Gaetano Liguori Collective Orchestra – Gaetano Liguori Collective Orchestra (1976, LP, Italy)

Lato 1

COLLECTIVE SUITE (21:38)

1 Collective (Solo Fiati)

2 Collective 1

3 Tango,Ultimo?

4 Percussione Bitte

5 For Max

6 Two Bassess

7 Flute

8 Collective 2/ Finale

Lato 2

NUOVA RESISTENZA (18:47)

Musicisti

Alto Saxophone – Edoardo Ricci, Massimo Urbani

Bass – Roberto Del Piano

Contrabass – Roberto Bellatalla

Drums – Filippo Monico, Pasquale Liguori

Flute – Sandro Cesaroni

Piano – Gaetano Liguori

Soprano Saxophone – Giancarlo Maurino

Tenor Saxophone – Sandro Cesaroni

Trombone – Danilo Terenzi

Trumpet – Giancarlo Maurino, Guido Mazzon

Registrazione Effettuata Nei Giorni 3/4-2-1976 Negli Studi PDU-Basilica

The Collective Orchestra was a visionary, short-living creative music collective led by Gaetano Liguori, who was one of the main protagonists of Italian free jazz since the early 70s. It was an important attempt to put together young musicians from the two main towns in Italy, and its respective leading figures: Giorgio Gaslini in Milan and Mario Schiano in Rome. Previous attempts to set up anything similar were, in fact, either frustrated by rivalries between the various personalities or were destined to be one-off events.

Liguori's vision is simply wonderful here – even bolder and more expressive than on his previous works for PDU, and the energy which he summons and transmits throughout is just extraordinary. The near-telepathic interplay of the core set of Gaetano Liguori on piano, Roberto Bellatalla on double bass, Filippo Monico on drums, Guido Mazzon on trumpet, and young musicians Edoardo Ricci, Giancarlo Maurino and Massimo Urbani on soprano and alto saxophones, is given a richly expanded sound palette by the addition of Danilo Terenzi on trombone, Roberto Del Piano on Fender bass and Sandro Cesaroni on flute.

There's something really magical about the reciprocity that occurs when he plays these exceptional improvisers - and the album's still has a "sense of the new" feel (after 40 years!) that's as gripping as anything recorded by Italian ensemble around the same time.

The sound is strong and freely exploratory, at a level that's completely fresh and very striking, and handled here with a wonderful balance between playful arrangements and fierce improvisations.

Guido Mazzon - Il profumo della libertà (1992, CD, Italy)

Finally, there is an album that celebrates the great diversity of trumpeter Guido Mazzon's many talents as a composer, arranger, soloist, and jazz theorist. This set of seven long selections looks deeply into the many facets of modern music that Mazzon has explored and continues to exploit with his lyrical genius, radical approach to experimentalism, and his deep love of jazz tradition. In settings that range from duet to sextet, Mazzon and his collaborators -- which include the incomparably wonderful Ellen Christi -- look deeply into the roots of jazz's vanguard lineage to forge a true Italian avant-garde sensibility. The title track opens the album with a small motif from Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman," which is abandoned almost as soon as it is articulated in favor of a slow, languid, sweeping, wordless vocal from Christi. Mazzon solos around her, sliding lines in between her breaths and soaring over her voice as pianist Umberto Petrin creates a series of changes that can be referenced for tonal modalities over and again. When the full sextet appears on Mazzon's "Il Vecchio Sognava i Leoni," with Renato Geremia's violin and clarinet adding to a colorful grouping which includes Elenora Nervi's tuba, as well as the standard quartet of the previous selection, we hear the deep lyrical leanings of Mazzon toward Italian folk song and the way it articulates itself in free improvisation as thematic anchor and idiomatic stipulation in harmonic constructs and tonal lightning rod -- microtonal free association and whole-tone modulation intertwine through the center of a traditional melody and turn them both, as well as any idea of counterpoint, inside out. Hence, the influences of 20th century composers György Ligeti and Bruno Maderna come to mind. This is a brilliant record that showcases how wide-ranging the Italian avant-garde is in its thinking and playing. Most importantly, it showcases the compositional brilliance of Guido Mazzon, a jazzer who takes the music of the entire universe into consideration when he sits down to write. ~ Thom Jurek