Lorena Fontana - A Vision - Making of
Behind the scenes in Los Angeles during the recording of *A Vision*
This video is the official behind-the-scenes documentary filmed in Los Angeles during the recording sessions of A Vision, an original jazz album by Italian vocalist, lyricist, educator, and composer Lorena Fontana. The making-of was directed by Alessandra Arcieri, with my contribution focused on audio and video editing: assembling the material into a coherent short documentary and shaping the raw footage into a narrative that could preserve the intimate, concentrated, and collaborative atmosphere of the session.
The result is not simply a studio report. It is a glimpse into a particular moment of musical exchange: an Italian jazz voice bringing her repertoire to Los Angeles, surrounded by musicians whose experience spans jazz, fusion, film, live performance, and international studio work.
The Project
A Vision was produced in Los Angeles and released by Videoradio during the 2013/2014 album cycle. A contemporary RadioEmiliaRomagna feature described it as Lorena Fontana’s fifth album and noted that it was made in the United States with pianist Mitchel Forman, bassist Edwin Livingston, drummer Ralph Humphrey, and saxophonist Michael Rosen. The same feature also mentioned that the repertoire combined newly written material with pieces by authors such as Antonio Carlos Jobim, Djavan, and Cedar Walton.
The sessions took place at the Los Angeles studio of Dennis Moody, a recording, mixing, mastering, and live sound engineer with an especially strong reputation among drummers and rhythm-section players. That setting was ideal for a project built around live interplay, acoustic nuance, and real-time musical trust.
In summer 2013, I handled the post-production and video editing for the behind-the-scenes material under Alessandra Arcieri’s direction. My task was to respect the pace of the footage without overloading it: the room, the gestures, the silences before a take, and the way musicians listen to each other were just as important as the finished musical passages.
Direction and Post-Production
The documentary was directed by Alessandra Arcieri, an Italian author, screenwriter, director, and multimedia teacher whose work spans cinema, television, theatre, documentary, and cross-media storytelling. Her later credits include documentary work such as La mia vita con Osho / My Life with Osho: Tales from Ustica and Il Teatro del Silenzio, and her professional profile is connected with Writers Guild Italia and screenwriting education in both Italian and international contexts.
For this making-of, the directorial point of view is essential: the video does not try to explain the album from outside, but to observe the musicians from within the creative process. My editing work followed that intention, privileging continuity, atmosphere, listening, and small human details over excessive montage.
Dennis Moody and the Studio
Dennis Moody is one of those figures whose name may not always appear in the spotlight, yet whose work has touched an enormous amount of recorded and live music. A Grammy-nominated and platinum-awarded engineer and producer, he has participated in thousands of recording projects and has worked across jazz, fusion, rock, pop, R&B, Motown-related artists, film music, and large-scale live sound.
He is often described as a “drummer’s engineer”, a title that makes perfect sense in the context of A Vision. Moody’s own materials list collaborations with some of the most respected drummers in modern music, including Dave Weckl, Steve Gadd, Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Smith, Peter Erskine, Terry Bozzio, Jimmy Cobb, and many others. This background matters because a jazz session depends heavily on how the drums and bass are captured: the sound must be present and alive, but never detached from the ensemble.
Moody’s studio history also gives useful context. In 1991 he designed, built, and operated Sonora Recorders, a professional 24-track studio in Los Angeles. Later, Dennis Moody Recording was designed and built in 2001, located just north of downtown Los Angeles near the Mt. Washington area. His reputation also extends far beyond the studio: as a live concert engineer, he has mixed in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden to the Hollywood Bowl, The Forum, the Royal Albert Hall, and Wembley Arena.
That combination of studio precision and live-performance instinct is exactly what a session like this needs. The musicians were not assembling isolated fragments. They were playing, reacting, breathing, and shaping the songs in the same physical space.
