Claudio Fasoli Emerald Quartet - Reflections (2010)

Claudio Fasoli should be ranked among the elite group, and "Reflections" is a tangible sign of elegance, class and the search for new sounds that the famous Venetian musician managed to voice. Eleven compositions, all signed by Fasoli, influenced by the wonderful influence of his Scandinavian acquaintances. The Emerald Quartet, now consolidated and well-established, with Mario Zara on piano, Yuri Golubev on double bass and Marco Zanoli on drums, is the perfect transliteration of the leader's compositional and emotional thinking, which encompasses soprano and tenor. The modern sound, with a strong emotional impact, is acidic in places, like Stucky, with a structure in continuous tension or Fortuny, which is held on the Zara piano, here swinging and dissonant, around which the strings of Golubev's vibrating double bass are virtuosically twisted. They release a ringing mix of soprano-saxophone Fazoli. The convolutions of modern music are well worked out in almost all works and contribute to the creation of the feeling of the record, but they dust off the top in Widman, innervated by the repeating note of the piano, around which a fabulous piece, stretched by overlays of the built-in soprano and double bass with drums and cymbals of Zanoli can make a musical episode even more hypnotic. Claudio Fasoli does not disdain ballads, even if with a spicy modern flavor, such as Fenice, full of tonal variations, marked by the classicism-soaked pianism of Mario Zara and the capacious textures of Yuri Golubev. And also Grunwald with a long solipsistic introduction by Zara, carefully playing pauses and silences to release the warm energy of the piece, which is reflected from the hissing soprano leader. a variety of shapes and styles that also leads to more rocky gorges, such as those inhabited by Hermada, in a tense and intense dialogue between the clear phrases of Fasoli and the precise rhythmic scans of Zanoli. And they again acquire a hypnotic coloring in the superimposition of seemingly free and well-noticeable sounds heard in the Fog. He plays in a more modern mainstream, enlivened by interesting metric solutions in Pauly and acquiring a sparkling cantabile in Gibigianna, where chunky Zanoli drums stand in the foreground. Claudio Fasoli still surprises with his innate chameleonism, his personal taste for the right note, for broad arpeggios, always developing, as well as his compositional thinking, which in "Reflections" stimulates mnemic activity with a long look at the future of jazz.