In July 2019 my JJ colleague Simon Adams gave a warm welcome to the wide-ranging ECM release that was Italian pianist Guidi’s Avec Le Temps. Here is another excellent albeit very different session from Guidi, cast in the sort of cross-rhythmic, distilled and intensely reflective mode that will be familiar to anyone who has enjoyed the various releases Joe Lovano has had on ECM in recent years.
Nourishing, melodically and rhythmically inflected space and silence are at a premium in what is the fifth session from Guidi (born 1985) as leader on ECM: he has also recorded for the label with, e.g., Enrico Rava, including the trumpeter’s Roma, where Lovano was present.
Guidi’s trio with the American Thomas Morgan (b) and the Portuguese João Lobo (d) has some 10 years’ experience behind it now and it shows here. Sample the radical quality of their interplay in the lean and elliptical reading of My Funny Valentine or the opening measures of the sombre Means For A Rescue. American tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis (born 1983) sits out on both these pieces, as Guidi and the ever-impressive Morgan develop the musical and emotional tension with the help of adroitly pitched, most sensitive support from Lobo.
Elsewhere, Lewis proves to be a compelling player out of the post-Coltrane, Lloyd/Lovano axis, with his own full and broad yet astutely tempered sound and congruent quality of spare and spaciously sustained and weighted melodic exposition and development, especially in the upper register. He also brings some subtle touches of gospel inflection to his painterly lines. Sample the opening piece here, a now floating and fluttering, now building take on the beautiful Catalan folk melody Cantos Del Ocells (Song Of The Birds).
Things cook some on the rhythmically sprung Only Sometimes and Wonderland but mostly this is an album of ad libitum tenderness, reverie and yearning, which foregrounds the poetic core of Guidi’s subtle, rhythmically and dynamically alert pianism: hear, eg., the interplay of deep arco bass, piano and drums throughout To A Young Student, the other track here where Lewis sits out.
I’ve been playing this most engaging album over and over again. Once you’ve heard it, I can’t but think you will too.
Discography
(1) Cantos Del Ocells; To A Young Student; (2) Means For A Rescue; (1) Only Sometimes; Luigi (The Boy Who Lost His Name); (2) My Funny Valentine; (1)Wonderland ( 44.01)
Guidi (p); James Brandon Lewis (ts); Thomas Morgan (b); João Lobo (d). Pernes-les-Fontaines, August 2023.
ECM 589 1503
