. Five of the album’s eight tracks feature the Philharmonic Orchestra of the “Giuseppe Verdi” Theater in Salerno, conducted by Antonio Sinagra, layered against her long-standing rhythm section of pianist Alessandro La Corte, bassist Aldo Vigorito and drummer Gaetano Fasano, with her friend Dario Deidda guesting on acoustic bass on one track. That orchestral backing gives the album a genuinely cinematic sweep without ever burying Marciano’s own voice underneath it, if anything, the strings seem to give her alto and sopranino more room to breathe, rather than less.
The title track opens the record exactly as its name promises, drifting and unhurried at first before gradually gathering real intensity, and its warmth sets the tone for everything that follows. “Giovanni (Your Sweet Smile)” softens into a genuinely tender ballad, one of the album’s most direct expressions of affection, while “Flying” and the nearly twelve-minute “Hypnagogic State (Sleep/Wake/Sleep)” give Marciano considerably more improvisational room to stretch out. That title is worth sitting with for a moment: a hypnagogic state is the threshold between waking and sleeping, and it’s a remarkably apt description for the album’s whole emotional project, the sense of someone who is physically gone remaining vividly, insistently present in memory and dream alike.
One of the loveliest touches on the record arrives in “We Stay at Home”, which opens with a saxophone quotation drawn from Charles Trenet and Léo Chauliac’s beloved French standard “Que reste-t-il de nos amours?” (“What remains of our loves?”). It’s a quietly perfect reference point for an album so preoccupied with exactly that question, and Marciano’s answer, delivered instrumentally rather than in words, is generous: what remains is music itself, passed down and carried forward.
The album closes with a church version of the title track, stripped back to just the quartet, and the contrast with the lush orchestral opener gives the record a satisfying sense of arrival, beginning in full symphonic bloom, ending in something closer to prayer.
Daydreaming, My Beloved Father Giovanni succeeds because it never mistakes scale for sentimentality. This is a genuinely virtuosic showcase for one of Europe’s most distinctive saxophonists, played with real emotional honesty and given room to expand by a first-rate orchestra and rhythm section alike.
It’s an album about absence that somehow feels, track after track, like an act of company-keeping rather than mourning, proof that Marciano inherited from her father not just a passion for music, but the instinct to turn even the hardest chapters of life into something worth sharing. A beautiful, deeply moving record, and one of the most personal statements of her long and distinguished career.
Frankie Pfeiffer
Editor in chief – PARIS-MOVE
PARIS-MOVE, September 18th, 2026
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CD Release date: Sept. 25, 2026
Vinyl 2LP set Release date: October 8, 2026
Musicians:
Carla Marciano – Alto And Sopranino Saxophones
Alessandro La Corte – Piano & Keyboards
Aldo Vigorito – Double Bass (1, 3, 4, 6–8)
Gaetano Fasano – Drums
Dario Deidda – Acoustic Bass (5)
Philharmonic Orchestra Of The “Giuseppe Verdi” Theater, Salerno (1-5)
Conductor: Antonio Sinagra (1-5)
Tracklisting:
- Daydreaming 07:38
Dario Deidda, Gaetano Fasano, Aldo Vigorito, Alessandro La Corte, Carla Marciano, Giuseppe Verdi di Salerno Philharmonic Orchestra
- Giovanni (Your Sweet Smile) 03:37
Gaetano Fasano, Dario Deidda, Alessandro La Corte, Aldo Vigorito, Carla Marciano, Giuseppe Verdi di Salerno Philharmonic Orchestra
- Flying 10:09
Carla Marciano, Alessandro La Corte, Aldo Vigorito, Gaetano Fasano, Dario Deidda, Giuseppe Verdi di Salerno Philharmonic Orchestra
- Johnny is walking 06:23
Carla Marciano, Alessandro La Corte, Aldo Vigorito, Gaetano Fasano, Dario Deidda, Giuseppe Verdi di Salerno Philharmonic Orchestra
- Flowers from the sky 07:18
Carla Marciano, Alessandro La Corte, Aldo Vigorito, Gaetano Fasano, Dario Deidda, Giuseppe Verdi di Salerno Philharmonic Orchestra
- We stay at home 05:52
Carla Marciano, Alessandro La Corte, Aldo Vigorito, Gaetano Fasano, Dario Deidda, Léo Chauliac, Charles Trenet
- Hypnagogic state (Sleep/Wake/Sleep) 11:49
Carla Marciano, Alessandro La Corte, Aldo Vigorito, Gaetano Fasano, Dario Deidda
- Daydreaming (Church Version) 08:09
Carla Marciano, Alessandro La Corte, Aldo Vigorito, Gaetano Fasano, Dario Deidda
All compositions by Carla Marciano
All arrangements by Carla Marciano with the collaboration of Alessandro La Corte
A&R: Challenge Records by Sander Vos
Recorded: September 14–15, 2025 at Panorama Studio, Salerno, Italy; April 18, 2026 at Splash Recording Studio, Napoli, Italy
Recording engineers: Daniele Chiariello & Alessandro La Corte at Panorama Studio; Massimo Aluzzi at Splash Recording Studio
Mixed by: Massimo Aluzzi at Splash Recording Studio, Napoli, Italy
Mastering: Michael Scherchen at The Mix Factory, London, UK
Liner notes: Carla Marciano
Photo cover: Fabio Rizzini
Photography: Daniele Chiariello, Enzo Figliolia
Photo post-production: Alessandro Manzo
Product coordination: Natasja Wallenburg
Artwork: Juan Carlos Villarroel & Natasja Wallenburg