Jazz Articles about Enrico Rava

Enrico Rava: Consummate Fan, Consummate Artist

by R.J. DeLuke
December 12, 2005

Listen to Enrico Rava play the trumpet. It's direct and assured. Controlled and cool, yet capable of flights of fancy. His sound on the horn is mature and fat and full. It's capable of bold and brazen statements, and can be fragile as an eggshell. With it, he has become one of the finer players around the globe, and an icon in his native Italy. Rava is also an admitted fanatic about the music. “I consider my ...

Enrico Rava: TATI

by John Kelman
October 4, 2005

Italian Enrico Rava may arguably be the best qualified trumpeter to carry the mantle of the late Miles Davis' more tender and straightforward side. Last year's Easy Living--his return to the ECM label after a seventeen-year hiatus--found him exploring the kind of approachable yet never less than adventurous post bop territory that Miles might have found himself in had he continued in the direction he was going before forming his classic mid-1960s quintet with Hancock, Shorter, Carter, and Williams. But ...

Enrico Rava: TATI

by Chris May
October 1, 2005

What you see is not necessarily the only thing you get. The track titles here, including Gershwin's “The Man I Love" and Puccini's “E Lucevan Le Stelle," together with Enrico Rava's celebrated melodic genius, might suggest an album of lush and legato music, comfortably at peace with the world. And indeed, TATI is glowingly lyrical from start to finish. But this lyricism comes with a bite. Like Easy Living, the ECM album which preceded it, this set is multi-levelled: underneath ...

Enrico Rava: Full of Life

by John Kelman
August 20, 2005

In a recent AAJ article, Marc Meyers makes a strong case for a new mainstream in jazz, championed by artists like trumpeters David Weiss and Dave Douglas, as well as the improvisationally and compositionally rich SF Jazz Collective. But it's worthwhile to note that there are still artists out there mining the legacy of the more conventional mainstream for new riches.

Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava, who enjoys a reputation as a fearless improviser in a multitude of contexts, chooses to ...

Enrico Rava: Full of Life

by Jim Santella
August 11, 2005

A lyrical trumpeter with a mellow tone and soft-edged motions, Enrico Rava brings a delicious sound to the forum. His piano-less quartet maintains a focus on embellished melodies and creatively improvised airs. Their combined textures leave space for the quartet's harmony to breathe. Without clutter, they give their audience a feeling of openness. The music simply floats around the room like falling leaves.

Rava's original “Mystere" moves slowly with baritone saxophone and trumpet textures, producing an eerie plot. ...

Enrico Rava: La Dolce Vita & Full of Life

by C. Michael Bailey
August 3, 2005

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 ...

Enrico Rava: Happiness is...

by Simon Calle
August 24, 2004

In '02 Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava won the Danish Jazzpar prize. One of the activities related to the award is a series of concerts through various Danish cities--which are documented on this album. These six joyful pieces can easily be likened to the title, “Happiness is To Win a Big Prize," the name of one of the compositions.

The music recorded by the Rava sextet can be classified as hard bop, with a lot of influences from the work of ...