Stefano Onorati & Fulvio Sigurtà – Extended Singularity
(Caligola Records 2346. Album review by Frank Graham)

Amongst the many revealing insights in LJN’s recent interview with Fulvio Sigurtà (trumpet, flugelhorn/ link below) were his reflections on Wayne Shorter’s last great quartet (“the quintessence of risk, and therefore the quintessence of trust”). Sigurtà’s affection for the London scene following his 14 year sojourn in the capital clearly remains undimmed, but now back in his native Italy full-time he performs internationally and is a faculty member at the Conservatorio di Rovigo in the Northeastern province of Veneto.

One of Sigurtà’s current projects is his longstanding duo Singularity, with pianist Stefano Onorati. In recent times the duo has been expanded into a quartet, a format which allows them to put Shorter’s liberating musical philosophies into action. Joined by Gabriele Evangelista (bass), first call for Enrico Rava and Stefano Bollani, and Alessandro Paternesi (drums), who played on Sigurtà’s atmospheric 2013 release SPL (CamJazz), the group’s nominal co-leaders may share the writing credits but each freshly minted piece is really more of a collective endeavour.

Opening with the wonderfully spacious ballad “A Moment And Then”, as the rhythmic pulses ebb and flow all four players make an instant mark. “Quintessence” develops quite naturally from Evangelista’s rubato intro, the group coming together to state the theme before the piece opens out into the kind of elastic time-no-changes groove refined and perfected by Davis and Shorter in the mid-‘60s. The bright declamatory melody of “Thrills” recalls the post-NuJazz stylings of Mathias Eick, a marked contrast to the tense “Oslo Twilight”, a brooding piece where pent-up tensions often threaten to breach the surface.

Shorter’s hand is clearly evident on “Parallel Dimension”, where vertical and horizontal patterns collide as the quartet exchanges glancing blows. “Swami”, inspired by a rhythmic pattern (a Korvai) which Sigurtà learned from his Indian music teacher, is as playful as it is enchanting, whilst “Out Of The Blue”, another of Onorati’s roomy ballads, gradually pulls the listener into a deep pool of sound. The complex rhythmic and harmonic turns of “Nighthawks” kindle memories of the late Kenny Wheeler, and it’s one of the set’s compositional highlights. Closing somewhat paradoxically with “First Scene”, the second of Sigurtà’s two compositions, the quartet channel the spirit of Miles’ classic soundtrack to Louis Malle’s 1958 film Ascenseur pour l’échafaud.

Not yet a subscriber of our Wednesday Breakfast Headlines?
Join the mailing list for a weekly roundup of Jazz News.

Fans of Shorter’s later work and Tomasz Stańko’s Suspended Night quartet will find much to enjoy here, and with Enrico Rava providing his full seal of approval in the album’s poetic liner notes, what greater recommendation could there be?

LINKS: Interview with Fulvio Sigurtà
Press kit with quote from Enrico Rave – source adEIdJ