Enrico Rava & Stefano Bollani

The trumpeter and composer Enrico Rava occupies a page of his own in the history of Italian, European and world jazz. Bursting onto the scene as a member of Gato Barbieri’s quintet in 1964, by the age of 27 he had worked with Steve Lacy and Roswell Rudd as well as Bill Dixon’s Jazz Composers’ Orchestra Association. He founded his own quartet in 1970 with Abercrombie, Danielsson and Christensen, going on to play with leading lights like Gil Evans, Joe Henderson and Cecil Taylor and to lead numerous combos. In 1997, he joined forces for the first time with his pianistic alter ego, Stefano Bollani.

“I’ve rarely met an improvising musician with such a strong sense of structure and form”, said Manfred Eicher of Bollani, and Eicher and Rava have both mentored the pianist, taming his incredible explosiveness and steering the dam burst of ideas made possible by his supernatural technique into careful decisions and melodic flow. His “Piano Solo” CD (voted “album of the year” by “Jazz Musica” in 2006) somehow combines a series of seemingly incompatible choices (lyricism / playfulness, lucidity / inwardness, improvisation / classicism).

Bollani and Rava’s relationship is based on trust and mutual respect. Neither tries to impose themselves on the other. The trumpeter narrates in fleeting whispers, oneiric interchanges and controlled subtleties, while the pianist can request ten subjects from the audience, then astound them by combining them into a single composition on the spot.

The trumpeter is blessed with virtuosic maturity, refinement, finesse, a personal sound and the ability to really swing, while the pianist’s modus operandi involves “always focusing on the ideal listener”. Bollani draws on myriad sources—Brazil or Ravel, Dixieland or Milhaud, tango or Poulenc—but never loses his way in the chaos, and both remain focused on the joy of music and the quest for unmatched aural pleasure.