Centazzo - Schiaffini - Armaroli "Trigonos" (Dodicilune, 2018)

Andrea Centazzo, composer and performer, is one of the pivotal figures in the so-called NY Downtown Music Scene of the 1970's. Unluckily he is known here in Italy only as 'Giorgio Gaslini drummer' – he played drums and percussions with Gaslini from 1972 to 1976 – and this fact limited his career at a point that Centazzo chose to move to the Us at the end of the decade. There, he played with John Zorn, Tom Cora, Eugene Chadbourne and Toshinori Kondo.

He also founded his own label, Ictus, and recorded with Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Pierre Favre, Alvin Curran among the others. At the same time he studied composition. A more complex figure than the 'percussionist' described by the press, Andrea Centazzo has now recorded for the label Dodicilune a new album of his own compositions, with the help of vibraphonist Sergio Armaroli and trombonist Giancarlo Schiaffini. If you want to know more about this couple of musicians, read here.

The music provided by this album is 10 compositions, four by Centazzo and Armaroli, two by Centazzo/Schiaffini, and the remaining played by the trio. Being at the border of contemporary music and improvised music, all the compositions have a meditative quality that goes beyond the sum of its parts.

The gestures have a quality typical of the Eastern folk music, but they are not rooted in it: it is more an assonance than a derivation. Listening to the record, I often asked myself how good would it be to listen to this music live in a good theatre, since it's aura would be better exploited in this context.

And in effect, the issue of the record was premièred in Milan, Italy, at the Out Off, a small theatre devoted to theatrical experimentation since the 1970's. Really a good place to start this new adventure for an artist like Centazzo, who in the past has gone well beyond music also thanks to his painted graphic scores.

Marc Ribot “Songs of Resistance (1942-2018)” Anti, 2018

Marc Ribot is one of the most eclectic post-modern musicians you'll ever hear on guitar. He toured exstensively with Chuck Berry and recorded guitars in many of Tom Waits' albums since 1984, but in his discography you'll also find not one, but two Cds dedicated to the music of Albert Ayler. Between the artist he worked with, there are David Sylvian, John Zorn, Elvis Costello and Mike Patton.

In 2018, Marc has become more political than ever. First with his last Ceramic Dog Trio album “YRU Still Here”, then with this new “Songs of Resistance (1942-2018)” issued by alt-rock label Anti. Politics and the resistance to fascism have a noble tradition in avant-garde jazz at least since 1970's album “Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra”, where Ornette Coleman's bassist gave life to some free jazz versions of the anti-fascist and anarchist songs of the Spain of the 1920s.

Now that Trump has won the elections in the Us and the alt-right is spreading their wings all over the world, is time to embrace again the weapons of creativity against the Black Wave. And, who better than Marc Ribot? Helped by a bunch of brave singers like Tom Waits, Steve Earle, and Meshell Ndegeocello, Mr Ribot gives new life to old political songs for our harsh times.

Only the initial We are Soldiers in the Army has open references to jazz, with his textures of saxophones. The rest of the album is divided between folk songs (Bella Ciao, The Militant Ecologist), rock (The Big Fool), ethnic music (Rata de Los Patas), funk (John Brown) taking me back at the good old days in which I was listening to Ani Di Franco and Bruce Springsteen.

Obviously this is a post-modern record, in which you can touch all the time passed between the original songs and the present tense, but the original drive is still here. It's all a matter of our present tense. Fascism is coming back, and so many artists are lost in the supermarket of a sterile experimentation – now that everything has been experimented – but it's not the case of Ribot and his friends, whose idea and practice of music is still rooted in real life and their beings.

John Coltrane "Both Directions at Once" (Impulse!, 2018)

March 6^th, 1963. Englewood Cliffs, Van Gelder Studios. Saxophonist John Coltrane joined his partners – bassist Jimmy Garrison, pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones – for a recording session. The result will be: four short versions of Impressions (one pianoless), two untitled originals with Trane on soprano (the most interesting pieces), a version of Nature Boy which is a short game based on the theme of the song, two versions of Vilia, one Slow Blues and two versions of the piece One Up, One Down.

Part of the material, recorded the day before the session with singer Johnny Hartman, is pianoless. That means that possibly Trane had Sonny Rollins, his eternal rival, in mind. Hearing for the first time this material, Rollins said “This is like finding a new room in the great pyramid”. But we're so far here from a “new Coltrane album”, from a “lost album”.

The recordings, held by Naima Grubbs, Trane's first wife, and discovered only recently, are in fact only a session of music, recorded only with the purpose of leaving Coltrane free to listen to them. An album is usually something more complex, with material coming from different sessions. So, while listening to this record anyone can feel like a peeping tom, which is quite good since you're listening to unreleased material by John Coltrane.

