Milcho Leviev

Multiple Personalities:

Milcho Leviev Plays the Music of Don Ellis

Mighty Quinn

Don Leviev, Self-portrait 

Trumpeter, drummer and big-band leader, Ellis was one of the golden names of overseas jazz, together with the band with which Milcho became inextricably bound up after 1971. Multiple Personalities brings together rare and unpublished pieces by Ellis, most of which were composed especially for piano. This music is not just borrowed from someone else’s life, a story retold, or a score played out… It is the self-portrait of an unquestionably great pianist revealing his don-ellinean musical root, hidden deep down at the burning epicenter of his mind. This is why Milcho Leviev’s performance leaves the impression of being extremely homogeneous, one marked by vigour and natural feeling. His fingers skillfully sculpture 3-dimensional images on the black-and-white keyboard, with the palette of an impressionist – green, pink, yellow, here and there the indispensable spots of grey, and, of course, lots of blue in every possible shade. No doubt, Don Ellis’s music is in the very bloodstream of Milcho Leviev, and he never interprets it like a mere fan. He simply opens up just as he opens the pieces “Homeless”, “Sugar’s Lullaby”, “Indian Lady”, “Pavane For A True Musical Prince”, “Possibilities”, “Rainforest” and they start breathing by themselves, elegant and natural as they are, as if they’ve always belonged to the Bulgarian, and not to the American. Teacher and disciple in one – and applause for the latter!