Paolo Fresu
Night On The City

LA RECENSIONE

The city is a strange place; during the day most of us hate it. We get annoyed by the sound of horns, the traffic, the rude person who wants to cut in line at the post office, and we go on with this sad step. However, at night it's different. Leaning on a balcony with hands resting on the railing, the perspective changes: where once there were honking cars, now there's only the road, occasionally trodden by some sporadic vehicle, the street lamps, blind just a few hours before, now seem like small metropolitan stars illuminating the way for modern wanderers, and finally that silence, magical, almost unreal, that speaks, telling stories of dreams, disappointments, loves, in a few words, whispering life.

In this frame, we kind of like the city; it's different, it makes us think, and in the end, we even regret ignoring it, trampling on it, and insulting it throughout the day, so we observe it, calm, relaxed, imagining a personal soundtrack for our thoughts, a light music, at times dreamy, melancholic but never sad. In other words, it makes us think of what Paolo Fresu and his quintet proposed in 1995 in that little Jazz gem known as "Night On The City". The gestation of the said album was quick; it was recorded at night (at the end of a session related to the work "Ensalada Mistica") and spontaneously, capturing all the magic that is created when a group of experienced and passionate musicians let themselves go to those magical and melancholic suggestions arising from the nocturnal peace.

The pieces are all very soft, relaxed, and dreamy, made to do oneself good, to be lulled in the torpor of one's thoughts and leave the world outside for a while, entering the apartment of one's soul, of which, fortunately, only we hold the keys.

In conclusion, we are facing a work full of pathos and poetry, where each musician contributes to the sound architecture of the various pieces with their own experience and technical/compositional baggage, giving the whole that aura of a single great suite where ideas, characters, and feelings intersect, whose common denominator is the charm that the city exercises at night.

Line-up: Paolo Fresu: Trumpet; Tino Tracanna: Tenor, Soprano Saxophone; Roberto Cipelli: Piano; Attilio Zanchi: Double Bass; Ettore Fioravanti: Drums.