Saturday, February 11, 2017

ITALY: Jacopo Ferrazza- Rebirth (Cam Jazz 2017)

“…A group performance, with guitar and drums always in the picture. In fact, it reminds me a great deal of classical string trio writing, with a revolving emphasis on different voices (listen to this on “Il Teatro Dei Rami”) in the ascendant as the harmonic cycle goes round... Sometimes it’s hard to do more with a record than expression enthusiasm and move on, but Ferrazza asks to be listened to with some depth and penetration. This is eminently thoughtful music, as if we were privy to a serious but not humourless conversation between three friends of markedly different but loyally sympathetic sensibility... It takes a rare group like this to detach itself from fashion and from critical strictures and to make a music that is alert to the times (how contemporary is “Blind Painter”? or “Living The Bridge”?) but which answers to much longer and more established traditions in our music. …Ferrazza and his men seem to have found a quieter turning of their own and are headed off on a musical adventure that promises to breathe new life - if not actual rebirth - into a scene that needs fresh perspectives and new voices”. (Brian Morton
Cam Jazz
)