" PLEASANTLY AIRY"
(Acoustical Adventures)
....... Their set-up would fit in at church on a Wednesday afternoon with coffee in the
parish house afterwards.Still, the kind of simplicity with which they make something
different and something more out of the Beatles and Latin-American rhythms, makes the
music belong on bigger stages.
There is a fullness in everything they do, an airiness that arises from their now and then
taking turns at playing, and both with extreme skill... They make the music larger than
many bigger bands manage to, and the music doesn't cease just because they stop playing
physically. So when at some point one needs to get a rest from the more demanding jazz,
this is the down-pillow one needs.
Ove Wall
(OJ)
" Masterly weave of melody and harmony"
Concert
The Amedeo & Belinda duo has the uncommon arrangement of guitar and cello; Belinda also uses her voice as an instrument through wordless singing. It feels refreshingly unusual to listen to a woman who sings lively scat-song while plucking the cello-strings. Amedeo is weslike: I seem to be hearing beats the strums of Wes Mongomery.
Afroamerican, bossa, cuban, jazz - such are their musical roots, with various genres overlapping eachother. Belinda Riquelme and Amedeo Nicoletti manage a masterly balance between melody and harmony. They take turns in playing the lead and the accompaniment. Guitar and cello intertwine eachother in unexpected shiftings like two streams meeting and parting along their separate paths.......
Ingrid Stömdhal
(Svenska Dagbladet)
A sensation
.....Here was also a small sensation in the shape of Cuban cellist and singer Belinda
Riquelme and Italian guitarist Amedeo Nicoletti. Their Brazilian music was over-flowing
with joy for playing, instrumental virtuosity and rhythmical vigor. ....
Ove Wall
"the 20th edition of trettondagsjazz in Gävle,Sweden"
..... It's easy to take delight in this music, Belinda sings charmingly in different
languages and plays excellent cello, Amedeo is a driven guitarist. The sound is fresh, it
swings relaxed and the own tunes are likable.
I would gladly hear them live in the context of a concert, this CD makes you want more!
SVEN-ERIC DAHLBERG
"JAZZ STAGE"
AN ADVENTUROUS CD
.....It's a CD filled with musicality, poetry and feeling in elegant Latin rhythms with a
light color of jazz. Quite introverted, and if they were not so enormously skillful it
could become a little monotonous. And certainly it
is a delightful version they bid of Strawberry Fields Forever.
Hans Menzing
.... With acoustical guitar and cello and Brazilian music as a base, the couple Amedeo and Belinda blow in like a subtle arch of beauty with a touch of melancholy. Their music is arranged within the frames of jazz and swings light as a summer wind.
Kai Martin, "G.T"
Amedeo and Belinda, the rythm and the passion
On Saturday evening, the Kikuyu was exceptionnally receiving the duo Amedeo and
Belinda. Having come to France to promote their new album'Acoustical Adventures', they
made a halt at Colmar to the great happinness of the present spectators.
Colmar would without any doubt never have gotten the chance to welcome this exceptional
duo if Amedeo hadn't been a long-time friend of Guy Roël, famous blues-man in the region.
So of course the Saturday evening unfolded under the sign of re-unions.
Amedeo is of Italian origin and the lively Belinda was born in Cuba and studied cello in Moscow. Our two friends met in Sweden and now live in Stockholm. Impossible then for these two travellers to box themselves into some very specific style. Their music is a sensible mix of Afro-Cuban jazz and Brazilian tones.
Through the glances that they incessantly exchange, it is easy to measure the musical complicity that exists between these two artists. They no longer play in an auditorium, surrounded by a public, but navigate with ecstasy on an interior ocean which they seem to be the only ones to know.It is by magic that Belinda's cello turns into a bass animated by a unique pizzicato. She is not initiating the rythm, she is rythm. Her voice strikes switching in one instant from rythmical practise into heavy and deep song.
Amedeo, on the other hand, has the smile of those artists for whom the technical mastery no longer is an obstacle, clearly he is somewhere else in a delicate search sometimes reserved to an initiated public. His guitar expresses the passion of the people's and does not hesite to make free latino digressions.
This duo is not performing a music, it continues in live it's exploration and drags the spectator along into their tumultuous journey. Their creations do not leave you restful, they engrave an exceptional movement,that of life.
Derniéres Nouvelles d´Alsace
Tuesday 9th of February 1999
Latin cocktail
Back from Midem and before Montreux, the duo Amedeo and Belinda set fire on the café de la Maison de l'étudiant (the House of the student) at Mulhouse on Monday evening.
For the Italian and the Cuban, recently arrived from Sweden, it was no lazy time. If, in the beginning they granted a few sentimental Brazilian strolls, they then took up the rest with full power, to give a colorful set of guitar, cello and voice. Jazz, Afro-Cuban and Brazilian rythms under the timeless influence of the Beatles form the (extra)ordinary of this group discovered by Guy Roël and brought to the program by the university's Cultural Animation Service.
They will perform again at the Entrepot on Saturday at 10 p.m., just following the performance by Cuche and Barberat. Entrance is free. The next concert within the frame of the musical Tuesdays at the studen's House café will take place on Tuesday the 2nd of February at 7.30 p.m. with 'The Saints'.
L`Alsace
Friday 29th of January 1999