Tati
Enrico Rava, Stefano Bollani, Paul Motian
- 1The Man I Love
05:54 - 2Birdsong
02:16 - 3Tati
04:36 - 4Casa di bambola
03:41 - 5E lucevan le stelle
05:34 - 6Mirrors
05:52 - 7Jessica Too
03:54 - 8Golden Eyes
04:21 - 9Fantasm
04:03 - 10Cornettology
06:32 - 11Overboard
03:05 - 12Gang of 5
04:06
Jazz Magazine, Disque d’émoi de l’année
Jazzman, Choc de l’année
Jazzman, Choc du mois
Classica-Répertoire, L’événement jazz du mois
Fono Forum, Empfehlung des Monats
Stereoplay, CD des Monats
Audio, CD des Monats
Consigliato da Musica Jazz
Enrico Rava’s exquisite trumpet tone in the service of a dozen ballads is a musical situation preordained to satisfy. With Italian kindred spirit Stefano Bollani on piano and peerless Paul Motian on drums, the results frequently transcend simple satisfaction. On Tati, the trio creates a sound of almost uniform breathtaking beauty with subtle sonic surprises sprinkled throughout. … The material, featuring a half dozen Rava compositions and three classic Motian gems, is perfect for the trio’s personalized approach. … Motian, as always, is the essence of subtlety. He alternately allows the music space to breathe and also pushes it onward with his signature passive-aggressive approach. Pianist Bollani … interpolates classical and pop expertise and experience into the proceedings, but it’s his sense of restraint and his quick-witted responses to the creations of Rava and Motian that is most impressive. However, it’s the engaging warmth and purity of Rava’s tone that dominates the music. His burnished beauty makes the sound.
Michael Point, Downbeat
Tati, in its inspiration and collective execution and continuity, is … very possibly Enrico Rava’s most indispensable recording. The mood is never broken, but evolves. After the Gershwin, everything is originals by members of the trio except a Puccini theme from Tosca, which seamlessly becomes one more fluid form in the spontaneous aesthetic. … Rava’s … ideas are impossible to anticipate as they move in melodic tangents and intuitive flares of energy.
Thomas Conrad, Jazztimes
Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava has a memorable project in hand with Tati. He is working in an unusual trumpet-drums-piano trio configuration, but it works like-crazy on this introspective recording. The opener is a wonderfully melodic version of Gershwin’s “The Man I Love”, though this is no standards record. Ten of the 11 tunes that follow are originals, including three by drummer Paul Motian and one by pianist Stefano Bollani. A good deal of what unfolds here is quiet and elegant, with an intriguingly speculative edge. Rava’s horn sound has a sunsetlike glow to it.
Billboard
Was Enrico Rava und Stefano Bollani im New Yorker Studio zusammengespielt haben, ist eine kleine, stille Sensation. Dazu Paul Motians Drumming. Musik zwischen den Kontinenten, entgrenzt, überhöht. Man möchte sich das vorstellen : Diese weiten Klänge schweben über den Wolkenkratzern, über dieser nervös wirbelnden Stadt. Eine Musik, die hier gänzlich aus der Zeit gefallen ist. ... Trompete, Klavier und Schlagzeug – die Welt kann so einfach sein.
Tilman Urbach, Fono Forum
Man ist versucht, eher von improvisierter Kammermusik zu sprechen als von Jazz. Hier wippt kein Fuß, dafür geht einem das Herz auf, denn die rhapsodisch erzählende Musik atmet in jeder Sekunde. Schon das eröffnende „The Man I Love“ von George Gershwin ist ein Wunder an Transparenz und Reife. Niemand muss hier irgendwas beweisen. ... Das bedeutet keineswegs, dass Rava sich nun in vorhersehbaren Kantilenen des Wohlklangs erginge. Doch seine zutiefst italienische Hingabe an die Melodie bewirkt, dass noch von den gewagtesten seiner Tonverbindungen eine wunderbare Wärme abstrahlt. Sein fast dreißig Jahre jüngerer Partner Stefano Bollani spielt ein hoch virtuoses, dabei mit Tönen durchaus nicht verschwenderisches und von Jazzklischees freies Klavier. Und Paul Motian, dem großen Haushälter am Schlagzeug, genügen meist das seherische Rascheln mit den Besen auf der der Snaredrum und ein sanfter Tritt aufs Hihat-Pedal. Nur manchmal kickt er seine Basstrommel so kräftig, dass sie wie die Pauke einer italienischen Banda klingt. Dann ist alles ganz irdisch – und spielerisch.
