No one can deny that there is only one thing set in stone when discussing or writing about music: it’s simply a question of listening. The renowned music critic and historian Ted Gioia considered this to be the corner stone, the starting point for building everything else, including the enchantment, the ecstasy, and the colours. Listening to the double bass player Michelangelo Scandroglio and his band is to enter a realm in which talent and emotion go hand in hand.
At the age of just twenty-five, the classy Scandroglio, who is also and above all a composer, leads his eponymous quintet, which also includes the percussionist Luca Caruso, the trumpeter Paolo Petrecca, Nicola Caminiti on saxophone, and the pianist Emanuele Filippi, who have been friends since the times when they attended the Siena Jazz International Summer Workshops in their home town. Despite their youth, aged between twenty-two and twenty-six -only the piccolo Bollani, as the jazz critic Pablo Sanz has affectionately nicknamed Filippi, is nearing thirty, and in addition to their experiences, they share a rare quality that is a mixture of youth and maturity. There is a sense of plenitude in their performance (in which we are invited to partake), and carefree delight both in their solos and in the band’s togetherness. There is a mild tension between their technique and vibrant expression.
Staying with Gioia and be- sides listening to the chords, we hear what great jazz musicians do with them. This quintet won the band competition at the 44th Getxo International Jazz Festival, performing on the stage with the remarkable spontaneity of a band with engaging melodies (as members of the jury at the time, we described them as audacious, astonished also by how similar the band leader was to the great Battiato, which created a feeling of empathy from the very start), within the context of a style of jazz that has seen fit to understand that the best conservatories can produce unabashed swing.
It is no surprise that Scandroglio’s track record includes prizes at other European jazz festivals, such as Riga and Veneto. His debut album In the Eyes of the Whale, published in 2020 on Auand Records, has been praised by leading musicians, such as his fellow countryman the trumpeter Paolo Fresu. He has a very personal instinct as a composer, rooted in the European jazz tradition, as his scores also embrace harmonies influenced by Mediterranean folklore. Their genredefying performance is rounded off by the aforementioned Filippi, appearing here as just anoth- er member of the band, but with all trappings of a leader in the making, as shown by his poetic compositions on the keyboard. This same regal authority can be attributed to the two brass players, the saxophonist Caminiti, quite unique in his monologues, and the extraordinary trumpeter Petrecca, whose time and education in New York are readily apparent, with a lyricism closely reminiscent of the aforementioned Paolo Fresu, or even of none other than Chet Baker himself.
Passion, energy, expression, structure, synthesis and originality are just some of their strengths. Together, they suggest a sum of qualities that reflect their commitment to a style of jazz that is uninhibited, uncorseted and unrestrained; an approach whereby, as the true masters such as Thelonious Monk contend, jazz and freedom go
cheek by jowl.
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