The music of Charles Mingus is important here and we gravitated immediately to the deathless beauty of Mingus Ah Um (Columbia, 1959) classic 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,' the bass icon's homage to Lester Young.
Music is the Answer begins with a co-write 'Ottobre' loose enough to be an improvisation and coherent enough to jump species into what we all want - in the moment full-on creation in real time, the spontaneity unforced but meaningful borne of immersion and top musicianship, not just a jam.
Criteria fulfilled
Far from a jam. Piano, double bass and drums are the main ingredients led by fabulously fluent Italian pianist Domenico Sanna along with DC born bassist the Hargrovian Ameen Saleem who reunites from his days in his band The Groove Lab more than a decade ago with fellow US jazzer Gregory Hutchinson who more recently was on Soweto Kinch's 5-star satirical masterstroke White Juju with the LSO issued a couple of years ago.
Mingus aspect makes sense
Domenico's 'Tea for Art' is when things get really motoring. Hutchinson can go into hard bop mode at ease when he needs to. 'Mingus Overture' is brief but cosmic. And then we get into the suitably spacey version of 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' the two folding into one another and this aspect of the album makes sense.
'Possibility' again given it's credited as a co-write is conceivably but not necessarily an improvisation. Regardless of such chin stroking the trio again come alive here with Saleem fundamental in the tonality.
Italian player Sanna born in the coastal city of Gaeta, south of Rome, released standards strewn Too Marvelous for Words 14 years ago. He comes over far more Elmo Hope and Bud Powell-like in those days.
Check Sanna playing a solo concert in Gaeta in the video
The treatment of Jimmy Van Heusen's 'Darn That Dream' first recorded by Mildred Bailey with the Benny Goodman Orchestra and released in 1940 does not sound fogey-ish at all. And it could so easily have been. But Sanna title track 'Music is the Answer' which has percussive effects coming towards the end of the album has a great lightness and far more immediacy to it. Then the album takes a more expansive direction on 'Nocturne Gaetano' (a home town homage?) when Italian altoist Gabriel Marciano joins and his compatriot drummer Fabio Sasso is also credited.
L-r: Ameen Saleem, Domenico Sanna, Greg Hutchinson. Photo: FSNT
Comments