CD ECM Records Stefano Battaglia Trio: In The Morning - Music Of Alec Wilder

2015

Stefano Battaglia - pian
Salvatore Maiore - contrabas
Roberto Dani - tobe

On his sixth album for ECM the Italian pianist and his trio reflect on the work of American composer Alec Wilder (1907 – 1980). “I first came into a more direct contact with Alec Wilder’s music in the early 90s, when I was performing his Sonata for Oboe and Piano and his Sonata for Horn and Piano”, Battaglia remembers. “I had already known some of his popular songs like ‘While We’re Young’, Blackberry Winter’ and ‘Moon and Sand’ through the intense versions Keith Jarrett has recorded. But after working on Wilder’s chamber music I wanted to develop a deeper connection with his intriguing musical universe, and I've discovered an immense hidden treasure.”
Almost three years after their last ECM album ‘Songways’, Battaglia and his partners Salvatore Maiore (bass) and Roberto Dani (drums) develop an almost telepathic rapport on In The Morning, a live recording from April 2014 at Teatro Vittoria in Torino. “My take on Alec Wilder is completely focused on the melodic aspect… after twenty years of study I can totally identify with this music”, Battaglia emphasizes.

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Italian pianist Stefano Battaglia has delved into the catalogue of American composer Alec Wilder for the source of this atmospheric and meditative recording, his sixth release for ECM and third as a trio featuring the bass of Salvatore Maiore and drums of Roberto Dani. […] In the hands of this trio, alert to every nod, rustle, hesitation and shimmer conjured by one of the partners, each piece evolves and casts a spell. […] This focussed and intense set bears repeated listens. Interplay and sympathy between the three musicians sustain the tension and momentum. This music doesn’t rush, but it’s never becalmed and there are many moments of lustrous beauty.
Mike Collins, London Jazz News

Piano trios are becoming something of a speciality within the Italian jazz fraternity and now reaching the venerable age of fifty, leader and pianist Stefano Battaglia demonstrates why he is one of the leading exponents in both his country and on the European continent with this live recording from the Teatro Vittoria in Turin in April 2014. […] Battaglia is very much his own man and devotes the album to an exploration of one of the major, yet lesser known composers of what has become known as the great American songbook in Alec Wilder […] once again an ECM recording of distinction with impeccable sound as ever.
Tim Stenhouse, UK Vibe

Intensely poetic and shiftingly impressionistic in tone and pace […] All beautifully played by this top-flight piano trio.
Robert Shore, Jazzwise