PAOLO FRESU & DANIELE DI BONAVENTURA – In maggiore
ECM 471 0051
Paolo Fresu (trumpet, flugelhorn); Daniele di Bonaventura (bandoneon)
Recorded May 2014
The art of the duo is an intimate shared experience between players and listener, where the musicians appear to have nowhere to hide, and the ‘audience’ hears clearly everything that is played from the most subtle of nuances and inflexions to a blatant mistakes. Whilst these can be eradicated in the studio the performances will suffer, as the conversational flow is interrupted.
No such problem here with this delightful and absorbing set from trumpeter Fresu and Italian bandoneon player, Daniele di Bonaventura. Paolo Fresu will be familiar to many and has played on hundreds of sessions in various different contexts, and as leader EMI, RCA and Blue Note but like me, many will be encountering di Bonaventura for the first time with this recording.
With the pair having worked together previously with the Corsican vocal ensemble A Filetta iun concert and on the ECM album Mistico Mediterraneo the two musicians were able to build on the shared experience to develop a musical rapport that brings these pieces to life. In a programme that encompasses original compositions, improvisations and melodies that come from a shared musical memory the duo take us on a journey from the Breton lullaby that inspires ‘Ton Kozh’ to Latin America in ‘O Que Sera’ by Chico Buraque de Hollanda.
Eschewing the electronic hardware that he sometimes embraces in live performance, Fresu allows his burnished trumpet and flugel sound to bathe in the natural unamplified acoustic with the bandoneon, with breath and the rattle of keys and valves producing percussive effects that bring an additional timbral dimension to the performances of ‘Ton Kozh’ and ‘Se va la murge’ with Paolo’s haunting muted trumpet. Variety is plentiful with the delicate beauty of tone on both muted and open horn on ‘Te recurerdo Amanda’, the playful reading of ‘Quando me’n vò’ from Puccini’s La Bohème and the sheer grandeur of Fresu’s ‘Sketches’ that conjures images of the work of Gil Evans and Miles on Sketches of Spain.
A quietly deceptive album that yields treasures that would not necessarily be expected from the instrumentation and that sneaks into the subconscious with delicate melodie that linger liong after the notes have decayed.
Reviewed by Nick Lea
ECM 471 0051
Paolo Fresu (trumpet, flugelhorn); Daniele di Bonaventura (bandoneon)
Recorded May 2014
The art of the duo is an intimate shared experience between players and listener, where the musicians appear to have nowhere to hide, and the ‘audience’ hears clearly everything that is played from the most subtle of nuances and inflexions to a blatant mistakes. Whilst these can be eradicated in the studio the performances will suffer, as the conversational flow is interrupted.
No such problem here with this delightful and absorbing set from trumpeter Fresu and Italian bandoneon player, Daniele di Bonaventura. Paolo Fresu will be familiar to many and has played on hundreds of sessions in various different contexts, and as leader EMI, RCA and Blue Note but like me, many will be encountering di Bonaventura for the first time with this recording.
With the pair having worked together previously with the Corsican vocal ensemble A Filetta iun concert and on the ECM album Mistico Mediterraneo the two musicians were able to build on the shared experience to develop a musical rapport that brings these pieces to life. In a programme that encompasses original compositions, improvisations and melodies that come from a shared musical memory the duo take us on a journey from the Breton lullaby that inspires ‘Ton Kozh’ to Latin America in ‘O Que Sera’ by Chico Buraque de Hollanda.
Eschewing the electronic hardware that he sometimes embraces in live performance, Fresu allows his burnished trumpet and flugel sound to bathe in the natural unamplified acoustic with the bandoneon, with breath and the rattle of keys and valves producing percussive effects that bring an additional timbral dimension to the performances of ‘Ton Kozh’ and ‘Se va la murge’ with Paolo’s haunting muted trumpet. Variety is plentiful with the delicate beauty of tone on both muted and open horn on ‘Te recurerdo Amanda’, the playful reading of ‘Quando me’n vò’ from Puccini’s La Bohème and the sheer grandeur of Fresu’s ‘Sketches’ that conjures images of the work of Gil Evans and Miles on Sketches of Spain.
A quietly deceptive album that yields treasures that would not necessarily be expected from the instrumentation and that sneaks into the subconscious with delicate melodie that linger liong after the notes have decayed.
Reviewed by Nick Lea
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