Maurizio Giammarco Quartet
Hornithology

THE REVIEW

"It was a genuine pleasure to play with three masters and to perform my compositions with them. Some of these, which I particularly love, were waiting in a drawer for an opportunity like this. They are all themes inspired by authentic impressions and real-life situations. The kind of stories you tell a bartender, late at night, when you're feeling elated".

If you then tell these stories along with Danilo Rea, Peter Erskine, and Marc Johnson, you can understand how morning arrives in the blink of an eye...

Having wrapped up the adventure with Lingomania, the most influential Italian electric jazz band, which featured people like Enzo Pietropaoli, Roberto Gatto, and Umberto Fiorentino, the saxophonist Maurizio Giammarco in 1988 brings to life his most ambitious project ever. A dream quartet, that pairs the two overseas giants with a very young Danilo Rea, unshaven but already equipped with his fantastic repertoire of lyricism and happy inspirations. Listen to his excellent solo in "No Spanish Night" to believe it...

Giammarco is unjustly little known to the general public, but he boasts a career spanning several decades. A winner of several polls conducted by the magazines "Musica Jazz" and "Fare Musica", he is currently the artistic director of the Jazz Orchestra of Parco della Musica in Rome. He has played with all the greats, has written for cinema and theater, and has collaborated in the tours and recordings of many pop artists, including Mina and Mia Martini.

His tenor saxophone is influenced by Rollins and Coltrane, while on the soprano you can hear more of Shorter's influence.

The album opens with "Old Home", a track that well explains what Giammarco wants to express when he plays: "That mix of intuition, healthy and detached relaxation that characterizes our music, jazz". It may also be healthy relaxation, but let's not forget that on board we have a rhythm section that makes a mark...To gauge the artistic stature of Marc Johnson, it might be enough to say that he was the last bassist of the great Bill Evans. A refined aesthete of the double bass, singable, original, and evocative in solo. Peter Erskine is a monster of eclecticism, comfortable both with Weather Report and in John Abercrombie's trio, he nonchalantly moves from velvet on the cymbals to dynamite on the drums. The unparalleled professionalism of the two means that their presence fits seamlessly within the project. No problem of cohesion between Giammarco and Rea, who musically speaking know each other like the back of their hand: the band immediately hits the ground running, with no shortage of emotions, a desire to play and have fun together.

Here then is the seductive "Sky Walker", the boppish rollercoasters of "End Of A Bop Affair", with an enjoyable stride solo by Rea. And again, the open song of the soprano sax in "Arboreal Code": superb interplay with Rea, once again.

The transfer to CD reveals a few flaws: the sound quality is not unforgettable, and the concluding "Voce Vai Ver" is pleasant but not very cohesive with the rest of the album: it seems added just to increase the CD's length compared to the LP. Padua's Gala Records deserves a big earful for the inadequate treatment given to this little gem, but even more so for not including in the CD booklet the original notes that appeared in the LP. It featured a beautiful, poignant dedication from the friend Daniele Formica to Giammarco. We will have to make a virtue of necessity and focus on the music...