Jazz Articles about Manuel Caliumi

About Manuel Caliumi

Album Review

Andrea Grossi Blend 3 + Jim Black: Axes

by Mark Corroto
May 22, 2024

When Sonny Rollins recorded “A Night At The Village Vanguard" (Blue Note, 1957) and later toured Europe in 1959, he was frequently asked about performing without a pianist. His saxophone, bass, and drums lineup was unconventional at the time, but it gave him the added freedom to explore his creative powers. Similarly, bassist Andrea Grossi's trio, Blend 3, which includes alto saxophonist Manuel Caliumi and electric guitarist Michele Bonifati, has taken a similar approach. On their previous releases Lцbok (We ...

Album Review

Michele Bonifati Emong: Three Knots

Read "Three Knots" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
September 25, 2023

Primo lavoro a proprio nome per il chitarrista Michele Bonifati, alla testa del suo quartetto Emong, nel il quale mette in fila sette sue composizioni su tempi lenti e le arricchisce con due originalissime cover, coerenti con lo stile dell'album, riflessivo e dinamicamente tanto vario, quanto intenso. Emong è un particolare tipo di aquilone capace di volare anche quasi in assenza di vento (con un minimo, appunto, di tre nodi): una metafora che ben si attaglia alla musica ...

Album Review

Andrea Grossi Blend 3 + Beatrice Arrigoni: Songs And Poems

Read "Songs And Poems" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
July 3, 2023

Album che sconvolge le linee di demarcazione tra generi e stili, Songs and Poems vede all'opera il trio Blend 3 del contrabbassista e compositore Andrea Grossi (clicca qui per leggere la recensione del precedente CD Lubok), al quale si aggiunge la voce di Beatrice Arrigoni, negli ultimi tempi molto attiva in progetti trasversali e innovativi. Il programma prevede undici brani, tutti musicalmente composti da Grossi e con testi tratti da Emily Dickinson (i primi tre), Edward Estlin Cummings (dal sesto ...

Album Review

Lisa Marie Simmons: Notespeak 12

Read "Notespeak 12" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
March 3, 2023

Poetry & Jazz has a checkered history. When combined, the two art forms are not so much a marriage made in heaven as an obstacle course. The biggest danger is that one of them is verbal and the other is non-verbal and at its best transcends words. The second danger is that the better the poetry and/or the jazz in question, the more intrusive may be their competing demands for the listener's attention. Notespeak 12 is top-end poetry ...

Album Review

Andrea Grossi Blend 3 + Beatrice Arrigoni: Songs And Poems

Read "Songs And Poems" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
August 12, 2022

Sometimes a great athlete's performance is described as “poetry in motion." If we apply that phrase to this Andrea Grossi Blend 3 release, we might say it is poetry in emotion. The bassist composed a musical score to accompany three poems by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), another four from E.E. Cummings (1894-1962), and one by himself. The remaining three tracks are wordless poetry. Grossi's Blend 3 includes alto saxophonist Manuel Caliumi and electric guitarist Michele Bonifati. The trio has ...

Album Review

Offset 5: Deflections

Read "Deflections" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
September 9, 2021

Curiously, Italy's Offset 5 began as a trio and took more than a decade to become a quintet. Offset 5 began in 2010, when guitarist Marcello Abate formed an alliance with drummer Federico Negri and contrabassist Davide Paulis in a trio devoted to tradition and standards. Offset 5 grew into a quartet with the 2016 addition of alto saxophonist Manuel Caliumi, which simultaneously occasioned the group's move away from standards and into their own, original compositions. (Caliumi and Negri respectively ...

Album Review

Michele Grossi Blend 3: Lubok

by Neri Pollastri
June 30, 2020

Formazione molto interessante, capitanata dal contrabbassista Andrea Grossi ma di fatto paritetica, Blend 3 è un trio completato dal sax contralto di Manuel Caliumi e dalla chitarra di Michele Bonifati, che dà vita a una musica in equilibrio tra scrittura e improvvisazione a partire da spunti compositivi estremamente sofisticati. Il lavoro si avvia con una bella improvvisazione e prosegue con un brano di gusto contemporaneo costruito su semplici intervalli. “Iwato"--dedicata a Giancarlo Nino" Locatelli--è costruita sull'omonimo modo della ...