Roberto Bonati Madriperla Trio: Parfois la nuit

Nighttime provides the seed of inspiration for Roberto Bonati on Parfois La Nuit. A poem, rendered in French in the album's inner sleeve, speaks to its inherent beauty and impenetrability—its colors and shades, the contrasting emotions it provokes. Through the ages, the night has inspired poetry of romantic, gothic, and philosophical hues. A little of all these flavors informs the Italian bassist's compositions, which are in turn hushed and ethereal, sombre and abstract, luminous and lyrical.

Joining the Italian double bassist in his Madreperla Trio are guitarist Luca Perciballi and saxophonist Gabriele Fava—three distinct musical personalities who together mould a unified aesthetic. The trio sets out its stall on "Parfois La Nuit," an achingly pretty rubato tone poem of earthy bass lines, gently keening soprano saxophone, and feathery guitar accompaniment. There are shades of ECM in both the playing and the album's production values—think Jan Garbarek, Arild Andersen, and Bill Frisell in lyrical, introspective mode, and you are in the ballpark.

Half a dozen "Dream" pieces, ranging from 30 seconds to four minutes, are woven throughout like nightmarish turns in an otherwise placid dream. On these vignettes, the musicians draw more percussive sounds from their instruments, with fuzz-edged guitar blasts, skronky saxophone, and arco bass—by turns woozy and grating—creating an unsettling ambience. Perciballi's electronic dusting—little crackles and pops and faint white noise—only adds to the sense of unease that these interludes provoke.

Either side of the "Dream" pieces, gently insinuating melody and lyricism prevail. It is hard not to be seduced by the restless, melancholy beauty of "Night Village," or the ruminative "Chiara e la notte," whose late shift in gear into an ostinato-driven groove—albeit a passo d'uomo—is typical of the little surprises the Madreperla Trio unfurls. Likewise, on "Rouge," urgent bowing and exclamatory tenor saxophone, extending into overblowing, signal a change in collective intent. In the closing bars, the trio unveils a dancing folkloric motif—the sudden acceleration a welcome injection on an album of mostly laid-back expositions.

The absence of piano and drums accentuates the chamber-jazz quality of the music. Even when Perciballi stretches out on "Madreperla" over a circling bass motif, his painterly lines exude a dreamy quality. As elsewhere, the mellow vibe cedes way to a rhythmically jaunty, though brief, arco-cum-saxophone-driven coda. On "And He Paints Her Blue" and "May Love," the music walks a thin tightrope between melancholy and lulling embrace, an emotive ambivalence that characterizes the album as a whole.

The nascent trio's debut is less about soloing in conventional jazz terms than it is about molding melodic lines and contrapuntal shading in the service of emotional textures. To this end, Bonati's Madreperla Trio delivers an often beguiling soundtrack to our nocturnal realm.