The Words And The Days, Enrico Rava

by John Fordham
The Guardian

Growing into the kind of Miles Davis-sparked trumpet inspiration for the Italian jazz scene that Palle Mikkelborg has been for Denmark or Tomasz Stanko for Poland, Enrico Rava has become one of European jazz's major legends. This set follows up 2003's Easy Living, which brought a sumptuous brass-dominant small group to a mix of ambiguous, Kenny Wheeler-like music, tiptoeing tone-poetry, and nods to Ornette Coleman and the Miles Davis 1960s band.

Group-minded pianist Andrea Pozza is substituted for Stefano Bollani, and the feel is a little straight-jazzier - even if the Chet Baker vehicle The Wind has a ambient-music ghostliness in its slowly whoopy trombone countermelody. Echoes of Duke is an ecstatically riffy swinger, Serpent a spacily hypnotic, lonesome-Miles reverie, Don Cherry's Art Deco is turned into an early-jazz trumpet-trombone conversation, and there are two revisits to old Rava originals: the undulating Secrets and the Carla Bley-like Dr Ra and Mr Va. Rava's return to ECM has paid off handsomely so far.

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