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Review

Enrico Rava

New York Days

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by Tim Owen

May 23, 2009

/ ALBUM

Here is confirmation that Rava is currently playing as well, if not better than at any time in his long career.

With this album, what may sound at first like rather a predictable release from ECM turns out to be something rather special, as the Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava, at 70 years of age, continues to enjoy a renaissance. Here’s confirmation of the grapevine rumours that Rava is currently playing as well, if not better than at any time in his long career.

The quintet behind these New York Stories may be new, but each individual member has previous experience in playing with Rava. Most significantly perhaps, this is his fourth pairing with pianist Stefano Bollani in as many contexts. Following his re-entry to the limelight on ECM in 2004, 18 years after his previous date for the label, with a rewarding if somewhat unadventurous all-Italian quintet that included Bollani (Easy Living), the pair have recorded terrific albums in trio with Paul Motian (Tati) and as a duo (The Third Man). Now New York Stories sees them cross the Atlantic to New York City in order to re-join Motian in the company of two other Americans, saxophonist Mark Turner and bassist Larry Grenadier.

Rava lived in New York in the late 60s and early 70s following a period of touring with Steve Lacy, so it is not surprising that he claims the revolutions of those years and of New York Jazz in general as major stylistic influences. The names he checks - Miles Davis and Duke Ellington - may be relatively conservative for those times, but the Miles Davis quintet with Wayne Shorter did blend approachability, tension, and incisive attack in much the same way that this group does.

Rava is said to have provided his group with only the bare bones of his compositions, “the melodies and chords, a few lines to indicate arrangements”, so it comes as no surprise that the two group improvisations also included can hardly be differentiated from the partially predetermined performances; they are prime examples of the immediacy and spontaneous composition that makes Jazz at its best so inimitably thrilling, and testament to the contributions made by each musician’s individual contributions to the success of the whole.

Mark Turner’s studious urbanity contrasts nicely with Rava’s lyricism; there’s an analytical toughness in the way he phrases that lacks entirely the tinge of well-weathered European nostalgia that suffuses Rava’s warmly vocal playing, and contrasts with it beautifully. Larry Grenadier is an ideal bass partner, combining solidity and resourcefulness with an edge of unpredictability that will be instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with his previous ECM recordings with Charles Lloyd. Turner and Grenadier play together in the trio Fly, alongside Jeff Ballard. They too have a new album on ECM, Sky & Country, and it’s interesting to contrast the leanness of that recording with the loaded stillness of New York stories, which can be attributed to the romantically lyrical aspects of Rava and Bollani’s joint conceptions. (Rava’s tone has none of the dry asceticism that can be heard in the playing of perhaps his closest peer, Tomasz Stanko). What both Fly and Rava’s group have in common are some very satisfying internal contradictions: unfussy rigour and casual tension.

Paul Motian, of course, epitomises these qualities in his drumming; he can always be relied upon to impart to any group sound some vital edge, without undermining any essentials. That edge, applied by Motian and Grenadier to Rava and Bollani’s consonant sensuality, with everything tempered by Turner’s clarity, makes this date really special.

From a personal perspective, it would be interesting to hear Rava, Bollani and Motian work with ECM’s most surprising recent signing David Torn; that would really put a NY slant on things. For now though, this gem is ECM in excelsis.

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