Enrico Pieranunzi, Bert Joris, Frankfurt Radio Big Band, Chet Remembered, Challenge ****

Swinging big bands have a scarcity value and luxury complexion these days maybe more than ever. That makes this sighting by Italian master pianist Enrico Pieranunzi with internationally renowned Belgian trumpeter Bert Joris and the Frankfurt Radio …

Published: 4 Jul 2023. Updated: 10 months.

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Swinging big bands have a scarcity value and luxury complexion these days maybe more than ever. That makes this sighting by Italian master pianist Enrico Pieranunzi with internationally renowned Belgian trumpeter Bert Joris and the Frankfurt Radio Big Band from Germany something of a multi-nation beacon of light and object of fascination given our tastes and stylistic predilections today.

Pieranunzi first met the charismatic Chet Baker in the late-1970s and compositions here he ''composed expressly for Chet'' are on this likeable album that encourages a trip down memory lane but isn't so stuck in the past as that rummaging into jazz history might indicate. Pieranunzi notes that in Joris' playing ''there are clear traces of Chet’s style, reworked in a very personal way''. And fittingly you don't get the feeling at all that Joris is playing a pastiche of Baker - quite the contrary he is instead being completely appropriate to the style and flavour in his role and touch.

The Frankfurt Big Band bearing in mind its firepower knows how to be nimble. And intimacy is not neglected, so for example on third track 'Chet' with Hans Glawischnig's bass line responding to syncopated prodding from Pieranunzi you get a sense of delicacy on the record that is the flip side to say the rip roaring exuberance exhibited on 'Brown Cat Dance.'

Joris and Pieranunzi have collaborated before on 2021's intimate duo album Afterglow also issued by Challenge

With all the Chet Remembered compositions by Pieranunzi and these arranged by Joris the trumpeter's soloing on 'Soft Journey' is the best place to find some of his most involving work. 'Night Bird' later manages to tame the coltish horns and the relatively brash opening tutti in the deft navigation the melody line negotiates leading eventually to superb alto saxophone work from Heinz-Dieter Sauerborn.

Compositions from 1980 release Soft Journey that Pieranunzi recorded in Rome with Chet are included on Chet Remembered and include 'Soft Journey,' 'Brown Cat Dance,' 'Night Bird' and 'Fairy Flowers'

Given the inclusion of tracks such as 'Soft Journey' it is practically obligatory to step back in time and listen to Baker and Pieranunzi together. Overall 'The Real You' is so appealing, probably most beautiful and certainly the sentimental choice the treatment containing all sorts of elements including an unabashed brassiness and a love of melody that is channelled and decanted so carefully. UK CD release is this coming Friday.

Bert Joris and Enrico Pieranunzi, photo: via Proper for Challenge

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Eurojazz radar: Fiona Grond

So where are the new singers this year? Here's a candidate for a bit of sustained interest come the autumn. Take ''magic passwords'' song 'You Call Me' for a spin. Singer Fiona Grond offers the stark airy English language lyric stripped off its …

Published: 3 Jul 2023. Updated: 10 months.

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So where are the new singers this year? Here's a candidate for a bit of sustained interest come the autumn. Take ''magic passwords'' song 'You Call Me' for a spin. Singer Fiona Grond offers the stark airy English language lyric stripped off its eerie almost Enya like inflection of a brittle coating and somehow cracks the code to move it into a lonely cityscape environment instead, arranged eventually for telling contributions by shards of guitar and later saxophone. The album from which it is drawn is called Poesias, a word that can mean ''poetry'' in Italian, Catalan, Occitan and Portuguese and with an added diacritic on the ''i'' in Spanish and Galician. So its internationalism is established in a single 7 letter word.

Swiss singer Fiona Grond covers a Sidsel Endresen and Bugge Wesseltoft Eurojazz late-1990s classic on her upcoming trio release in a guitar and sax setting

Grond is herself from a very multi-lingual country, Switzerland. Hailing from near Zurich here on this ACT release out at the end of August the singer is with guitarist Philip Schiepek - who impressed us a lot on clarinettist Rebecca Trescher's Silent Landscape last year - and alto saxophonist Moritz Stahl. The album to compound the internationalism still further was recorded in Italy by Stefano Amerio, the great sound engineer best known for his work with Manfred Eicher. While most of the tunes are Grond originals 'You Call Me' is a Sidsel Endresen & Bugge Wesseltoft number that appeared on the Norwegian singer and keyboardist duo's 1998 release Duplex Ride and the upcoming album also induces a foray into Bach.

Fiona Grond, photo: Manuel Nieberle