Something Bluesy and More (Parco Della Musica)
Franco D’Andrea Trio
Released May 24, 2024
All About Jazz Best Jazz Albums of 2024
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About:
For the new project Franco D’Andrea revisits the piano trio alongside Roberto Gatto, one of Europe’s most prestigious drummers, and the young and highly appreciated double bass player Gabriele Evangelista. The idea behind the meeting is to bring into the trio formula the rhythmic and intervallic inventions and freedom typical of D’Andrea’s music, and to confront a repertoire little frequented by this type of formation: from blues to early jazz, via Ellington and Coltrane, to pure invention. D’Andrea retrieves from the origins of jazz a bluesy feeling that permeates the poetics of the trio and gives life to free, joyful and extremely communicative music.
Track Listing:
1. St. Louis Blues (William Christopher Handy) 5:26
2. Caravan (Duke Ellington, Irving Mills / Juan Tizol) 6:38
3. Livery Stable Blues (Alcide Núñez / Ray Lopez) 4:36
4. Exploration (Franco D’Andrea / Gabriele Evangelista / Roberto Gatto) 4:32
5. Soft Winds (Benny Goodman / Fred Royal) 5:28
6. Half the Fun (Billy Strayhorn / Duke Ellington) 4:08
7. I’ve Found A New Baby (Jack Palmer / Spencer Williams) 7:32
8. The Telecasters (Billy Strayhorn / Duke Ellington) 4:27
9. Love Supreme (John Coltrane) 5:42
10. Tenderly (Jack Lawrence / Walter Gross) 2:53
Personnel:
Franco D’Andrea: piano
Gabriele Evangelista: double bass
Roberto Gatto: drums
Recorded 18th and 19th January 2024, at Music Production Studios, Milan, by Roberto Andrea Sartirani
Mixed by Massimo Aluzzi
Mastered by Massimiliano Cervini
Recording, Mixing and Mastering Supervision: Roberto Catucci
Producer: Roberto Catucci
Production Assistant: Francesca Pompili, Noemi Quarantelli
Photos by MUSA, Riccardo Musacchio
Design: Creation (24)
Review:
Along the artistic path of Franco D’Andrea, significant stages continually cross, fully placed in the vast map that the musician conceives as a unitary and coherent fresco. With this title, tantalizingly allusive, Something Bluesy and More, the piano trio team appears again, already practiced by D’Andrea abundantly in its multiple declinations, from the most experimental, begun in 1970 with the epic Modern Art Trio, to those that explore characters and songs chosen from a wide range of his interests and approached with an original imprint. Remembering that every choice of instrumental team is also a functional choice for the musician, motivated by a strong idea, by a formidable instinct that combines knowledge, deep experience, design acumen.
The first sensation aroused by listening to this CD is that of extreme fluidity, of elegance of the movement of the whole and of the individual mechanisms, of mutual ease within the trio, which is also well transmitted to the fruition. The contribution of Gabriele Evangelista on double bass and Roberto Gatto on drums, a pairing that already appeared in the splendid Sketches of the 20th Century, manifests itself with perfectly functional flexibility and ease. This fluidity is the generator and at the same time the result of D’Andrea’s particular approach, which moves with marvelous elasticity between the origins of recorded African-American music and the most contemporary instances. This is not particularly unusual for those accustomed to frequenting the pianist’s production, but the prodigy lies precisely in the result, each time capable of adding amazement.
Despite the great chronological and stylistic variety that makes up the material on this album, the homogeneity of the product manifests itself as a natural fact, which springs from a single source, branches out repeatedly, but always finds its own strong direction. Not an easy thing, whose audacity stands out already by reading the titles placed side by side in the program. Of course, these are songs that are part of D’Andrea’s genetic code. Material that he has frequented and explored repeatedly throughout his career. But working on such a vastness of stimuli without ever losing control, indeed, putting such forces in constant dialogue, is not something that is encountered daily in the world of art and creativity.
The flexible balances stand out right from the incipit of “Saint Louis Blues,” which opens the CD and, coincidentally, is the song that has its origins furthest back, that 1914 in which it was published by the author, William Christopher Handy. An incipit that immediately calls into question contemporaneity, on a circular phrase undoubtedly in D’Andrea’s style. How the phrasing and harmonies of the piano then lead into the broad field of the blues, to hint at and then arrive at the famous theme, is precisely the result of flexible balances. How from the Latin rhythm marked by Gatto one slips into the delicate march that accompanies the supporting theme is the result of these continuous shifts, in which underground movements intervene, grafts that make the blues atmosphere rich in accents, characters, colors.
Some songs are introduced by riffs that bear the clear imprint of the pianist. Thus the Ellingtonian “Caravan” and “Soft Winds” by Benny Goodman, whose incipit immediately projects into the dimension of D’Andrea. Other pieces receive ingenious stimuli, such as the one that highlights from the beginning the phrase of the refrain of “The Telecaster,” a composition by Billy Strayhorn, inventing new gravitational balances, which among other things fit perfectly and illuminate very interesting glimpses. Others still receive the pregnant reading in the quantity of variants that the piano investigates in all fields, as in “Half The Fun,” another Strayhorn gem.
Or as in the Coltranian “A Love Supreme,” in which the three musicians move with velvety grace, where one of Evangelista’s memorable interventions stands out. “Exploration” is the only song signed by D’Andrea: an investigation into the abstraction of motifs and rhythmic intersections, on constant tonal fluctuation. “Tenderly” closes the album, where the alchemy of the trio, of broad, deep breath, is framed by the sumptuous, enigmatic reflection of the piano. Whoever listens, shares exploration and wonder.
Giuseppe Segala (All About Jazz)