Ok, so what about the music? The two untitled originals go near the land of free jazz, while the remaining pieces are pure post-bop. Trane himself described his style and articulation to Wayne Shorter as “starting a sentence in the middle and then going to the beginning and the end of it at the same time”.

And obviously you can hear that in this session. The music in this album is important since you can hear Coltrane on solid rock starting with his future sonic experimentations, in a period, our present tense, of reflux, with so many musicians standing on solid ground. A call to do something else, something new.

Roberto Ottaviano - Forgotten Matches The Worlds of Steve Lacy (Dodicilune, 2017)

“Today, the more I study Lacy's repertoire, the more I deal with the transcription of his compositions, the more I listen to his unreleased recordings, the more I concentrate on his language trying to connect the strings of his inspirations and his soundographies, the more I feel little, tiny”. This is a statement by saxophonist Roberto Ottaviano, who gave light to a double album full of Lacy's music last year.

Roberto Ottaviano is a sopranist born in Bari, Italy, in 1957. He studied saxophone with Lacy himself, while applying to composition and arrangement under the guide of George Russell. Since 1979 he toured and recorded all over Europe, playing with Mal Waldron, Giorgio Gaslini, Reggie Workman, Andrew Cyrille, Albert Mangelsdorff, Keith Tippett, Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennink, Barre Phillips, Pierre Favre, Kenny Wheeler, Mark Dresser, Paul Bley, Irene Schweitzer, Tony Oxley and many others.

Roberto Ottaviano

In this double record, full of Lacy's compositions, Ottaviano plays with a quartet (with Glen Ferris on trombone, Giovanni Maier on bass and Cristiano Calcagnile on drums) on the first cd, and in a duo with pianist Alexander Hawkins on the second cd. Ottaviano style on soprano saxophone is less metaphysical, less angular than Lacy's, more rounded.

The music contained in this collection is more similar to what Lacy did in albums like 'The Kiss' (Lunatic Records, 1987) than in obliques, confrontational records as 'The Gap' (America, 1972). Both the quartet and the duo is far from free playing, and more akin to traditional jazz. To hear such interpretations is strange in a way, since Lacy music is hand to hand with the limits of his instument, while Ottaviano is playing it more like a conventional, melodic device.

Anyway it's important, now that 14 years have passed since Lacy's death, to reinvigorate this music for the new generations of musicians and listeners. Maybe this record can put a new light on Lacy's body of work, reinvigorating his legacy and leading his music to the future.  

Less Of Five – Chapter Two (Caligola Records, 2017)

Do you remember that era during the 1960s when Blue Note Records was putting on the market albums of musicians such as Sam Rivers and Bobby Hutcherson? It was a 'third wave' between classical jazz and free improvisation. Now, thanks to Caligola Record, we can breath not the same music, but the same temperatures.

Pianist Giorgio Occhipinti, born in 1969, boasts collaborations with the likes of Evan Parker, Joelle Léandre, Ernst Reijseger, Paul Rutherford, Barre Phillips, and Peter Brotzmann. He started playing piano and flute with his father's band. Occhipinti was part of one of the hystorical groups of Sicilian jazz, the December Thirty Jazz Trio (1989) and since 1992 he collaborated with the Pino Minafra Sud Ensemble.

In 1993 Occhipinti created the Festival Ibleo del Jazz becoming its artistic director. In the same year he foundet a nonet (Giorgio Occhipinti Hereo Nonetto) that took many forms in the following years: octet, orchestra, and so on. In 2000 he took part in the Banlieue Bleues Quartet with Pino Minafra, Sandro Satta and Vincenzo Mazzone.

Giorgio Occhipinti

The musician that seems to me more similar to Giorgio Occhipinti is Matthew Shipp. Not for his open, ascendent chords (Occhipinti is less mysthic an more gentle), but because of a quality in improvisation and interplay. Luckily enough his new record, 'Chapter Two' by the group Less of Five (featuring Gianpiero Fronte on alto and soprano saxophone, Giuseppe Guarrella on double bass, and Emmanuele Primavera on drums) provides us with two long compositions, 'Orange's Smell' and 'Breathing New York's air' that are more than ten minutes long, leaving us with a flavour that is connected to free improvisation, even if the music is softer.

The other six pieces, from 3 to 6 minutes long, are miniatures of melody and improvisation. The effect in listening to this record is that of a music that doesn't want to be caged in a precise definition, a music that loves to take you by the hand and wonder into new landscapes, even if quite often the flavour of blues is strong, as in the track 'Expression' . Highly recommended to all the lovers of free improvisation, but not only.  

