At a superficial view, in the framework of the heterogeneous choice of the compositions contained in this album, one could perceive a sort of non-structured project, a lack of specific goal in putting together evergreen tracks, great authors' Italian songs and original compositions forming a whole which rightly suggests different approaches to interpretation. These approaches can however lead to find out a unitary proposal if each single musician's personality and expressive skill merge and blend in that dialogue we call interplay and which becomes unavoidable in any jazz performance.
An aim attained in the music of this work, the second recorded by Giuseppe Bassi as a leader, thanks to the performance of top-level Italian jazz musicians who, as their contemporary musicians in the world, live jazz without prejudices, bringing up-to-date the linguistic material sedimented all along its secular history and above all in the the latest decades.

So that in the two gems by Rota and Trovajoli, forming a charming Italian couple, one can find out examples of absolute sobriety of interpretation and that rhythmical way of playing guitar coming from Freddie Green's, upon which the double-bass improvises taking us back to the saxophone solos by Paul Chambers.

The music written by Bassi, on the other hand, is thought as structures functional to the development of improvisations and to the creation of a particular effective dynamism within the group. Evergreens express new harmonic, rhythmical and timbre structures and change into tracks of modern mainstream obeying its regulating philosophy. Therefore, contrary to what it seems like, we can enjoy a CD with a definite musical design in which the relationship between contemporaneity and tradition brings to the awareness that the jazz aesthetics is both severe and ductile and then fit to welcome materials coming from different worlds of music.

The manifold historical references in Bosso's language, in Scannapieco's sound, in Di Leone's phrasing and accompaniment, in Moroni's magistral and "complete" way of playing piano, in Tucci's drumming, in Bassi's way of conceiving the instrument - he plays the historical role of backbone of the group and at the same time imposes a real parity of the solo performance - do not produce a stereotyped and old language but they are the pre-requisite to think modern and firmly. That firmness coming from devotion and competence and that evolution being the fruit of the sincere will of expressing oneself.
Maurizio Franco

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