Claudio Filippini, Andrea Lombardini & U.T. Gandhi - Two Grounds (Live) (2018)

"It was Joe Zawinul, in his early work with Weather Report and, before that, with Miles Davis, who discovered that you could make a Fender Rhodes piano sound like a church organ or bells from a drowned cathedral, just by altering the settings and experimenting with the pedals. So it’s not surprising to find two Zawinul composition in this compelling “piano trio” (but so much more) set; what is surprising is that they come from pre-Weather Report and from the days when Zawinul was still trying to blend classicism with the blues. Claudio Filippini and his comrades Andrea Lombardini and U.T. Gandhi share a deep and utterly secure sense of musical structure, which is why they’re able to take on the “everyone solos, all of the time” philosophy and make something original and strong out of it, even as they reference jazz history. Opening with Hermeto Pascoal’s peerless “Little Church” is a masterstroke; even if you don’t know the 1970 Miles Davis version, with the composer whistling and playing electric piano, you’ll hear how rooted this version is in the sometimes troublous history of electric jazz. Filippini, Lombardini and Gandhi, though, have emerged in a generation where no special pleading for electricity is required, and besides there is enough kinetic energy in all their playing to make distinctions of “electric” and “acoustic” seem not so much irrelevant as rather quaint. Peerless, switched-on modern music". (Brian Morton)

Claudio Filippini ( Piano, Fender Rhodes, Keyboards )
Andrea Lombardini ( Bass, Electric Bass, Colascione Lute )
U.T. Gandhi ( Drums, Percussion, Live Electronics )