CD ECM Records Enrico Rava, Stefano Bollani, Paul Motian: Tati

2005

Enrico Rava - trompeta
Stefano Bollani - pian
Paul Motian - tobe

A ballads album of remarkable musical range and depth, an intensely melodic disc, featuring the unorthodox line-up of trumpet, piano and drums.

One of the highlights of “Easy Living” was the extraordinary rapport between Rava and the prodigiously talented young pianist Stefano Bollani. “A phenomenon,” the trumpeter says, “a real poet of the piano. His technique is one of the most amazing I’ve ever come across. Every time we play I’m surprised. And we’ve played together hundreds of times.”

“Tati” was recorded in New York’s Avatar Studios. The album opens with George Gershwin’s “The Man I Love”, which veteran jazz followers perhaps associate most strongly with the Miles Davis/Thelonious Monk 1954 version. Davis’s playing has been a touchstone for Rava throughout his career, and Motian, a history man, actually worked with Monk in the 1950s. Bollani feels his way gently in the tune... then dazzles.

Eicher: “Bollani has a refreshingly non-American approach, closer to Martial Solal than the Berklee School”. Bright ideas and a certain wit and cunning prevail. Of his own work Bollani (born 1972) has said that his music “lives under the sign of irony, with a pronounced Italian flavour”, on this disc perhaps truest of his own piece “Casa di bambola” (Dolls’ House).

Throughout “Tati”, Rava’s tone is burnished, secure. In his mid-sixties his playing is even more focused than it was in his thirties, when he started with ECM. “It’s true”, Enrico avers. “In the last six or seven years, I’ve pushed my trumpet playing to a different level, and added half an octave to my range.”

Most of the material on “Tati” – including the beautiful title track, a tribute to French filmmaker Jacques Tati – is Rava’s, naturally and intuitively melodic. The ballads are augmented by Puccini’s “E lucevan le stelle” from “Tosca”: Reinterpreting opera themes has become a Rava speciality, and underlines the notion of a lyrical continuum in Italian music. Enrico’s “Cornetteology”, meanwhile, reveals the trumpeter’s love for the melodic end of free jazz. Early Ornette Coleman is invoked, with exceptionally quick witted interplay among the participants.

Motian also contributes three of his characteristically elliptical pieces. “Birdsong”, suggestive of a missing link between Monk and Erik Satie, has been a concert favourite of Paul’s trio with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano, and “Fantasm” was first recorded on the 1981 ECM album “Psalm” and then reprised recently on Paul’s ECM/: rarum “Selected Recordings” collection. “Gang of 5” is another piece that goes back to the early 1980s and has been played by a number of artists – including the aforementioned Martial Solal.

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Jazz Magazine - Disque d’émoi de l’année
Jazzman - Choc de l’année
Jazzman - Choc du mois
Classica-Répertoire - L’événement jazz du mois
Fono Forum - Empfehlung des Monats
Stereoplay - CD des Monats
Audio - CD des Monats
Consigliato da Musica Jazz

Tati, in its inspiration and collective execution and continuity, is … very possibly Enrico Rava’s most indispensable recording. The mood is never broken, but evolves. After the Gershwin, everything is originals by members of the trio except a Puccini theme from Tosca, which seamlessly becomes one more fluid form in the spontaneous aesthetic. … Rava’s … ideas are impossible to anticipate as they move in melodic tangents and intuitive flares of energy.
Thomas Conrad, Jazztimes

Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava has a memorable project in hand with Tati. He is working in an unusual trumpet-drums-piano trio configuration, but it works like-crazy on this introspective recording. The opener is a wonderfully melodic version of Gershwin’s “The Man I Love”, though this is no standards record. Ten of the 11 tunes that follow are originals, including three by drummer Paul Motian and one by pianist Stefano Bollani. A good deal of what unfolds here is quiet and elegant, with an intriguingly speculative edge. Rava’s horn sound has a sunsetlike glow to it.
Billboard

Was Enrico Rava und Stefano Bollani im New Yorker Studio zusammengespielt haben, ist eine kleine, stille Sensation. Dazu Paul Motians Drumming. Musik zwischen den Kontinenten, entgrenzt, überhöht. Man möchte sich das vorstellen : Diese weiten Klänge schweben über den Wolkenkratzern, über dieser nervös wirbelnden Stadt. Eine Musik, die hier gänzlich aus der Zeit gefallen ist. ... Trompete, Klavier und Schlagzeug – die Welt kann so einfach sein.
Tilman Urbach, Fono Forum