Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Tommaso Starace: Italian Short Stories

Tommaso Starace: Italian Short Stories

By Bruce Lindsay
August 4, 2014
View read count

Some musicians appear to conjure their tunes from thin air, others work with raw material furnished by the great composers, still others take their inspirations from many different sources and give them due acknowledgement. Saxophonist Tommaso Starace is in the latter camp. This lyrical, engaging, player's second album, Tommaso Starace Plays The Photos Of Elliot Erwitt (Frame Records, 2006), drew on eight photographs by this master of the camera. For Italian Short Stories Starace returns to this source of inspiration. These are short stories from a very particular Italian—photographer Gianni Berengo Gardin—and they inspire Starace's most ambitious album to date.

The photographs that inspired Starace appear in the rather lavish CD booklet. They display melancholy and nostalgia ("Echos Of Naples" from 1958, "The Bubble Vendor" from 1960); the joy of the fair ("Let The Magic Begin," 2000) or of dancing ("Recollection," 1958); the smile of a young child as she stares into a car full of sheep ("The Amused Gypsy Girl," 1966). Strangest of all is the oddly unsettling picture of young boys wearing cut-out animal masks ("Olivetti's Touch," 1974).

Starace's musical responses are varied. "Recollection" opens with a snatch of scratchy old '78, an unidentified male singer straight out of a long-forgotten music hall show. Starace's first appearance is on soprano, a bright, flowing sound that readily reflects the photo's subjects—

Michele Di Toro

piano

" data-original-title="" title="">Michele Di Toro's sparkling solo also captures the movements of the young dancing couple. "Olivetti's Touch" is a sprightly soprano/piano duet, filled with the optimism of childhood—absolutely no indication that Starace is unsettled by the mask-clad youngsters.

"Jamme!" responds to Gardin's photo of two men and a boy zooming through Naples on a motor scooter with an up-tempo slice of post-bop jazz. Drummer Tommy Bradascio and bassist

Attilio Zanchi

bass, acoustic

" data-original-title="" title="">Attilio Zanchi drive the tune, Di Toro punctuates with emphatic chords and Starace and guest musician

Paolo Fresu

trumpet
b.1961

" data-original-title="" title="">Paolo Fresu energetically trade phrases. It's just a quintet, but the full-on sound wouldn't shame a

Charles Mingus

bass, acoustic
1922 - 1979

" data-original-title="" title="">Charles Mingus big band. "The Amused Gypsy Girl" is the album's other high energy tune, Starace's sprightly alto lead line owing much to "Salt Peanuts." In contrast, "Interius Tranquilitas" is as tranquil as the title suggests, a feature for Zanchi's confident yet gentle bass solo.

One tune each from Di Toro, Zanchi and Bradascio, plus Maurice Ravel's "Adagio Assai," complete a strongly melodic collection. The old clich�� about pictures being worth a thousand words may well have some truth to it—but on Italian Short Stories Gardin's pictures, like Erwitt's before them, find new life in these instrumentals.

Learn more about our star rating system

Track Listing

Recollection; The Bubble Vendor; Motion In Stillness; Ravel's Waltz; Let the Magic Begin; Olivetti's Touch; "Jamme!"; Interius Tranquilitas; Nothing Must Change; The Amused Gypsy Girl; Sensually Deranged; Adagio Assai From Piano Concerto In G Major; Back To My Roots; Echos Of Naples.

Personnel

Tommaso Starace

saxophone

Tommaso Starace: alto saxophone, soprano saxophone; Michele Di Toro: piano; Attilio Zanchi: bass; Tommy Bradascio: drums; Paolo Fresu: trumpet, flugelhorn (5, 7, 12, 13).

Album information

Title: Italian Short Stories | Year Released: 2014 | Record Label: Universal Music Group

PREVIOUS / NEXT

Lenny Pickett: Equal Opportunity Exp...
< Previous

Stereo Is King
Next >

Support All About Jazz

All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.