Luca Flores - Innocence / 2CD set

Sixteen previously unreleased tracks recorded by Luca Flores between 1994 and 1995 are finally available thanks to a fortuitous find and the help of family members, colleagues and fans of the extraordinary Italian musician who passed away in 1995.

The release of “Innocence” (Auand Piano Series), a new double album including previously unreleased originals and standards, is a true event that contains several sub-stories: a great musician, his music, a huge band that never was. But it’s also the story of the endless passion of those who found this music and endeavoured to make it available in an album. And most of all it’s an opportunity for all those who have loved Luca’s music to listen once again to his piano (and even his voice).

As Paolo Flores (Luca’s brother) writes in the booklet (which retraces every step in this finding), this project was conceived in the second half of 1994 for an album dedicated to his childhood in Mozambique, to be titled “Innocence”. The first tracks had been recorded that summer, with the idea of developing others for a big band, featuring African percussionists, a string and a vocal ensemble, and even Miriam Makeba. Such a production was beyond the available means, so the final decision was to go for a piano solo album (“For Those I Never Knew”, Splasch Records), with the addition of some new tracks recorded on March 19, 1995. The Italian pianist passed away 10 days later.

In 2016, the full recordings of the four sessions (from June 1994 to March 1995) came to light thanks to Luigi Bozzolan, passionate musician and Luca Flores’ music researcher, sound engineer Stefano Lugli, who executed those recordings and found copies forgotten in a near-abandoned recording studio, and Michelle Bobko, who eventually found the original tapes. The story is one of an emotional discovery, followed by careful editing, restoration the original sound, and the effort to identify which tracks Luca Flores might have intended to include in “Innocence” in addition to those selected for the album “For Those I Never Knew”.

Paolo Flores answers the big question lingering on such an event: is it fair to release music that Luca Flores had originally excluded? «Maybe – he writes in the introduction – the tracks selected for “For Those I Never Knew” were a message he wanted to leave, a sort of recap of his life. Looking at the track-list of his last CD, there are references to his childhood, to Africa, to the musicians he loved and played with, to his friends, to the dark clouds that overshadowed his last years and stifled his hopes, and to his final decision. What was left out are other fragments of this story, which is now worth completing.