Fearless Five – The new and umpteenth musical adventure by Enrico Rava: Video, Photos

Past and future intersect in the present of Fearless Five, the new and umpteenth musical adventure by Enrico Rava.

In the CD of the same name (Parco della musica records) and especially in the engaging live shows that are occupying the Italian stages these days, some episodes of Rava’s long and authoritative career return, chosen with shrewdness and a refined taste for some less frequented corners, the trombone returns, absent from Rava’s groups for more or less a decade, from the collaborations with Petrella and Ottolini, and the desire for a comparison with the most difficult instrument, the one that requires daily practice and trained “lips”: the trumpet.

The future horizon is represented by the umpteenth young discoveries, the drummer (and singer) Evita Polidoro, and the trombonist Matteo Paggi, two “borderline” musicians between jazz and other sound worlds such as rock and classical, able to bring personal contributions to the interpretation of the material on the program.

Just as the voice of Francesco Diodati’s guitar looks forward, who together with Francesco Ponticelli represents the continuity with the recent history of Rava’s groups: the electronic notes, the ambient backgrounds, the noises, the phrasing and the fragmentations produced by his instrument are the current and prospective declination of a way of understanding creative freedom that is familiar to those who have long followed the most famous Italian jazz musician in activity, who summarizes the project as follows.

“With this group I feel like I’m on an ideal island, where everyone gives and everyone receives what they need. There is great freedom but mutual respect, everyone listens to the other, as in a perfect democracy that only jazz can represent. The musicians all have this great, almost telepathic, ability to listen and interact with inputs.

But it also takes courage to stay on this island. Surrounded at times by a threatening sea, at times less so, given the very difficult times we are living in, it still remains my ideal island where I love to live and play.”

We start right from Diodati’s feedback in “Lavori casalinghi” to find immediately after the trumpet with which an increasingly incandescent dialogue is born, up to the theme, imaginative and typical of Rava’s melancholic poetry that introduces a broad improvised dialogue between the hyperboles of the trombone, the frayed notes of the trumpet and the guitar.

A debut that well summarizes the circulatory system of the Fearless Five, in series with the classic “The Trail” (from the French adventure on Label Bleu “Rava Noir“), here animated by a sparkling funky and Latin vein in which Paggi’s trombone seems in complete harmony, and with a relic from an old Gala album “Animals” recorded in 1987 in a quartet with Beggio, Mancinelli and Di Castri, “Spider Blues“, here in excellent form thanks to the composite rhythmic carpet provided by Polidoro and Ponticelli, to Diodati’s psycho blues digressions and to the changes of direction managed by the leader’s trumpet in a path from quiet to a hot jam session.

But it doesn’t end here. It must be said of the convulsive and feverish collective homage to free and to one of its major exponents of “Cornettology” and its appendix, the breathless race of “Infant“. There are short fragments dedicated to melody such as “Lady Orlando“, “Fragile” and my favorite, “Bell flower“, examples of the unchanged ability to call, with the breath of that instrument, to gather the feelings.

From “Rava Noir” also comes an “Amnesia”, with ecstatic and alienating atmospheres, accentuated by the ethereal vocals of Evita Polidoro who here replaces the muted trumpet of the original.

It closes with the return home in two minutes of “Le solite cose” now almost a theme song for Enrico Rava, introduced by the two wind instruments and then expanded to all five without fear.