Giovanni Guidi Trio - City Of Broken Dreams (2016) [Hi-Res]

Pianist Giovanni Guidi, is one of the most outstanding musicians to have emerged from the ranks of Italian jazz in the last decade and has already made his presence felt on Enrico Rava’s “Tribe” and “On The Dancefloor” albums. Rava praises both Guidi’s “limitless curiosity” as an improviser and his “relentless refinement” of touch and musical taste, and the pianist continually proves that those qualities are not opposites. His first leader date for ECM is a glowing collection of self-penned tunes, simultaneously inner-directed and creatively daring, with many adroit exchanges between the musicians and plenty of space given also to bassist Thomas Morgan, whose role in the Guidi Trio is perhaps analogous to Scott LaFaro’s in the Evans Trio. Portuguese drummer João Lobo is another highly original musician, poetically shading the music with a delicate tracery of cymbals.

City of Broken Dreams” is the ECM leader debut of the prodigiously gifted Italian pianist Giovanni Guidi. Guidi has previously appeared on two discs for the label with Enrico Rava – “Tribe” with the Rava Quintet and the live “On The Dance Floor” with the Parco della Musica Jazz Lab band. Now he introduces his new international trio with US bassist Thomas Morgan and Portuguese drummer João Lobo, and a shimmering inner-directed music of striking originality. Lyrical free-floating ballads predominate, and the tunes seem optimally set up to showcase the strengths of his confrères. Bassist Thomas Morgan has as much room to move in this unit as Scott LaFaro had in the Bill Evans trios, or Gary Peacock in Paul Bley’s groups – invited in other words to interact in the foreground of the music. Guidi is generous with his space in these pieces, all from his pen, every one of them turning some unexpected corners.

In these haunting compositions, melodies can suddenly scuttle crabwise, and rhythms may be dislocated and stretched, sometimes setting up considerable tension, as on “No Other Possibility”. Sometimes, as on “The Way Some People Live”, Guidi casts down a carpet of gentle arpeggios for Morgan to glide across. João Lobo, an acute commentator, punctuates “The Impossible Divorce”, with disconsolate lunges at tom-toms and scrapes sticks agonizingly across cymbals at the climax of “Late Blue”. As the impressions accumulate, the “City of Broken Dreams” begins to seem like a short story collection, a series of vignettes from a lonesome place, to which the listener will feel drawn to return.

Giovanni Guidi, piano
Thomas Morgan, double bass
João Lobo, drums

Tracklist:
01. Giovanni Guidi Trio - City Of Broken Dreams (7:17)
02. Giovanni Guidi Trio - Leonie (3:52)
03. Giovanni Guidi Trio - Just One More Time (4:13)
04. Giovanni Guidi Trio - The Forbidden Zone (3:39)
05. Giovanni Guidi Trio - No Other Possibility (6:26)
06. Giovanni Guidi Trio - The Way Some People Live (6:06)
07. Giovanni Guidi Trio - The Impossible Divorce (3:36)
08. Giovanni Guidi Trio - Late Blue (6:16)
09. Giovanni Guidi Trio - Ocean View (3:28)
10. Giovanni Guidi Trio - City Of Broken Dreams (Variation) (7:12)