Tom R. Schulz, Die Zeit
Motian in dieses phänomenale Duo einzubauen, war eine Idee von Manfred Eicher. Eine typische Produzentenplatte also? Natürlich nicht. Paul Motian fügt sich ein, als wäre er schon immer da gewesen. ... Ob da nun „E lucevan le stelle“ aus Puccinis Tosca oder „Fantasm“ aus der Feder von Paul Motian erklingt, ist eigentlich zweitrangig. Große Künstler eignen sich das Material sowieso an, als wäre es aus ihrem eigenen Fleisch und Blut, und genau das geschieht hier. ... Selten ist die Jazzthetik-Höchstwertung so gerechtfertigt wie hier.
Rolf Thomas, Jazzthetik
Douze miniatures gorges de sens, de sentiment, de musicalité. Des cymbales qui strient l’espace, une trompette qui déclame la main sur le cœur, un piano qui introduit la profondeur de champ… Quoi de plus simple si, de l’un à l’autre, l’œil cligne, la balle rebondit, la complicité sourit. Entre Rava et Bollani, la télépathie est avérée par l’expérience. De la part de Motian, il s’agit carrément d’une philosophie de vie : a-t-il jamais été musicien autrement que dans l’intention fusionnelle, dans le bras-dessus, bras-dessous avec ses compagnons de jeu ? S’agit-il de Puccini, de Gershwin (une version littéralement magique de « The Man I Love ») ou des compositions des trois larrons, le propos est le même : sculpter un instant de beauté pure. Easy Living, l’album précédent du trompettiste, en quintet en énonçait les prémisses. Enrico Rava exprime aujourd’hui un lyrisme incroyablement serein. En apesanteur. Même lorsque la tension affleure, il s’agit d’abord de la sublimer par la phrase juste, l’accord inattendu, la coloration percussive. Comme tout paraît simple lorsque la règle du jeu – less is more – s’énonce avec cette élégance et cette implication!
Alex Dutilh, Jazzman
A ballads album of remarkable musical range and depth, an intensely melodic disc, featuring the unorthodox line-up of trumpet, piano and drums.
Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava’s return, after a 17 year absence, to ECM with “Easy Living” was widely celebrated. “One of the best jazz albums of recent years,” wrote Stuart Nicholson in The Spectator, “a classic at a time when you thought classic jazz albums were a thing of the past.” The album collected international prizes, appeared on many Christmas best-of lists, and took the 2004 Critics Poll of Italy’s Musica Jazz by storm. Editor Filippo Bianchi informed us, “The only category that Enrico Rava did not win is ‘Young Talent’ - in other words he won ‘Musician of the Year’, ‘Best Record of the Year’ and ‘Best Group’, not a bad idea to have him back at ECM I dare say...”
One of the highlights of “Easy Living” was the extraordinary rapport between Rava and the prodigiously talented young pianist Stefano Bollani. “A phenomenon,” the trumpeter says, “a real poet of the piano. His technique is one of the most amazing I’ve ever come across. Every time we play I’m surprised. And we’ve played together hundreds of times.”
Associated for almost a decade now, Enrico Rava and Stefano Bollani also play in duo. Producer Manfred Eicher: “I appreciated their duo playing very much. What they do there is very linear, and I thought about what Paul Motian might bring to their interaction, that he could bring in a horizontal dimension, and waves of sound that would inspire them in new ways. For me, Motian is the great player of waves, a creator of musical depth, and an adagio drummer par excellence. He opens out the space. So that’s how we began: with freely-phrased ballads that developed naturally and organically toward more complex rhythmic constructions.”
“Tati” was recorded in New York’s Avatar Studios. The album opens with George Gershwin’s “The Man I Love”, which veteran jazz followers perhaps associate most strongly with the Miles Davis/Thelonious Monk 1954 version. Davis’s playing has been a touchstone for Rava throughout his career, and Motian, a history man, actually worked with Monk in the 1950s. Bollani feels his way gently in the tune... then dazzles.
Eicher: “Bollani has a refreshingly non-American approach, closer to Martial Solal than the Berklee School”. Bright ideas and a certain wit and cunning prevail. Of his own work Bollani (born 1972) has said that his music “lives under the sign of irony, with a pronounced Italian flavour”, on this disc perhaps truest of his own piece “Casa di bambola” (Dolls’ House).
