Now this is different! Hmm, how best to describe this disc? Well, it's Vaudeville with a twist!
Italian composer, musician and artist Paolo Conte has created a story about the introduction into Europe of a fresh new musical style and a wonderfully expressive and talented people. The new music is Jazz, and the expressive and talented people are American Negro's.
The setting for the story is Paris during the early 1920's. The story revolves around six european characters and their lives over the course of 7 days climaxing when each attends a concert by a troupe of black musicians and performers from America. We also spend time with the black performers as they experience Paris and european people.
The story is told using a number of techniques. The visual aspect of the story is presented using sketches or paintings by Paolo Conte. The artwork was created using a number of techniques including oil pastel paintings, ink sketches and pencil drawings. The aural aspect of the story is told using narration, dialogue, monologue, sound effects and music of various styles. Paolo Conte has composed all of the music and written all of the dialogue featured in this presentation.
What can I say about this disc? Well I found it somewhat interesting but I can't say that it'll get played very often. Perhaps it will have a place as an educational tool for art students.
This disc features a full frame video transfer that is very clear and clean with natural colours and nicely balanced contrast. I noticed no artefacts of any kind.
Each painting or sketch is presented at regular intervals using techniques such as pans, zooms and tracking shots to help keep things interesting. You can pause, fast forward or skip chapters like on any other disc.
Audio wise I listened to the english version of the soundtrack and found it to be very good. The audio for this soundtrack is nominally Dolby Digital 2.0 encoded at a bit rate of 448 kb/s however the centre channel, the subwoofer and the surround channels are each active at various times during this presentation. It is also odd that PowerDVD initially shows this as a 5.1 channel mix and then changes to display only 2. You figure it out!
The spoken parts of this track are always crystal clear and to use wine terminology, 'full bodied'! The musical portions of this track are also very clear with good fidelity and an open soundstage.
The use of channels is mixed. During some of the musical pieces only the main front channels are used while in others the surrounds are used for reverb. The surrounds also carry sound effects such as crowd or traffic noise. Sound effects are typically heard during dialogue portions of the story. Narration, dialogue and monologue passages are spread evenly across each of the front speakers.
The subwoofer is used in many of the musical sections and is clearly heard. In fact I found it slightly distracting at times.
There are a number of mainly text based extras on this disc.
Introduction by the author
In this section Paolo Conte discusses his motivations for writing this story and describes how the story is presented.
Script
This section provides a copy of the script that can be viewed in either French, Italian, English, Dutch or Spanish.
Cast
Here the characters of the story are shown. There is a drawing or painting of each as well as their name and some very basic information about their character or their relationships to other characters.
Soundtrack
In this section you can find the titles for each of the instrumental pieces, the lyrics for the songs, the names and instruments of the musicians, the names of the singers and on which song they performed.
Credits
Those involved in the production of this disc are listed here.
