GIANCARLO MAZZU/LUCIANO TROJA - Any Morning
SLAMCD 598
Giancarlo Mazzù, guitar; Luciano Troja, piano
Recorded April 28th 2019 at 2nd Story Sound, New York City
Mazzù and Troja are Sicilians who studied composition at the Conservatory of Messina and played together on the Italian jazz circuits. They search out new arrangements and languages in which to express their music, mixing jazz, classical, folk and free improvisation. Past recordings have seen these efforts, in large, applied to their interpretations of standards from the “Great” American Song Book; you know, collections from the likes of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein and so forth, ‘Second-hand Songs’ as I like to call them. It is hardly surprising that between them their major influences are named as Jim Hall, Barney Kessel and Bill Evans, though their broader gamut reveals a much more catholic background.
This new album is a little different, being a collection of ten originals. The mood is not especially different from the ‘Songbook’ era, the lessons rotating around elegance and nimbleness, while evoking reminiscences of amorousness, of melancholy. The playing is delicate, then we light upon Manlight – for Manlio Nicosia, a real swinger in which the players’ sensitivity to musicality leans more acutely to the genus that we know as jazz.
At the end of all we can claim that it is hardly surprising that the musicians here may wish to add to their lists of influences such names as Bach, Chopin, Coltrane, Davis, Debussy, Dolphy, Towner and Wheeler. So be it.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
SLAMCD 598
Giancarlo Mazzù, guitar; Luciano Troja, piano
Recorded April 28th 2019 at 2nd Story Sound, New York City
Mazzù and Troja are Sicilians who studied composition at the Conservatory of Messina and played together on the Italian jazz circuits. They search out new arrangements and languages in which to express their music, mixing jazz, classical, folk and free improvisation. Past recordings have seen these efforts, in large, applied to their interpretations of standards from the “Great” American Song Book; you know, collections from the likes of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein and so forth, ‘Second-hand Songs’ as I like to call them. It is hardly surprising that between them their major influences are named as Jim Hall, Barney Kessel and Bill Evans, though their broader gamut reveals a much more catholic background.
This new album is a little different, being a collection of ten originals. The mood is not especially different from the ‘Songbook’ era, the lessons rotating around elegance and nimbleness, while evoking reminiscences of amorousness, of melancholy. The playing is delicate, then we light upon Manlight – for Manlio Nicosia, a real swinger in which the players’ sensitivity to musicality leans more acutely to the genus that we know as jazz.
At the end of all we can claim that it is hardly surprising that the musicians here may wish to add to their lists of influences such names as Bach, Chopin, Coltrane, Davis, Debussy, Dolphy, Towner and Wheeler. So be it.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
