BackJAZZMATAZZ | The Sardinian charms of Paolo Fresu
The warm tones of Fresu's horn, his natural romanticism and adroit compositions showcase the best in contemporary Italian jazz
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Jazz, perhaps America’s best contribution to the world, travels rather well. Even at the time it was taking shape in New Orleans, Chicago and New York, the sounds of this unique style crossed the Atlantic without any heaving over the side and landed with both feet on the ground. The music spread rapidly throughout the continent and struck deep roots in many countries.
When Louis Armstrong toured Italy after the war in 1949, he was rapturously received by audiences already familiar with the swing that had people dancing across the pond. There had been jazz bands already in Italy before Armstrong’s visit, but the genre grabbed the public’s attention on a larger scale and fired some of the country’s best musical minds. Out of the churn emerged trumpeter Enrico Rava, arguably the most well known Italian jazz musician, who lived for a while in New York and was involved in many well-regarded albums, including the seminal Escalator over the Hills (1971).
From Rava in the 1970s to Paolo Fresu, who plays both the trumpet and the flugelhorn, at the turn of the millennium, Italian jazz has indeed evolved and matured. Nowhere is this more evident than in Fresu’s latest offering ¡30!, released in April this year. Born in Sardinia and trained in the National Academy of Jazz in Sienna, Fresu caught the eye of Rava in the 1980s and went on the achieve stardom in Italy in the next decade.
The quintet that he started in the 1980s is still producing heady music, and ¡30! bears ample witness to that. Despite playing for some 30 years, the band hasn’t lost any of its freshness, still belting out tunes that are simple but catchy. All the pieces in ¡30! are originals, four composed by Fresu and two each by saxophonist Tino Tracanna, pianist Roberto Cipelli, bassist Attilio Zanchi and drummer Ettore Fioravanti. The engaging interplay where each player speaks with a distinct voice easily makes ¡30! one of the best releases this year.
What’s more astonishing is that these five were already fabulous as young Turks when they were playing gigs across Europe, caught brilliantly in Live in Montpellier (1988), where the horns of Tracanna and Fresu weave a compelling magic over subtle electronica and percussive persistence. Besides strong originals, it features well-played standards, including a quirky take on Thelonious Monk’s Well, You Needn’t sandwiched between two interesting reprises of Alice Cooper’s Only Women Bleed.
Recalling sometimes of Miles Davis in his 1950s electric period but less restrained in its emotional outpouring, sometimes of Chet Baker in his warmth and ease, Fresu deserves better recognition not only for his skills as performer, composer and arranger but also for his enthusiastic collaborations with an eclectic spectrum of artists. This is brilliantly evident in Carla Bley’s The Lost Chords find Paolo Fresu (2007), where the Sardinian is indeed an inspired find for the Lost Chords that has Andy Sheppard on the sax, Steve Swallow on bass, Bley on piano and Billy Drummonds on the drums.
The big, edgy sound of Sheppard provides the perfect foil for Fresu’s more stylized intensity in the six-part Banana Quintet, yet another witty masterpiece by Bley. If Fresu is lyrical as warm sunshine in One Banana, the first piece and one of Bley’s best, the Latin vibes of Five Banana sees him leading with the fireworks. He turns in a stellar performance throughout this enjoyable album that has the best ensemble jazz has to offer in recent years.
Fresu, who once said in an interview that knowing the history of jazz was an important tool to open new doors, remains true to his word, extending the work of American masters with panache of his own, delighting listeners with an easy intimacy only the truly gifted can lavish.
Jazzmatazz is a fortnightly column on stories from the world of jazz. For playlists of the music that it features, click here.
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