Mauro Sambo & Marcello Magliocchi “... camminava solo sotto le stelle ...” (Plus Timbre, 2021)

 

A couple of years have passed since my last review. I abandoned – another time! – free jazz and improvised music since I was hearing only some interesting stuff here and there, but lost in a big desert, so to speak. More recently I started writing again, on paper, and I felt the need to go back to my (let’s call it) youth. So I went to a record shop and I came out of it with a bunch of recent records (Cecil Taylor at Angelica, Roscoe Mitchell on ECM, Peter Brotzmann solo...) and finally, while I was listening to those records, I was curious again of hearing new stuff around me.

And then I remembered of Mauro Sambo. I have to confess my readers I feel guilty with him. I never met Mauro in person, but he sent me physical copies of six of his CDs plus a DVD about ten years ago, when I first started writing to this blog. We also had some exchanges through social networks. But I never wrote a single word about his work, that is very singular and interesting. So, while I wait to relisten to all of his older stuff, maybe for a retrospective, Mr Sambo is out right now with a new record in duo with Marcello Magliocchi. And, what a record.

A little bit of history first. Mauro Sambo started his artistic career at Venices’ Accademia di Belle Arti, and during his studies he won some fellowships and had his first exhibitions through Italy and Europe culminating into his participation to the XLIV Biennale di Venezia in a section dedicated to young talents coming from all over the world. His first works are sculptures and pieces of performance art. He shifted to sound in 1986 basically because of his will of putting together sound and images.

As a musician, Sambo is a multi-instrumentalist (reeds, percussions, flutes, guitars, electronics) whose relationship with sound is always peculiar. If you might, think about the first performative sounds of a concert of his beloved Art Ensemble of Chicago mixed with that intimistic but mystical quality of the sound of a musician like Evan Parker, even if grammar and syntax are quite different, and you’ll not be that far from the reality of Sambo’s music.

Created quite often as one of the many brushes for his performances, music is a part of Mauro Sambo’s palette, and it’s very interesting to see him playing saxophones through a metal cage, or sharing the space of a concert with other musicians like he does on this CD from 2021 titled “... camminava solo sotto le stelle ... “ (He was walking alone under the stars, NdA) accompanied by friend Marcello Magliocchi, an intriguing drummer and percussionist who creates music gestures through sounding sculptures aptly created by Andrea Dami, plus an electric guitar with only one string and other percussions.

Magliocchi is an accomplished musician of his own, who in the past played free jazz – with the likes of Mal Waldron or Joelle Léandre, just to name a few, contemporary music and movie soundtracks. His touch is both important in creating the atmosphere and the inner space throught which you move as a listener, and in underlying with his tools his friends improvisers. This is why I compared this sounds to the one produced by the AEOC.

On the other hand, Sambo statements, even if quite often fragmented and short, create a space for a meditative listening that is quite similar to the one you’ll find listening to Evan Parker on soprano, even if the two musicians use a different language. Parker repetitions and binaural sounds open your mind, while Sambo can obtain the same effect almost as if he’s fragmenting the space through sound or, at the opposite, splitting up the sound through space.

“Improvisation – Sambo states in a recent interview – is absolutely necessary, obviously it needs to be inside some predetermined patterns, patterns dictated by your own culture, you emotional approach to the situation created in that particular moment, even if you play alone (the environment and the public has an influence on your path) or with other musicians”. This, as everyone can understand, is a music made out of relationships more than relying on mastering abilities like speed or resistance. And, in this sense, it is true contemporary music.