Apocalypse Trio feat. Paolo Angeli – Live at Fasano Jazz (Jazz Engine Records, 2017)

I've always been a fan of Richard Teitelbaum and of his records with the likes of Anthony Braxton. That mood, that feeling, jazz with a nocturne feeling, jazz widened through its extremes, jazz and electronics. I'm also a fan of a record, issued few years ago, featuring Evan Parker and Grutronics. So, I was happy to see Paolo Angeli, one of my Italian heroes, playing with an electro-acoustic trio as in the album “Live at Fasano Jazz”.

The Apocalypse Trio features Vincenzo Deluci (trumpet), Camillo Pace (double bass) and Giuseppe Mariani (electronics). Vincenzo Deluci (b. in Fasano) started studying trumpet as a child, and took his degree in 1992. Finalist in different contests, he won the International Contest 'Astor Piazzolla' in Castel Fidardo as Best Musician. He is author of the Lp “La Rana Dalla Bocca Larga” who sold 1000 copies in only 15 days.

After a car accident, who put him on a weelchair, he came back to the music with the live show “VianDante”. Camillo Pace (b. in Taranto) graduated as a bassist at Monopoli's 'Nino Rota' Conservatory and then he took a degree in jazz music disciplines, specializing in history and musicology. He conducted studies as ethnomusicologist in Kenya and South Africa.

Giuseppe Mariani, born in Noci, studied trumpet as a child and graduated in 1999 at the 'Nino Rota' Conservatory in Monopoli. Between 2001 and 2002 he lived in London where he worked with saxophonist A. Wilkinson, drummer S. Ritchie and bassist Bellatalla. Since 2002 he took interest in other musical forms, and the relationships between improvised and electronic music.

The Apocalypse Trio

Special guest on the record is Paolo Angeli, an extraordinary musician who plays a self-built instrument. Born in 1970, he started to play guitar at 9. He traveled up to Bologna, where he started playing with different ensembles and musician, one of whom is the great Fred Frith. His instrument, a sardinian prepared guitar, is the result of Paolo Angeli's interest in both avant-garde music and folk music.

This record start with 'Apocalypse', an original composition of the trio that sees trumpet and guitar having a conversation surrounded by electronic sounds popping by. Then is the turn of another composition, 'Impro', who is very reminiscent of glitch music, followed by 'A Child is Born' (Jones/Wilder) lunar and crepuscular. Composer Ennio Morricone has his hommage paid by the 'Morricone Suite', featuring the themes from “Nuovo Cinema Paradiso” and “Once Upon a Time in America”.

And then is the turn of 'Nature Boy' by Nat King Cole, where one can enjoy the richness of the textures provided by Paolo Angeli; the record finish with 'Procession', an original composition by Deluci where improvised music takes the foreground over electronics, dominated by the trumpet and the doodles of the cello/guitar.

I'm enthousiast to hear such young musicians expressing passion and knowledge, and the record will become for sure one of the best albums of the year 2017. Listen and enjoy this record, and then my advice is to recover the other records I mentioned at the beginning of this post, to have a wider landscape about the history of the encounters between jazz and electroacoustic music.

Remembering Misha Mengelberg (1935-2017)

Misha Mengelberg with Thomas Heberer, The Stone, 2008

Last week pianist Misha Mengelberg has died, aged 81. Mengelberg was born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1935. The son of the Dutch conductor Karel Mengelberg, his family moved back to the Netherlands in the late 1930s and the young Mengelberg began learning the piano at age five. He studied architecture briefly before entering the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. There, he won the first prize of a jazz festival in Loosdrecht and became associated with the Fluxus movement.

His influences count the likes of Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington and John Cage. Mengelberg was one of the very first perpetrators of the revolution of the free jazz/avant garde jazz of the 1960s but from an European perspective. His first appearance on a record is on Eric Dolphy's final recording, Last Date (1964). On that record appears also drummer Han Bennink, marking the beginning of a long friendship and collaboration.

Mengelberg and Bennink founded later a quartet with saxophonist Piet Noordijk and many different bassists. The quartet played at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1966. In 1967 Mengelberg co-founded the Instant Composers Pool, an organization that, similarly to the AACM on the other side of the Ocean, promoted avant garde jazz performances and records, with Bennink and Willem Breuker.

Mengelberg played with a large variety of musicians: quite often he performed in duo with fellow Han Bennink; other collaborations included guitarist Derek Bailey, and saxophonists Evan Parker, Peter Brotzmann, and Anthony Braxton. He also wrote music for other performers (leaving some space for improvisation) and oversaw some music theatre productions. On the other hand, he made known to the public the works of pianist Herbie Nichols.

Related Links:

Misha Mengelberg discography on Discogs

An interview with Misha Mengelberg by Dan Warburton