Search - Eugenio Colombo :: Tales of Love and Death

Original and masterful.

greg taylor | Portland, Oregon United States | 01/11/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I read a blindfold test with Olu Daru once where the tester played for Daru a cut from a Wynton Marsalis CD. The first thing Daru said was "Are all these guys playing under 40?"
That is actually one of the things that I think sets jazz music apart. Yes, there are young lions in jazz but I think in general the apprenticeship in jazz or modern creative or whatever you call it takes longer than most popular music styles.
I used to do martial arts. In my style of kung-fu, to achieve a black sash usually took about seven years or more. At that point, my sifu used to say that you were now ready to really start learning.
Jazz strikes me the same way. To really develop an individual voice on an instrument is usually the work of ten or more years of playing professionally. And then you are ready to grow into your own musical vision.
This CD by Eugenio Colombo is the result of decades of efforts. Colombo has absorbed the tradition of jazz (see, e.g., Guida Blu) but he also loves the music traditions of the Mediterranean. He has studied the musics of North Africa and Arabic music. He must love medieval chants and plainsong. He is a founding member of the Italian Instabile Orchestra (was there ever a better group name than the Unstable Italian Orchestra?). He has played solo sax gigs, in sax quartets and in traditional quartets.
One of the suites recorded here is being recorded for the second time. He is using most of the same people from the original recording (available on his Giuditta CD ). This version was recorded in 1999 and utilizes the leader on alto and soprano saxophones, Gianni Lenoci on the piano, Bruno Tommaso on the bass, and Ettore Fioravanti on the drums. Also featured are the mezzo-soprano Micaela Carosi, Masha Carrera (soprano leggero?) and Elisabetta Scatarzi (soprano). On the Giuditta suite the women are singing from the Book of Judith which is Old Testament Apocrypha and on the Toxon suite they are singing a text from Odysseus. In between the two suites is a duet by Colombo and Tommaso so that all us staid jazz types can relax.
The effect particularly on Giuditta is that of polyphonic voices further played off of by a jazz quartet. If the liner notes are to be believed, Carosi engages in an improvised duet with Colombo. She is classically trained and yet she seems completely at ease in the duet. Sheesh. Where do these people come from?
For me, this music could hardly be a more striking or successful experiment. This is not dissonant music and certainly isn't atonal. The effect is so unnerving in some ways because the source materials are so far from what jazz usually uses. Those who prefer a more jazzier approach might prefer the earlier version of this piece which does not have the piano but which seems to use the jazz trio more traditionally.
For me the later version is the greater of the two. In fact, if I had any confidence in my competence to make such a statement, I would claim it as one of the most original jazz CDs of the nineties. But let's just say that I feel this is a great CD that I play for people who are open eared and looking for something new."