CD ECM Records Giovanni Guidi: City Of Broken Dreams

2013

Giovanni Guidi - pian
Thomas Morgan - contrabas
Joao Lobo - tobe

This is an enchanting trio album by Guidi, the 28-year-old from Foligno in Italy widely pitched as one of the world's best jazz-piano newcomers – on his first ECM date as a leader. American double-bassist Thomas Morgan and Portuguese drummer João Lobo share equally in the transformation of a series of deceptively simple but very different folk-melody themes into collective-improv meditations [...] Guidi's touch is subtle, and his sound rings; he constantly invites Morgan to reflect on the briefest of piano fragments [...] But this is a dynamic and accessible set, too, with tracks resembling Paul Bley's early interpretations of Carla Bley themes, waltzing ballads as inviting as Jacques Brel love songs, frostily delicate tunes that segue into sinister marches. This might be another unplugged jazz piano trio, but this one sweeps straight into the frontrunners.
[ John Fordham, The Guardian ]

Until now, Guidi has been an enfant terrible of the piano, exploding Ornette Coleman and Radiohead into jagged fragments, smashing keys with the flats of his hands in wild tantrums. On his new album he has turned inward. Nine originals are proffered like a casting of runes. Guidi follows tides of mood. His lyricism is rapt, though still tense with implicit energy. [...] It would be difficult to overstate the importance of bassist Thomas Morgan to the poetry and power of this album. He never solos and never stops soloing. His intricate, haunting lines are a continuous, revelatory second perspetive on the elusive truth Guidi seeks. ECM has had two great Italian pianists, Stefano Bollani and Stefano Battaglia. Now they have three.
[ Thomas Conrad, Stereophile ]

Some people still refer to Euro jazz with a sneer, the term infected with connotations of music that is insufficiently African-American. Of course, the argument is absurd; for 50 years jazz has been a language rather than a style, and surely the broader the use of that language, the better.
Enter a brave new voice on piano: young Italian Giovanni Guidi, a protege of brilliant trumpeter Enrico Rava. He has penned 12 pieces for which the word ‘compositions’ seems too hard-edged. They are more like aural dreams enacted by his piano, Thomas Morgan's bass and the drums of Portugal's Joao Lobo. Guidi is a minimalist who likes merely to sketch his pieces at the piano and leave much of the colouring to Morgan. The bassist's extensive work with the late Paul Motian bequeathed him an almost unparalleled instinct for leaving space. This ability to phrase unexpectedly but tellingly is ideal for Guidi's material, and the sheer sonic mass of his bass grounds the fragility and flitting figures of the songs. Lobo, meanwhile, does not so much colour as shade, his sparse drumming forms the shadows behind Morgan's monstrous notes and Guidi's more delicate ones. One of Guidi's melodies, Leonie, borders on being too sweet, but even this is saved by Morgan's idiosyncratic placement of notes. A couple of pieces are sinewy and the rest more wistful, with four (including the title track) so beautiful they almost hurt.
[ John Shand, The Sydney Morning Herald ]