Throughout “Tati”, Rava’s tone is burnished, secure. In his mid-sixties his playing is even more focused than it was in his thirties, when he started with ECM. “It’s true”, Enrico avers. “In the last six or seven years, I’ve pushed my trumpet playing to a different level, and added half an octave to my range.”
Most of the material on “Tati” – including the beautiful title track, a tribute to French filmmaker Jacques Tati – is Rava’s, naturally and intuitively melodic. The ballads are augmented by Puccini’s “E lucevan le stelle” from “Tosca”: Reinterpreting opera themes has become a Rava speciality, and underlines the notion of a lyrical continuum in Italian music. Enrico’s “Cornetteology”, meanwhile, reveals the trumpeter’s love for the melodic end of free jazz. Early Ornette Coleman is invoked, with exceptionally quick witted interplay among the participants.
Motian also contributes three of his characteristically elliptical pieces. “Birdsong”, suggestive of a missing link between Monk and Erik Satie, has been a concert favourite of Paul’s trio with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano, and “Fantasm” was first recorded on the 1981 ECM album “Psalm” and then reprised recently on Paul’s ECM/: rarum “Selected Recordings” collection. “Gang of 5” is another piece that goes back to the early 1980s and has been played by a number of artists – including the aforementioned Martial Solal.
One of the leading architects of Italian jazz, Enrico Rava was also one of the first Europeans to find wholehearted acceptance from New York’s players. In the mid 1960s he lived in NYC, working regularly with Steve Lacy, Roswell Rudd, Carla Bley and others. In 1969 he formed his first American band featuring a then almost-unknown guitar player, John Abercrombie. Abercrombie was also present on Enrico’s first ECM disc, “The Pilgrim and the Stars” (1975). Other acclaimed albums followed including 1986’s “Volver”, with Dino Saluzzi. Rather like that other great European trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, Rava started out influenced by Miles Davis and Chet Baker, contributed to the development of free jazz, then in his later music found a new and more intensely melodic approach. Form has become more important to him in his later years. Rava looked back on the shape of his career in the book “Note necessaire. Come un’autobiogafia”, issued in 2004 by Italian publisher Minimum Fax.
Stefano Bollani has a burgeoning solo career of his own and is adept in all the idioms. A graduate of Florence’s Cherubini Conservatory he is well versed in classical music, but the early part of his career was spent touring as a keyboardist with Italy’s pop singers. He has described Enrico Rava as his “mentor”, and indeed Rava encouraged him in his transition from the rock and pop world to jazz. Bollani has played on more than 70 albums and participated in concerts with amongst others Pat Metheny, Lee Konitz, Phil Woods, Richard Galliano, Miroslav Vitous and Gato Barbieri. Bollani won the Italian Django d’Or in 2000, and is the first European musician ever to have won the New Star Award of Japanese magazine Swing Journal.
Paul Motian of course is one of jazz’s great veterans. After playing with Monk and Lennie Tristano in the 1950s he made music history with the Bill Evans Trio and went on to rechannel the direction of jazz in his work with Paul Bley and Keith Jarrett. ECM encouraged his growth as a composer and bandleader and recently issued “I Have The Room Above Her” with Motian’s long-standing trio with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano, as well as “Storyteller” by the Marilyn Crispell Trio which features Motian as drummer and songwriter.
Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava’s return, after a 17 year absence, to ECM with “Easy Living” was widely celebrated. “One of the best jazz albums of recent years,” wrote Stuart Nicholson in The Spectator, “a classic at a time when you thought classic jazz albums were a thing of the past.” The album collected international prizes, appeared on many Christmas best-of lists, and took the 2004 Critics Poll of Italy’s Musica Jazz by storm. Editor Filippo Bianchi informed us, “The only category that Enrico Rava did not win is ‘Young Talent’ - in other words he won ‘Musician of the Year’, ‘Best Record of the Year’ and ‘Best Group’, not a bad idea to have him back at ECM I dare say...”
One of the highlights of “Easy Living” was the extraordinary rapport between Rava and the prodigiously talented young pianist Stefano Bollani. “A phenomenon,” the trumpeter says, “a real poet of the piano. His technique is one of the most amazing I’ve ever come across. Every time we play I’m surprised. And we’ve played together hundreds of times.”
