Jazz Articles

Nicola Conte & Gianluca Petrella: People Need People

by Chris May
February 12, 2021

For over twenty years, the Italian producer, composer and guitarist Nicola Conte has pursued a resolutely independent path in jazz and jazz-related music. The Schema label, with whom he has almost exclusively partnered since his breakthrough album, 2000's acid-jazz masterpiece Jet Sounds, is based in the fashion-centric northern city of Milan. But Conte nearly always records at Sorisso Studio in his hometown, Bari, a seaport on the heel of Italy's boot on the country's southern Adriatic coast. This off-the-beaten-track location ...

Nicola Conte: Other Directions

by Chris May
August 22, 2019

Since debuting with the quintessential acid-jazz suite Jet Sounds on the Milan-based label Schema in 2000, the composer, arranger, producer and guitarist Nicola Conte has released another ten exquisitely beautiful albums exploring acid jazz, spiritual jazz, soul jazz and bossa nova, often all on the same disc. Conte also produces other artists and has curated rare-groove bossa nova compilations for Far Out and modal-jazz compilations for Blue Note and MPS. Everything he does is erudite and lustrous and certain to ...

Piero Umiliani: Psichedelica

by Dan McClenaghan
April 23, 2016

Psichdelica is a fun album. It is music from the pen of Italian movie scorer Piero Umbiliani. The music here composed and recorded for the movie Svenzia Inferno e Paradiso (1968) is in large part a slice of those times. “Trippy, very trippy," might be the colloquial 1968 description for the the disc's first four tunes, with “before their time" electronics, loopy organ work, a soaring vocal chorus sounding like Gregorian chants that include females in the choir, backed by ...

Timo Lassy: In with Lassy

by Anthony Shaw
November 27, 2012

Timo Lassy is one of the not-quite-so-young generation of Finnish musicians to have risen thru the ranks of the generous local system of music education, starting out as a toddler on piano, and gravitating in his early teens to saxophone. He cut his teeth in Amsterdam at the end of the old century and since returning home has been involved in the front line of modern Finnish jazz, first with the U-Street All Stars and more spectacularly with the Five ...

Balan: More

by Ernesto De Pascale
June 1, 1999

During the Swinging Sixties, the most respected Italian composers and performers found work recording the prettier reflections of what was then the in sound. Despite extensive jazz backgrounds and advanced musical educations, these musicians were reduced to simply saying what people wanted to hear. It was in films that such Italian maestros as Ennio Morricone, Piero Umiliani, Piero Piccioni and Bruno Niccolai often found their most creative release. They could be creative, and still give the people what ...

The Cabildos: Cross Fire

by Douglas Payne
July 1, 1998

This is the second disc by mysterious keyboardist John Cabildo that the Italian label Schema has released in the last year. The first, Yuxtapocision, under the nom de disc of Cabildo's Three, was a gem of light, tight, funky grooves. This one – presumably recorded in Miami sometime in the mid-70s, too – is less interesting and a bit more erratic. But it ups the jazz-funk a bit and, rather less successfully, dips a bit too much into the Latin ...

The Cabildo's Three: Cabildo's Three - Yuxtaposicion

by David Corrigan
January 1, 1998

The Cabildo's Three are a bit of a mystery mainly due to the obscurity of the original release and the limited, pigeon English sleeve notes on this Italian re-issue. Originally released in the 70's on the Thuban Six label and recorded in Miami, further details are unclear.

What is clear however is that the trio are very talented musicians - Cabildo on keyboards, Bobby Fares on bass and Max Ronnie on percussion. Not names from the Latin Music Hall of ...

The Cabildo's Three: Yuxtaposici

by Douglas Payne
December 1, 1997

Yuxtaposición is a recently unearthed treasure recorded by a tight Italian trio in Miami during the early seventies. Until now, this music has only been heard in office backgrounds, TV commercials and movie soundtracks. But the perseverance of an admirer brought about its first-ever release on the Italian Schema label.

Imagine hearing a 1972-era Cal Tjader quartet without Cal Tjader and you get an idea of what to expect. It's slightly Latin, lightly funky and truly enjoyable. Yuxtaposición offers enough ...