The Personnel
| Musicians | ||
|---|---|---|
| Lorena Fontana | Vocals, compositions, lyrics | Italian jazz singer, lyricist, composer, and educator from the Modena area. Her work connects jazz, vocal research, improvisation, and contemporary song. She has collaborated with artists such as Kenny Wheeler, John Taylor, Paolo Fresu, Andrea Centazzo, George Russell, Stefano Bollani, Mitchel Forman, Ralph Humphrey, and Edwin Livingston, and has performed in Italy, Europe, North America, and Canada. |
| Dennis Moody | Recording studio / engineering context | Grammy-nominated and platinum-awarded engineer, producer, studio designer, and live sound engineer. Known in particular for drum and rhythm-section recording, he has also written The Drum Recording Handbook and The Studio Builder’s Handbook. His Los Angeles studio environment provided the technical and musical frame for the A Vision sessions. |
| Ralph Humphrey | Drums | Legendary Los Angeles-based drummer and educator, remembered for his work with the Don Ellis Big Band, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Seals and Crofts, Al Jarreau, The Manhattan Transfer, and many other projects. Humphrey was also a respected teacher at Musicians Institute and Los Angeles College of Music, known for his deep command of complex rhythm and studio discipline. |
| Mitchel Forman | Piano | Brooklyn-born jazz and fusion pianist who studied at Manhattan School of Music and went on to work with Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, John McLaughlin, Wayne Shorter, John Scofield, Mike Stern, Pat Metheny, Gary Burton, and many others. He is also known for his solo recordings and for co-leading the fusion group Metro. |
| Edwin Livingston | Double bass | Dallas-born bassist, composer, and educator based in Los Angeles. His background includes time in Texas and New Orleans, and his credits include work with Elvin Jones, Ellis, Delfeayo and Jason Marsalis, The Headhunters, Los Hombres Calientes, Justo Almario, and many other jazz and Latin-jazz artists. He has also taught bass and small ensembles at USC Thornton School of Music. |
| Michael Rosen | Saxophone | American-born saxophonist long active between the United States and Italy. A Berklee College of Music graduate, Rosen has been associated with the Italian and European jazz scene for decades, working as a performer, composer, arranger, and educator. His lyrical saxophone voice adds a distinctive melodic and timbral layer to the ensemble. |
| Videomakers | ||
|---|---|---|
| Alessandra Arcieri | Director | Italian author, screenwriter, director, and multimedia teacher. Her work crosses cinema, television, theatre, documentary, and cross-media storytelling; she is credited as director and writer on documentary projects including La mia vita con Osho / My Life with Osho: Tales from Ustica and Il Teatro del Silenzio. |
| Andrea La Mendola | Video operator | |
| Luca Cipressi / Milletgrain | Audio and video editing | My contribution was in post-production: selecting, editing, assembling, and polishing the behind-the-scenes footage into a coherent short documentary. The goal was to make the viewer feel present in the room, without interrupting the natural flow of the recording session. |
About the Music
The album blends Lorena Fontana’s original compositions with carefully chosen repertoire, placing her voice inside a refined acoustic setting. The music moves between dramatic intensity, lyrical restraint, and open jazz phrasing. Rather than treating the voice as a decorative lead part, the arrangements place it within the ensemble conversation: voice, piano, bass, drums, and saxophone continually respond to one another.
The behind-the-scenes footage captures that process from the inside. There are moments of concentration, moments of lightness, technical pauses, listening back, resetting, and trying again. These details are easy to miss in a finished record, yet they are the human architecture behind the sound.
Studio: Dennis Moody Recording, Los Angeles
Format: live studio performance captured in multitrack sessions
Mood: reflective, refined, intimate, and deeply collaborative
Direction: Alessandra Arcieri
Visual work: behind-the-scenes documentary edited and assembled by Luca Cipressi / Milletgrain
Behind the Scenes Atmosphere
The session was more than a professional appointment. It was an artistic exchange between people who knew how to listen. From subtle cues and shared eye contact to improvised ideas that developed into complete takes, the process documented in the video shows jazz as a living conversation.
That is what I wanted the edit to preserve, following Alessandra Arcieri’s direction. The footage did not need artificial drama: the drama was already there, in the attention of the musicians, in the small gestures before a take, in the space between one phrase and the next.
