Released: 2006
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Twenty Years Later
Twenty years have passed since Handful of Soul was released. Listening to the album today, it is easy to understand why it became such an important record in the history of Schema Records.
In 2006, Mario Biondi was still a relatively unknown singer. What immediately attracted attention was his extraordinary voice: deep, warm and unmistakably soulful, a voice that seemed to come from a much older tradition of American soul and rhythm & blues. Yet Mario was — and is — an Italian singer from Catania, Sicily.
At the time, the combination was unusual. Today, after everything that followed, it is almost difficult to imagine Mario Biondi without Handful of Soul. But the album was not the result of a single intuition. It was the outcome of a musical journey that had begun several years earlier.
The first important encounter between Schema, Mario Biondi and Alessandro Magnanini came in 2004, with the release of “This Is What You Are / On A Clear Day”, issued under the name Was-A-Bee. The record was initially conceived with the Japanese market in mind, but it soon began to travel well beyond its original destination. When British DJ and broadcaster Norman Jay discovered “This Is What You Are” and began playing it on his BBC London programme, the track acquired a new life and demonstrated the international potential of Mario’s voice.
The idea of an album naturally followed.
But the real challenge was not simply to record an album around a great singer. It was to find the right songs.
Building the repertoire
Luciano Cantone, who produced Handful of Soul, played a fundamental role in this process. He was responsible for shaping the repertoire around Mario’s voice, looking for material capable of revealing the depth, warmth and natural authority of his singing while remaining coherent with the musical language that Schema Records had developed over the years.
This is where Schema’s own history became part of Mario Biondi’s story.
Some years earlier, Ishtar had acquired the catalogue of Gigi Campi, the legendary Italian-born producer whose activities in Cologne had played a crucial role in the development of European jazz. Campi’s name was closely associated with some of the most important musicians and recordings of the European jazz scene of the 1960s and 1970s, including the extraordinary world surrounding Kenny Clarke, Francy Boland and the Clarke-Boland Big Band.
The acquisition opened a remarkable musical archive, containing recordings and compositions belonging to a fundamental chapter in European jazz history.
Among the material that came to Schema through this catalogue was “A Handful of Soul”, composed by the great Serbian trumpeter Duško Gojkovi? together with bassist Jimmy Woode.
Luciano Cantone recognised the potential of the composition for Mario Biondi. But his vision for the album went beyond the choice of repertoire. He also understood that these songs needed a solid and highly accomplished band behind them — musicians capable of giving depth, sophistication and a strong jazz identity to the material, while at the same time leaving room for Mario’s extraordinary voice.
This was one of the reasons for bringing the High Five Quintet into the project.
The choice proved crucial. The High Five had the musicianship, experience and instinctive interplay needed to move naturally between jazz, soul, rhythm & blues and Brazilian influences. Their contribution would give the repertoire a new dimension, transforming a collection of carefully selected songs into a coherent and distinctive album.
It was not an obvious choice. The song came from a very different musical era and from a European jazz tradition that, at first sight, seemed far removed from the contemporary soul identity that was beginning to emerge around Mario.
But Cantone understood that the song could work.
More importantly, he understood that it could become something else in Mario’s voice.
The recording of “A Handful of Soul” eventually became one of the defining moments of the project — so much so that the song gave its title to the entire album.
The title therefore carries a story within the story: a composition rooted in European jazz history, preserved within the musical heritage of Gigi Campi, rediscovered through Schema’s catalogue and transformed, decades later, into the title track of Mario Biondi’s debut album.
It was a perfect example of the way Schema had always approached its catalogue: not as something to be placed behind glass, but as a living musical heritage capable of generating new ideas.
In this sense, the making of Handful of Soul was not simply about finding the right songs for the right voice. It was about creating the right musical environment around that voice.
Alessandro Magnanini
Alongside Luciano Cantone’s role as producer and curator of the repertoire, Alessandro Magnanini was another important figure in the creation of Handful of Soul, contributing as a composer to the album’s original material.
Magnanini and Mario Biondi co-wrote two of the album’s key original songs, “This Is What You Are” and “No Mercy for Me”. Their collaboration had already begun in 2004 with the release of “This Is What You Are / On A Clear Day”, issued under the name Was-A-Bee.
“This Is What You Are” became an essential starting point for the story that would eventually lead to Handful of Soul. The song revealed the extraordinary affinity between Magnanini’s sophisticated compositional language and Mario’s unmistakable voice. Its success on radio and in DJ circles, especially in the UK through Norman Jay’s BBC London programme, demonstrated that this combination had an audience far beyond Italy.
“No Mercy For Me” showed another side of that same partnership, bringing out Mario’s natural qualities as a soul and jazz crooner.
Magnanini’s musical personality would later emerge even more clearly with Someway Still I Do, his 2009 album for Schema Records, further developing the sophisticated, melodic and jazz-inflected language already present in his work as a composer.
A voice and a repertoire
Once the direction was established, Cantone and Biondi worked with a repertoire that allowed the singer to explore different sides of his personality without ever forcing his voice into an artificial stylistic framework.
