Enrico Rava
New York Days

Vittorio walks down the street smoking the fourth cigarette of the evening, an evening that has barely begun. The lights of the neon signs reflect on the wet pavement, painting it with white, red, green. The cigarette ends, he takes a moment to put it out, and already his hand reaches for the coat pocket, where another dose of poison is about to be taken, lit, and inhaled by his lungs. Chemical poison that mixes with the poison of life.

But Vittorio is not alone, there are presences, ghosts that speak through musical instruments, accompanying him in his wandering. And it is a wandering without direction, solitary along with his Marlboro. The sound of his steps echoes in a dark alley, his hand touches the wall, fingers move like those of a young pianist, the cigarette he has in his mouth is as warm as the trumpet of an old man from Trieste. The thoughts begin to pile up in Vittorio's mind, the job that isn't going well, a woman he doesn't have, a life that seems not to be going in the right direction.

Meanwhile, the ghosts behind him dialogue forming the backdrop to the ghosts of his soul; the warm, deep sound of a saxophone wraps around that of a trumpet that resounds powerful and velvety. A bass and a drum describe the rhythm: solid legs of a melody that otherwise would be so volatile and elusive as to remain too abstract.

Vittorio reaches the bridge over the river, a black course of water flowing slow and placid, like the ghosts of his past that pursue him, like the memory of the eyes of "Lulu", those beloved eyes that expressed love, but for another person. The evening progresses, the faces of the people met along the street enter the eye, but do not settle in the brain, too busy wallowing in the viscous flow of thoughts without logical continuity. Happiness, sadness, carefreeness, and melancholy, memories overlap each other, merging with fake anecdotes more or less plausible, suspended between the improbable and the fantastic: mind games for escaping the heaviness of living.

All this while the ghosts continue to flirt with their instruments, creating a nocturnal, warm, vital, and melancholic sound, a music that emerges from the black of the night, sketching new shades, new colors, thanks to the brushstrokes of Paul Motian, who armed with sticks, paints the canvas exceptionally, perfectly following and outlining the mood of the moment.

The music is so beautiful, seductive, and emotionally charged that one risks falling into it, drowning in the sea of notes poured out by Bollani's piano, dancing with the clouds along with Rava's trumpet, sometimes soft and velvety, sometimes in spasmodic contortion, engaged in a dialogue with Mark Turner's tenor sax ("Outsider"), with a good Lanny Grenadier on double bass completing this splendid quintet.

The night is almost over and the sky begins to brighten, the cigarettes ran out a while ago and the money to buy more ran out even earlier, the memories of the past have finished playing ball with his mind. He checks the time: half-past six in the morning. The ghosts also vanish, bidding farewell with a final trumpet blast and a caress to the cymbal. For them, it would be unseemly to be found in the world of ordinary mortals during daylight hours, but they will return to accompany the nights of all the Vittorios who have the good sense to listen to them, to let themselves be led by them and be accompanied, into the great ocean of their own inner life.