Advertisement
Advertisement

Filippo Dall’Asta: Mediterasian

Reviewer rating
"Far from any suggestion of pastiche, the music conjures an elegant yet spirited path across and between genres".

Here is something a touch unusual – and most pleasant. London-based guitarist Dall’Asta  – a crisp and lucid player – got hooked on Django Reinhardt when he was 16, after his father gave him an album by the gypsy legend. As Dall’ Asta puts it in his sleeve-note, he proceeded to soak up lessons from all the gypsy guitar masters he could find in France and Holland. A few years later, a six-month back-packing trip to India led to the other element which distinguishes this, Dall’Asta’s self-produced debut disc – a fascination with Indian ideas of time and the meditative and spiritual potential of music.

Dall’Asta is not only a fine musician; he’s also an open-minded arranger of moods, tones and textures. What I liked here is that there is no all-too-effortful attempt to conjure any grand synthesis of worlds. Far from any suggestion of pastiche, the music conjures an elegant yet spirited path across and between genres. On the introductory “Alap”, Indian drone figures and vocal invocation set up the gloriously swinging title track, while the pensive suspensions of “Nothingland” integrate guitar and sitar, tabla and legato strings to telling effect. East and West co-exist just as freshly in the propulsive Latin figures of “Brazil”. 

Advertisement

Gypsy guitar master Lotto Meier spins some delicious singing lines on the slow-medium “Django’s Castle”; some further fine tabla from Keval Joshi sets up – and sustains – a mesmeric groove on the richly cast “Cristina”, over which Dall’Asta soars. The chugging “Prelude” is equally irresistible, with Hemstock’s clarinet in fine fettle, while the charming mix of strings with male and female Indian vocal exchanges on “Insaat Ki Dagar Pe” offers concluding contrast to Dom Durner’s characterful rendition of what I take to be Serge Gainsbourg’s 1960s Reinhardt tribute “La Javanaise”. Enjoy!

Discography
Alap; Mediterasian; Brazil; Nothingland; Django’s Castle; Cristina; Prelude No.2 in C minor; La Javanaise; Insaat Ki Dagar Pe (37.09)
Dall’ Asta (g);Tim Ellis (g); Umberto Calentina (b); Danielo Antenucci (d); Keval Joshi (tabla); Mehboob Nasdeem (sitar) plus (collective personnel) Surjeet Singh Aulakh (sarang); Lotto Meier (g); Liza Bec (bcl); Duncan Hemstock (cl); Duncan Menzies (vn); Dom Durner (v); 3-piece strings, 2-piece brass, 3-piece choir. London 2018.
filippodallastaguitar.com

Latest audio reviews

Advertisement

More from this author

Advertisement

Jazz Journal articles by month

Advertisement

The Dave Pike Quartet: Pike’s Peak

Pike recorded this album, his second date as a leader for Epic, a subsidiary of Columbia records, in 1962. A little earlier he had...
Advertisement

Still Clinging to the Wreckage 09/19

This piece was written for Jazz News, where it appeared in 1962. Times were different then, and I have let the original essay be....
Advertisement

Serge Chaloff: the bebop lowdown /2

In late 1950 Chaloff met Dick Twardzik (one of his mother’s students) when the 19-year old pianist sat in at the Red Fox Café...
Advertisement

Kansas City Jazz – A Little Evil Will Do You Good 

New study tells the story of KC jazz in a more free-flowing style than the dense 2005 Driggs and Haddix book and throws fresh light on it
Advertisement

Syncopation

In the late 1940s the first wave of World War II novels began to appear. The positives were that the authors had actually served...
Advertisement

JJ 01/83: Jimmy Giuffre at Leeds Playhouse

Forty years ago, Bob Charlesworth saw an intriguing, varied performance by the veteran clarinet, saxophone and flute modernist
"Far from any suggestion of pastiche, the music conjures an elegant yet spirited path across and between genres".Filippo Dall'Asta: Mediterasian