Pianist Marie Ginocchio invokes her late mentor Chick Corea on an adventure through “Wonderland”
The nineteen-year-old prodigy composed and performed the solo classical-jazz piano album that dropped Friday accompanied by her own illustrations inspired by the music.
Shortly after jazz piano legend Chick Corea passed away a couple of years ago, an introspective teenage pianist began composing solo piano music after listening to his 1978 album “The Mad Hatter.” Although Marie Ginocchio had only been playing piano for four years at the time, the student of the Chick Corea Academy exhibited prodigious composition and performing skills as well as imaginative timing, harmony and phrasing, which caught the ear of Corea’s longtime guitarist Frank Gambale, an acknowledged innovator and virtuoso in his own right. That was the encouragement Ginocchio needed to record “Wonderland,” her debut recording that was released on Friday (May 5) from Tyrian Music.
Each one of the nine piano sketches encompassing improvisational jazz and neo classical music that comprise the collection is accompanied by a colorful drawing made by Ginocchio, who also created the album cover image.
Entry into Corea’s academy program was a seventeenth birthday gift from Ginocchio’s parents in 2020. She found that Corea’s teaching philosophy suited her because of his belief that artistic freedom trumped music theory or process. Ginocchio derived additional influence from jazz pianists Makoto Ozone and Hiromi Uehara as well as from composer Béla Bartók. She is particularly allured to shifting time signatures and tempos along with dissonant harmonies. Corea passed away a year into her studies, but by then, Gambale and Academy staffers recognized that Ginocchio was exceptional and convinced her to start recording.
“She’s a Chick Corea reincarnation in a female form. I’m really going out of my way to help get her exposure that she really deserves. She’s absolutely amazing and brilliant, and I don’t say that lightly. As someone who has been independent, overlooked and misunderstood for most of my career, I understand what she’s facing, and I don’t want her to lose her spirit. The world needs these bright sparks to counter balance,” said Gambale.
In search of ideas for the project, Ginocchio recalled growing up listening to “The Mad Hatter.” With “Alice in Wonderland” as the underlying motif, she eagerly ventured down the rabbit hole, crafting over fifty minutes of music for “Wonderland.”
On the set, the now nineteen-year-old college student displays extraordinary technique, remarkable dexterity and dazzling speed that she deploys to tell mesmerizing piano tales. Ginocchio’s masterful finger work crafts hues, coloring and shading to illustrate her cerebral, contemplative and scholarly compositions that were written and committed to memory before being tracked in a recording studio near her parents’ home in Springfield, Missouri.
Listeners enter “Wonderland” with the precise and pondering “Alice in Analysis.” Ginocchio explains, “I wanted to use lots of lines and patterns in this song emulating how there are many thoughts happening in someone's head.”
The Bartok-influenced “Curiouser and Curiouser” gets its title from the classic story.
“I really wanted a song that would be very chaotic and strange, like how some of Bartok's compositions were. I’ve always loved Bartok and his ideas, so really this song was me trying to emulate him and the energy of his compositions.”
“Who’d Ever Think to Look for Me Here?” is slower and methodical, which Ginocchio intended to “balance out the rest of the songs on the album.” The title quotes Alice when she was lost in Tulgey Wood and references elements from one of Corea’s compositions, “Where Have I Known You Before.”
“Cheshire Cat” is Ginocchio’s attempt to capture the character’s personality.
“I used lots of jumping rhythms as well as complex lines. This character had more of a mysterious but also spunky and weird way of presenting himself, so I tried to make the song emulate that.”
Finding musical inspiration from compositions by Ozone and Corea, the upbeat and melodic “Where People Walk Upside Down” is taken from a quote by Alice in the story. Ginocchio brings “The March Hare” to life by writing a chaotic and energetic piece.
“I used a lot of rhythmic elements along with strange chords, transitions and odd time signatures to emulate those qualities.”
Spawned from another Alice quote, Ginocchio said that she didn’t have a specific idea for “What If I Should Fall” and randomly hit a rhythm and set of notes that she liked.
“From there, I went with the flow of what I originally made up in the beginning but tried to make this song slower and more moving emotionally with the periods of silence and chords.”
Ginocchio animates the odd characters lurking in the woods on the mysterious and bizarre “Into Tulgey Wood.”
“I tried to experiment more with some different rhythms and patterns. I wanted to work more with overlapping my hands for rhythms, so I tried to implement that in this song.”
Closing the adventure, “In the Shadow of the Queen” has a lot of moving pieces that revisit some of the elements we’ve heard earlier on the recording such as slowing the tempo to a deliberate cadence adjacent to a more frenzied section.
Ginocchio’s first instrument was clarinet, and she also plays guitar. Her breakthrough on piano came from learning to play via YouTube tutorials. That led to taking lessons from classical and jazz teachers and listening to classical music as well as to jazz piano recordings by Vince Guaraldi, Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans. But she quickly grew tired of regimented lessons, instead preferring to perform, create and explore her own forms of musical expression.
The ideas for Ginocchio to sketch the album cover and do an illustration for each song on “Wonderland” sprang from Corea’s own passion for sketching. Last year, Corea’s “Children Songs” series inspired Ginocchio to write shorter pieces that she labels minuets and have been shared on social media.
Ginocchio occasionally plays local shows and intends to do some virtual concerts, but she prefers focusing on composing new projects. She plans to experiment by recording in a band setting and adding electronic instruments and keyboards to her works. Along with working on more piano recordings, she plans to compose music pairing acoustic guitar and piano. But for now, Ginocchio’s playground is “Wonderland,” and she hopes listeners will embark on the enchanting escapade with her.
“Wonderland” contains the following songs:
“Alice in Analysis”
“Curiouser and Curiouser”
“Who’d Ever Think to Look for Me Here?”
“Cheshire Cat”
“Where People Walk Upside Down”
“The March Hare”
“What If I Should Fall?”
“Into Tulgey Wood”
“In the Shadow of the Queen”
Visit Ginocchio’s HearNow page at https://marieginocchio.hearnow.com.
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