Enrico Rava Quartet with Gianluca Petrella

Wild Dance

(ECM)

Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava’s relationship with ECM Records dates back to the mid-1970s and, while very much a new recording, Wild Dance follows a long-trodden path on the label of European musicians incorporating American influences into their own distinctive voices. Rava’s origins in New Orleans jazz are shared by his guest, trombonist Gianluca Petrella, and there are elements of Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis in the John McLaughlin era as the music moves through playful, snappy, swinging, scorching and freely searching moods. Melody, sound and space are big ECM factors and the septuagenarian Rava, who also loves singers, plays with a very personal, unhurried, vocal approach and a ravishing tone, particularly on the ballad Space Girl with its immediately tempting, Alfie-like phrases. What makes this album all the more approachable, however, is the playing of guitarist Francesco Diodati, who introduces an engaging assortment of tones and is a hugely sympathetic – and sometimes challenging – accompanist and a concise, penetrating soloist.

Rob Adams