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Rating:
This excellent live album by Paolo Fresu and Furio Di Castri (Audion Recordings label) captures part of the concert held in July 1999 at the Enoteca Italiana at the Medici Fortress of Siena, at the end of the annual master classes of 'Siena Jazz' where our two artists are teachers.
Fresu and Di Castri are two musicians who have often experimented with their instruments (trumpet and double bass) without ever compromising the lyricism and poetry of their compositions or reinterpretations of classic standards.
This LIVE performance composed of pieces by the authors themselves along with some famous covers, only confirms the great musical eclecticism of the two artists who manage to extract absolutely new and unexpected sounds from their instruments, creating a precious, unusual, and fascinating soundscape. It is certainly a jazz recording, but at the same time, it demonstrates how this music has the ability to embrace different horizons, creatively appropriating them. Many musicians feel the need to expand its boundaries (assuming jazz ever had real boundaries), just think of Charles Lloyd or Jan Garbarek.
The recording quality is excellent and certainly preserves the pathos of the live event through the use of only 3 microphones, utilizing the direct signal coming from the simple setups of the two musicians' instruments.
The CD is the most easily purchasable format (approximately 15 € on the site) with excellent audio quality. Let us not forget that the Italian 'Audion' builds and sells high-quality valve electronics and speakers, and thus, its very limited production is no different. So much so that Audion has also decided to release a 180 gr. vinyl (limited to 500 copies) with a different cover from the CD version. A very Fellini-esque and attractive cover.
The only moderately negative note of this vinyl is its background noise and some excessive crackling that I observed in the two copies I tested. However, this is offset by an excellent audio performance.
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