Ferdinando Romano: The Legends Of Otranto (GleAM Records AM7035)
Romano is a fine Italian bass player, very much on the up in the current Italian and European jazz scene: his thematically telling pizzicato lines here are complemented by atmospheric arco work which embraces both the most potent and the most delicate of touches. He’s also an impressive composer, on the avant-garde side of things and especially aware of factors of rhythmic layering and both temporal and colouristic differentiation, within and across the seven pieces which make up the intriguingly titled suite which is The Legends Of Otranto.
It’s a release which follows Romano’s previous and well-received Invisible Painters of 2023. The painterly quality of the compositions on The Legends Of Otranto is beautifully delivered by an unusually voiced Italian, Finnish and Estonian quartet as edgy and lively as it is poetically inclined, featuring Romano himself, Veli Kujala (acn), Kirke Karja (p) and Ramuel Tafenau (d).
JJ readers may be aware of The Castle Of Otranto, the novel by Horace Walpole which was published in 1764 and which is usually considered to be the first Gothic novel. Certainly, a Gothic element can be sensed in both portions of the music and some of the sleeve notes (given in Italian and English) which accompany it. And you can watch a short video which the admirable GleAM Records have made, highlighting the places in and around this coastal town in Italy’s beautiful Puglia region which inspired Romano’s arresting compositions. But in the end, the music has to stand by itself – which it most certainly does.
Carsten Dahl Ensemble: In The Middle Of Nothing – To Palle Mikkelborg (Storyville 1014344)
The last few years have witnessed a striking range of diversely conceived and realised, but always questing and top-quality releases from Danish pianist and composer Dahl: witness his Mirrors Within, Sagn, Our Songs, A Beautiful Blue Moment, The Solo Songs Of Keith Jarrett and, until now, the most recent Interpretations, all of which I’ve been fortunate enough to review for JJ.
Dedicated to his compatriot, long-time musical colleague and close friend Palle Mikkelborg – who appears here on breathy, economically cast yet deeply affecting trumpet and flugelhorn – In The Middle Of Nothing is surely Dahl’s most radical achievement to date.
It features Mikkelborg – the maestro who gave us such long-classic albums as the Miles Davis tribute Aura (on which Miles played), Anything But Grey and Song . . . . Tread Lightly – in the stilled and subtly shimmering, hovering and gently pitch-gliding company of an 18-piece ensemble. The personnel includes Fredrik Lundin (ts), Helen Davies (harp), Thomas Vang (b), Nils Bo Davidsen (clo, b), Stefan Pasborg (pc), a string quartet and The BBC Children’s Choir, as well as Mads Kjøller Henningsen on hurdy-gurdy. Dahl himself plays piano, Rhodes, harmonium, guitars and bass.
Such a range of resource might conjure fears of an all-too-rich and indigestible brew, but nothing could be further from the truth. The seven movements which constitute Dahl’s 38-minute mosaic-like suite are chiefly delivered with the sort of delicacy of incisive yet “open” utterance which takes the music into spacious realms as rarified (yet nourishing) as they are rare in jazz. True, in part 3, Fornax, Lundin’s tenor conjures some brief, thematically appropriate heat, but overall, this is music of practically mesmeric, meditative and often elegaic nature.
Spiritual cousin to such exceptional genre-crossing releases of recent decades as Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa, Terje Rypdal’s Undisonus and Jan Garbarek and The Hilliard Ensemble’s Officium, In The Middle Of Nothing is simply superb, from first note to last.
Peter Vuust Quartet: Homage (Storyville 1014366)
Once in a while a contemporary jazz album comes along which, from start to finish, offers nothing less than pure elegance and diversely swinging energy, refined harmonic awareness and the most lyrical, singing melodic affirmation. Danish bassist and composer Peter Vuust’s Homage is one such release, its beautifully recorded 72-minute programme of 11 pieces worthy of many a replay – and then some.
The overall idea of homage here includes pieces dedicated to Keith Jarrett and Jaco Pastorius, John Coltrane (who is not named in the chess-inspired title that is The Maroczy Bind but whose late-1950s/early-1960s modal spirit clearly informs the music) and the archetypal world that is given modernist celebration in Rhythm & Blues.
Vuust’s terrific quartet has many a year of collective experience behind it and the overall dynamic integration shown by the leader, Claus Waidtlow (ts, ss), Lars Jansson (p) and Morten Lund (d) is exemplary. Seasoned and superb players all, they have produced the sort of album which led Lund (one of the finest drummers around today) to comment to Vuust, during playback time, that “This is the best we’ve ever made, Peter.” Don’t miss it!
