feature photo: Yoni Kroll
Recently, guitarist and composer Nick Millevoi wanted to celebrate his hometown of Philadelphia in a way he’s uniquely equipped to do, so he wrote a hundred compositions, each named for a street in the City of Brotherly Love. In 2019, he published a book of twenty-five of these original compositions, entitled Streets of Philadelphia. He thought of this first volume of his Philly-themed song notations as an “album, it’s just on paper.”
Eventually, though, Millevoi did get around to recording these compositions using various ensembles, and ten of them are collected into an album, also named Streets of Philadelphia. Even here, though, Millevoi didn’t take the road most travelled and lead a conventional band through all of these songs.
He called in a motley assortment of instruments to perform his creations. Fellow Philadelphia comrade Dan Blacksberg on trombone, Veronica MJ on viola, Anthony DiBartolo on marimba/percussion and Tom Kraines on cello join Millevoi on guitar but they all only play together for three tracks; other times the songs are performed by various subsets of this group, or even solo.
Given these instruments and the people who play them, you never know what to expect, which is the main fun of this album. “Gaskill” is a delightfully zany combination of Blacksberg’s trombone, DiBartolo’s marimba and Millevoi’s guitar with odd percussion that defies adequate categorization. “Mower” is another full ensemble meeting, pulling in so many influences, from rock to avant-classical in much the same creative way Frank Zappa used to do. “Plover” is the final occasion for the entire quintet, but arranged akin to a full chamber orchestra and includes the crazed side of Millevoi’s guitar during his moment of shredding.
The slinky unison lines with DiBartolo’s marimba gives “Opal” a Mothers-esque quality but then the marimba holds down the riff as Millevoi’s guitar emits ghostly effects with bent notes like Nels Cline or Marc Ribot. Millevoi and Blacksberg both counteract and combine for “Vaux” and “Markoe” resembles a small classical setting thanks to the pairing of Veronica MJ’s viola with Tom Kraines’ cello, with a marimba lurking in the background. Speaking of MJ, her solo viola performance on “Camac” is a wicked, dexterous spectacle.
This record might ostensibly be about a certain American city, but it speaks more to the boundless talent and imagination of Nick Millevoi. Streets of Philadelphia will be released on December 4, 2020. Order it from Nick Millevoi’s Bandcamp page.
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