Stefano Zeni - Avalon Songs (2023)

Stefano Zeni, born in 1974, is one of the most important (and rare) exponents of the jazz violin in Italy. There are not many violinists who have marked the history of jazz: among the contemporaries there is certainly the French Jean-Luc Ponty, who wrote on the Zeni’s previous album: "a solo violin album is a great concept! Stefano Zeni did a great job!”. Although Zeni has been on the Italian jazz scene for at least twenty years, this is only his third album as a leader. After "Passaggi circolari", of 2011, and before "Avalon Songs", there is in fact "Parallel Paths", of 2018, the album to which Ponty refers. This solo album is enriched by the presence in two tracks of two special guests as Boris Savoldelli on vocals, and especially Mike Mainieri on vibraphone. After many important collaborations, the violinist from Milan finally returns as leader with an original and interesting unless piano quartet, flanked by Bruno Marini’s superb baritone sax and by bass-and-drum team of Marco Arienti and Alberto Olivieri, as solid as close-knit. The reference to the Ornette Coleman quartets of the late '50s is inevitable, but here Zeni and Marini seem to "float" with skill between hypnotic and circular melodies, almost thematic fragments that then find development in long and exciting improvisations. “Avalon Songs” is an album to listen to in one breath: only by letting yourself by the flow of music you can fully appreciate it.