Franco Ambrosetti Band: Lost Within You

Swiss trumpeter / flugelhorninst Franco Ambrosetti opens his Lost Within You with "Peace," from the pen of pianist Horace Silver. The original rendition comes from Silver's Blowin' The Blues Away (Blue Note, 1959). It was a composition that Silver stumbled upon when he was "doodling around on the piano, and it just came to me." It featured Blue Mitchell's characteristically brassy trumpet tone. It was unusual in the Silver songbook—an introspective, patiently deployed ballad, instead of the normal hard-charging, romps that dominate his music.

Ambrosetti's take on the tune is time-stands-still gorgeous. His tone is softer and warmer than Mitchell's; Jack DeJohnette opens on a silky teardrop splatter of piano notes before he ruminates with soft chords. And yes, it is that Jack DeJohnette, drummer in Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio, and pianist / drummer on numerous recordings of his own; he plays drums elsewhere on the rest of Lost Within You.

Then Ambrosetti blows in, his horn sounding as if it is made of 24 carat gold. He steps back for guitarist John Scofield's crisp, understated solo that rides the cushioning flow of bassist Scott Colley's timekeeping. The tune is a ten minute jewel that sets a template of consistent cohesion throughout the seventy-four minute set of spacious balladry and unrelenting beauty, including the soul searching melancholy of Cy Coleman and Joseph McCarthy's "I'm Gonna Laugh You Right Out Of My Life," Dave Grusin's poignant "Love Like Ours," and a wandering take on the familiar touchstone "Body And Soul."

Renee Rosnes sits in at the keyboard on five tunes and Uri Caine plays on three more, making the recording as all-star an affair as it can be, one that somehow manages to achieve that "whole rising above the sum of the parts" sound—and that sum is substantial—from start to finish. Both "Body And Soul'' and the Miles Davis / Bill Evans-penned "Flamenco Sketches" take on masterpiece-like proportions, with ensemble interplay both edgy and elegant for the former, and tone poem-ish and mysteriously, gently boundary-pushing on the latter, featuring Ambrosetti's horn at its most impassioned, with Rosnes' piano solo sounding as if it was composed on another planet, a place of serene, color drenched landscapes and flowering vegetation, a world with a sense of beauty parallel to but foreign to ours.

This relaxed, "savor the moment" set of tunes also includes three Ambrossetti-penned gems, including the vivacious "Silli In the Sky" and the wistful "Dreams Of A Butterfly." The set closes with pianist McCoy Tyner's "You Taught My Heart To Sing," Ambrosetti's horn brimming with gratitude, the group slipping into an easy swing on Scofield's solo—an unhurried sound exuding a genuine feel for the unquestionable relevance of our "right now" temporal existence.