Stefano Battaglia

Songways (ECM 2286)

Songways Agrandir l'image

Songways

Stefano Battaglia

ECM

602537245543

ECM 135648

ECM 2286

JAZZ

1

CD 16,98 €

Italian pianist Stefano Battaglia’s trio received much critical praise for the 2009 ECM recording “The River of Anyder”, with Down Beat writing of “novel and utterly delightful lyricism” and allaboutjazz.com hailing it as “one of the year’s most beautiful piano recordings: an undercurrent of gentle push-and-pull, flowing beneath its endless wellspring of haunting melodism, gives it its depth and weight, even as its diaphanous interactionsuggests an evolving language.” Songways, recorded in April 2012, is precisely concerned with the further evolution of that musical language.

“The new step”, Stefano Battgalia explains, represents “a new harmonic balance between archaic modal pre-tonal chant and dances, pure tonal songs and hymns and abstract texture.” Songs, chants and dances – each of the forms offers Battaglia and bassist Salvatore Maiore plenty of room to develop lyrical ideas. And, as the trio has developed, an expanded space has opened up for the drums also, giving Roberto Dani opportunities for textural shading and for playing melodically across the kit, hypersensitive to the pitches of drums and cymbals.

PERSONNEL:

STEFANO BATTAGLIA,
piano
SALVATORE MALORE, double bass
ROBERTO DANI, drums

Recorded April 19-21, 2012 at Auditorio Radiotelevisione scizzera, Lugano

TRACKS:

01 . Euphonia Elegy
02 . Ismaro
03 . Vondervotteimittis
04 . Armonia
05 . Mildendo Wide Song
06 . Monte Analogo
07 . Abdias
08 . Songways
09 . Perla
10 . Babel Hymn