The album moves naturally between soul, rhythm & blues, jazz and Brazilian influences. The repertoire includes songs associated with artists such as Earth, Wind & Fire, Donny Hathaway, Billy Paul, Luther Vandross, Lou Rawls, Aretha Franklin, Erykah Badu and Will Downing, but the choices were never intended simply as tributes.
They were chosen because they worked for Mario.
Songs such as “Slow Hot Wind”, “On A Clear Day” and “A Handful of Soul” offered very different challenges. Mario himself wondered whether he could reinterpret such classic songs while remaining faithful to his own vocal identity.
The result proved that he did not need to reproduce anything.
He transformed the material.
In “Slow Hot Wind”, his deep and husky voice gives the song an intimate and almost nocturnal atmosphere. “On A Clear Day” becomes warm and sophisticated, while “A Handful of Soul” acquires a new identity through the combination of Mario’s voice and the arrangements of the High Five Quintet.
Mario was himself surprised by the natural familiarity he felt with some of these songs. Singing them did not feel like an exercise in imitation; instead, the repertoire seemed to reveal something that had already been present in his musical personality.
That same inspiration led to the creation of original material.
Mario and Alessandro Magnanini co-wrote “No Mercy For Me” and “This Is What You Are”, two songs that became fundamental to the album’s identity. The latter, first released as a Was-A-Bee single in 2004, had already demonstrated its potential through international radio play and subsequent licensing to several compilations.
Another previously unreleased song, “Never Die”, written by Marco Bianchi, brought a further dimension to the album, with its sophisticated harmonies, vocal-jazz atmosphere and captivating instrumental solos.
The album also reaches back into the blues and soul tradition with “I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes” by Al Kooper, “I’m Her Daddy”, originally by Bill Withers, and “No Trouble on the Mountain” by L.C. Cook.
Then there is the Brazilian side of the record.
“A Child Runs Free” becomes a modern bossa nova in perfect Schema style, while “Rio de Janeiro Blue” introduces the unmistakable flavour of samba. These tracks are not foreign elements within the album; they belong to the same musical landscape that Schema had been cultivating for years.
The High Five Quintet
The other essential element was the involvement of the High Five Quintet.
When Fabrizio Bosso became involved in the project, he immediately understood the potential of bringing his own group into the production. The arrangements were entrusted to Luca Mannutza and Pietro Ciancaglini, while the quintet was completed by Daniele Scannapieco and Lorenzo Tucci.
Bosso’s trumpet and Scannapieco’s tenor saxophone formed the frontline, while Mannutza on piano, Ciancaglini on double bass and Tucci on drums created a highly flexible rhythm section.
The musicians were young, but their musical credentials were already remarkable. They had performed and recorded with some of the most important names in Italian and international jazz and had established themselves on the European jazz circuit.
Their contribution to Handful of Soul went far beyond accompaniment.
They understood how to leave space for Mario’s voice while creating arrangements rich in detail, sophistication and rhythmic energy. Their instinctive approach to jazz allowed the album to move naturally between soul, swing, jazz and Brazilian rhythms.
The result was a remarkable balance between voice and musicianship.
Twenty years on
Looking back today, Handful of Soul can be heard as much more than Mario Biondi’s debut album.
It was the meeting point of several different histories.
The history of a singer from Catania with a voice that seemed to belong to another era.
The history of Schema Records and its passion for jazz, soul and Brazilian music.
The history of Gigi Campi and the extraordinary European jazz heritage preserved within his catalogue.
The intuition of Luciano Cantone, who understood how to bring those different worlds together and, crucially, how to build a repertoire capable of giving Mario’s voice its own identity.
The songwriting partnership between Mario Biondi and Alessandro Magnanini.
And the musical chemistry of the High Five Quintet, whose arrangements gave the project its distinctive character.
When the album appeared in 2006, nobody could know how far Mario Biondi’s career would go. Today, twenty years later, the significance of Handful of Soul is easier to understand.
The album succeeded not because it tried to recreate the past, but because it knew how to use the past as a source of inspiration.
A composition born from the European jazz tradition of the 1960s, a catalogue inherited from one of the great figures of European music, a young Italian singer, a gifted composer and a group of extraordinary musicians came together to create something contemporary.
That is perhaps the most enduring meaning of Handful of Soul.
It is a record rooted in history, but never trapped by it.
And twenty years later, Mario Biondi’s voice still sounds exactly where it belongs: at the centre of the music.
CREDITS
Mario Biondi - vocalThe High Five Quintet:
Luca Mannutza - piano
Fabrizio Bosso - trumpet, flugelhorn
Daniele Scannapieco - tenor saxophone
Pietro Ciancaglini - double bass
Lorenzo Tucci - drums
Sandra De Bellis - percussion
Gianluca Petrella - trombone
Arrangements by Luca Mannutza and Pietro Ciancaglini
Produced by Luciano Cantone
Recorded in January 2006 at Cavò Studio, Bergamo
Engineered by Paolo Filippi
Mixed by Davide Rosa
Mastered at Nautilus by Giovanni Versari