Francesco Bearzatti and Federico Casagrande: And Then Winter Came Again

This liner-note begins, unusually, with a charitable appeal. Music reviewers and critics labour in obscure conditions, but this is not an appeal for better pay or more respect. Many of these poor souls suffer from a deeply embarrassing ailment that directly bears on their ability to function at all. As first the co-author and later sole author of a very large jazz reference book, I've had the symptoms for years. The condition is known to the very few doctors who recognize it as Adjective Fatigue, the inability to find new ways of praising—harshness, when called for, is always easier—the music we love. One of our colleagues, on contracting the complaint, resorted to an ever-smaller store of descriptors, to the extent that at one point he quite literally could not find another way of describing the sound of a tenor saxophone than "warm." I present with a more florid form which in its acute phase can lead sufferers to use apodictic, eleemosynary and trigeminal for the simple and single reason that they have never used them before. This, of course, leaves the suffering critic subject to the mockery of his peers, and the occasional thrown beer mat.

How do you find new ways of praising, let alone describing, the sound of this music? Most of us have played through a challenging new CD, faced the blank page and rejected "angular" as clichéd and worn-out. Language gets tired, but there is no merit in taking the easy way out and claiming that the very act of verbalising thoughts on music or art is beside the point. What a foolish notion? Someone—and he will remain nameless—said that talking about music was as irrelevant as dancing about architecture. Dumb: I can think of few better ways of celebrating a space than dancing around it...

But this doesn't much help with the present case, the music of Francesco Bearzatti and Federico Casagrande, a reeds/guitar duo from two players of proven experience and quality. I've written about both of them before, but haven't looked up what I might have said. Which would be worse? Saying the same things over again, or saying something quite different, even contradictory? If one enthused, how does one raise the ante without sounding hysterical, or, even worse, less keen this time. We've all had sulky comebacks from musicians whose new album we've described as "excellent." "You said my last one was 'terrific,' and the one before that as 'sublime,'" they tell you, like children whose birthday present seems smaller this year.

So what to say about And Then Winter Came Again, without saying "sublime" or "apodictic," or even "warm." I've always told students to think of jazz as a verb rather than a noun, as something that is done rather than a fixed canon of rules and procedures. As we know from their previous work, Bearzatti and Casagrande are deeply versed in those practices, but in a way that is far too dynamic and original simply to conform with any canon of taste. So before you hear it, which is the only meaningful test for music like this, let's think what the music does.

It moves, both in the sense that it stirs the air in new ways, but always engages the emotions. It dances, around its own architecture. It reveals, sometimes quite briskly, as on "Step By Step" and "Minor Happiness," sometimes more patiently as on "Nightwalker" and the lovely title track. It sings, and we've long advocated the removal of the "w" from jazz's most famous characteristic; a pendulum swings, not very interestingly, but the real mark of music is whether it has the power of song in it. These pieces all do. One instinctively calls them songs, not themes, numbers or, shudder, tracks.

Of course, the emphasis on doing and not describing applies to the listener as well. Don't put on this music and then give your attention to a carbonara or the daily newspaper. Listening is doing, too, and the real joy of this record is finding yourself inside it, walking, singing and dancing with Bearzatti and Casagrande.

^*But do keep in mind the plight of AF sufferers; they're people, too, and need help. Donations welcome.

Liner Notes copyright © 2025 Brian Morton.

And Then Winter Came Again can be purchased here.

Contact Brian Morton at All About Jazz.
Brian Morton is a Scottish writer, journalist and broadcaster, mainly specialising in jazz and modern literature. He is co-author of The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings.

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