Enrico Rava e Stefano Bollani
Montréal Diary/B

The first time I saw Enrico Rava and Stefano Bollani, I was in a small village in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines. They held a small concert in the courtyard of a stone farmhouse. An August night: more mosquitoes than listeners. Connoisseurs, these insects…

The rarefied atmosphere of the (I use a shameful term) location married with Bollani's strumming, which peeled away from within the passionate compositions of Rava, stuffing them with dreamy escapes into abstruse genres. Everything was carnivalized. The pieces thinned and stretched, assumed poses, then burst out laughing, seemed dead, and suddenly, were reborn. A triumphant mix of genres, colors, sensations. Blame it on jazz. Which allows you to play with everything. An everlasting childhood sport, after all. After an hour and a quarter of pure fun, the show ends.

Exactly a year later, an R&B album recorded in Montreal lands in my hands. I hesitate, thinking that eighteen euros aren’t pistachios, but then I take my heart and wallet in hand and head to the checkout. The first notes of Bollani create a sound roundelay, Rava enters the vortex with the lightness typical of those who haven't lost the desire to play. However, the voice of his trumpet seems initially insecure, perhaps fearing that this young pianist will make him look bad in front of the attentive Canadian audience. “You can't play Ufo Robot in the folds of these pieces… especially in front of these assholes who speak French…” he must have thought. And indeed, the album flows without any major upheavals.

Yet, in the simple greatness of pieces like “Theme for Jessica”, “Tango for Vasquez y Pepita”, “Le Solite Cose”, the magic of that summer little concert reappears. Only in a different form. And then you see her, Jessica, fleeing, and the trumpet follows her in a whirlwind of very fast notes, “Le Tue Mani” are those of the girl to whom you said a year ago “I won’t forget you”, Vasquez and Pepita are two thirty-somethings dancing in the dust of Mexico City, “Le solite cose” are those things there, as they've always been… aware of few certainties and much everyday life. A continuous epiphany. In an album that seems like a book, for its ability to evoke stories, places, people, objects.

Blame it on jazz. A sport for certified illusionists…