The jazz stylings of Italian trumpeter and flugelhornist Enrico Rava, much like that of his Polish counterpart Tomasz Stanko, are a synthesis 1950s Miles Davis and Chet Baker transformed through the fifty years that have elapsed since the release of the first sides which would become Birth of the Cool and the Gerry Mulligan pianoless quartets through the redefining Kind of Blue. It is music that the pedestrian listener would define as jazz based on his or her encounter with countless film noir soundtracks: the frenetic balance between white-hot virtuosity and heroin-cool balladry.

Enrico Rava incorporates these characteristics into his two most recent CAM Jazz releases, La Dolce Vita, an Italian film soundtrack album he shares billing with the great Giovanni Tommaso and Full of Life, where the trumpeter leads his current working quartet. The discs differ in approach, mostly because of the subject matter, but also the active participants. There does exist a common thread passing through both discs and that thread is the leader himself. Rava’s vision is pleasantly conservative, guaranteeing an equally pleasant listening experience. Each demonstrates the depth an accomplished artist reaches while painting within the lines of a given jazz genre.

Tommaso-Rava Quartet
La Dolce Vita
CAM Jazz
2005

It was bassist Giovanni Tommaso who was initially approached with a proposed two disc survey of Italian film music as seen through the jazz prism. La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life is the first of these recordings to be released, Secondo Tempo is the follow up). For La Dolce Vita, Tommaso assembled a quartet of Italy’s jazz aristocracy (which is headed by the bassist). Drummer Roberto Gatto and pianist Stefano Bollani have been steadfast members of the Italian jazz community, performing with a variety of American and European artists. Trumpeter Enrico Rava, like Tommaso, is in a class by himself. His musical roots are easy to spot: Miles Davis and Chet Baker. His trumpet rarely extends beyond the middle register and he uses his vibrato sparingly. The result is the dry ice cool sound affected so well by Paul Desmond and early Art Pepper, except on the trumpet rather than the alto saxophone.

Rava’s approach melds well with Tommaso’s overall arrangement philosophy for the chosen pieces. La Dolce Vita contains precious little anxiety in its music. For example, the two leaders infuse the melodies wrought for Dino Risi’s Profumo di Donna (Scent of a Woman, music by Armondo Trovaiola) and Michael Radford’s Il Postino (The Postman, music by Luis Bacalov) with a languid pathos, one of relaxation and repose. Rava’s approach is wholly melodic with simple lines where he finds “all the pretty notes.” Rava is conservative with improvisation, never losing site of the melody which spawned his explorations. Tommaso exercises the leader’s prerogative and allows himself considerable solo space. His lengthy introduction to “Il Postino” and his solos on “Profumo di Donna” and the title cut display Tommaso’s elastic sense of time and rhythm. The ringer is in the keys. It is pianist Bollani who counters Rava and Tommaso with an improvisatory tension that keeps the music from slipping into a soporific exercise.

La Dolce Vita is perfectly summed in the title piece, the lengthiest cut on the disc. Essentially a suite, “La Dolce Vita” effectively captures the spirit of Fellini and his landmark movie by including every stylistic jazz convention available to the musicians. One moment, the quartet is playing it straight with an almost candy swing and the next each musician plays as if from different galaxies. This piece also contains melodies that will be the most readily recognized. La Dolce Vita is a superbly conceived concept recording dispatched in an equally superb manner by Tommaso, Rava and company. It should prove to please even the most difficult and demanding listener. It is very listener friendly and should be included in several writers’ “best of 2005” lists.

Enrico Rava
Full of Life
CAM Jazz
2005

Full of Life reveals a different musical side of Enrico Rava, one devoid of the round, mid-register sepia tone of La Dolce Vita. Rava presents a bright and playful tone, one not afraid of taking chances, albeit those chances do not stray far from the mainstream.