Paolo Fresu / Uri Caine
Things

Drawers

Opening a drawer, we can find forgotten objects, things seemingly worthless but that hold the immense charm of evoking memories: a postcard from a distant friend, an old diary full of notes, a broken lighter, a forgotten photograph... but there are also other drawers, the intangible ones of memory, equally important and filled with "things". Everyone has their own, and Paolo Fresu and Uri Caine's drawers are overflowing with imagination, courage, passion, and above all, notes. In this album, they gift them to us divided between standards and original pieces that play on lively contrasts.

Thus, among the tracks of this album, we hear motifs always wonderful like "Everything Happens To Me", "Dear Old Stockholm", and "I Loves You Porgy" interpreted with the usual well-known skill by the two, through intense dialogues between piano and trumpet. In this way, Fresu and Caine demonstrate the ever-fresh vitality of these tunes, which don't need sophistication to emanate their magic. Moreover, in the middle, we find other music at the antipodes like Miles Davis's "Solar" and an Italian classic "E se domani", which find in the relationship between Fresu and Caine their common denominator. The structure of these pieces appears simple with an initial exposition and subsequent development. Then tension and relaxed swing intersect in such a fluid and natural way that it perhaps doesn't provide jolts, but compensates by transmitting much class and refinement.

But if it were only like this, "Things" (Blue Note Records - 2006) would probably be just another beautiful album among many, characterized by yet another impeccable execution of timeless notes. But it's not, because alongside the cited pieces there are, indeed, some original fragments. These, often consistent with their titles, highlight temperament, value, courage, impetuosity, lapilli. Take for instance "Frammento di re Fosco" which, with electronic games, loops, and effects, changes the album's listening rhythm in just under a minute, leaving a sense of sweet disorientation, so different from the emotional involvement of the standards. These small interludes thus have the power to alter the character of the album, which doesn't result linear but rationally mad by alternating subdued atmospheres with small accelerations and veiled ironies.

This alone could be enough to speak of a beautiful and original album, but to add another adjective one must mention the moment that alone is worth all the listening: the delicate, bitter, poignant, and nocturnal sweetness of Monteverdi's "Si dolce il tormento". It is incredible to discover how an eternal and inherently perfect music can gain new life from the painful dialogue between Fresu's trumpet and Caine's bouncing Fender Rhodes electric piano. It becomes wonderful to let oneself be lulled by this melody that leaves a feeling so poignant and melancholic as to be like awakening with a dream in your heart.

A beautiful, original album with a wonderful passage capable of gently accompanying the arrival of this autumn. Then one day, having turned into a memory, it can join the thousands of other "things" that populate the drawers of our life.