Associated for almost a decade now, Enrico Rava and Stefano Bollani also play in duo. Producer Manfred Eicher: “I appreciated their duo playing very much. What they do there is very linear, and I thought about what Paul Motian might bring to their interaction, that he could bring in a horizontal dimension, and waves of sound that would inspire them in new ways. For me, Motian is the great player of waves, a creator of musical depth, and an adagio drummer par excellence. He opens out the space. So that’s how we began: with freely-phrased ballads that developed naturally and organically toward more complex rhythmic constructions.”
“Tati” was recorded in New York’s Avatar Studios. The album opens with George Gershwin’s “The Man I Love”, which veteran jazz followers perhaps associate most strongly with the Miles Davis/Thelonious Monk 1954 version. Davis’s playing has been a touchstone for Rava throughout his career, and Motian, a history man, actually worked with Monk in the 1950s. Bollani feels his way gently in the tune... then dazzles.
Eicher: “Bollani has a refreshingly non-American approach, closer to Martial Solal than the Berklee School”. Bright ideas and a certain wit and cunning prevail. Of his own work Bollani (born 1972) has said that his music “lives under the sign of irony, with a pronounced Italian flavour”, on this disc perhaps truest of his own piece “Casa di bambola” (Dolls’ House).
Throughout “Tati”, Rava’s tone is burnished, secure. In his mid-sixties his playing is even more focused than it was in his thirties, when he started with ECM. “It’s true”, Enrico avers. “In the last six or seven years, I’ve pushed my trumpet playing to a different level, and added half an octave to my range.”
Most of the material on “Tati” – including the beautiful title track, a tribute to French filmmaker Jacques Tati – is Rava’s, naturally and intuitively melodic. The ballads are augmented by Puccini’s “E lucevan le stelle” from “Tosca”: Reinterpreting opera themes has become a Rava speciality, and underlines the notion of a lyrical continuum in Italian music. Enrico’s “Cornetteology”, meanwhile, reveals the trumpeter’s love for the melodic end of free jazz. Early Ornette Coleman is invoked, with exceptionally quick witted interplay among the participants.
Motian also contributes three of his characteristically elliptical pieces. “Birdsong”, suggestive of a missing link between Monk and Erik Satie, has been a concert favourite of Paul’s trio with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano, and “Fantasm” was first recorded on the 1981 ECM album “Psalm” and then reprised recently on Paul’s ECM/: rarum “Selected Recordings” collection. “Gang of 5” is another piece that goes back to the early 1980s and has been played by a number of artists – including the aforementioned Martial Solal.
One of the leading architects of Italian jazz, Enrico Rava was also one of the first Europeans to find wholehearted acceptance from New York’s players. In the mid 1960s he lived in NYC, working regularly with Steve Lacy, Roswell Rudd, Carla Bley and others. In 1969 he formed his first American band featuring a then almost-unknown guitar player, John Abercrombie. Abercrombie was also present on Enrico’s first ECM disc, “The Pilgrim and the Stars” (1975). Other acclaimed albums followed including 1986’s “Volver”, with Dino Saluzzi. Rather like that other great European trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, Rava started out influenced by Miles Davis and Chet Baker, contributed to the development of free jazz, then in his later music found a new and more intensely melodic approach. Form has become more important to him in his later years. Rava looked back on the shape of his career in the book “Note necessaire. Come un’autobiogafia”, issued in 2004 by Italian publisher Minimum Fax.
Stefano Bollani has a burgeoning solo career of his own and is adept in all the idioms. A graduate of Florence’s Cherubini Conservatory he is well versed in classical music, but the early part of his career was spent touring as a keyboardist with Italy’s pop singers. He has described Enrico Rava as his “mentor”, and indeed Rava encouraged him in his transition from the rock and pop world to jazz. Bollani has played on more than 70 albums and participated in concerts with amongst others Pat Metheny, Lee Konitz, Phil Woods, Richard Galliano, Miroslav Vitous and Gato Barbieri. Bollani won the Italian Django d’Or in 2000, and is the first European musician ever to have won the New Star Award of Japanese magazine Swing Journal.
Paul Motian of course is one of jazz’s great veterans. After playing with Monk and Lennie Tristano in the 1950s he made music history with the Bill Evans Trio and went on to rechannel the direction of jazz in his work with Paul Bley and Keith Jarrett. ECM encouraged his growth as a composer and bandleader and recently issued “I Have The Room Above Her” with Motian’s long-standing trio with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano, as well as “Storyteller” by the Marilyn Crispell Trio which features Motian as drummer and songwriter.
