Giorgio Gaslini

LP version. Multipli is a quintet record by Giorgio Gaslini, the Milanese pianist, composer and conductor who had scored Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte and who called his blend of twelve-note composition and jazz improvisation "total music". He had worked with free players such as Steve Lacy, Don Cherry and Roswell Rudd, and in the early seventies had brought jazz courses into the Santa Cecilia conservatory in Rome. Here, for Soul Note, he leads a band of Italian musicians through eight pieces, all but one his own.

The quintet recorded on October 6 and 7, 1987 at Barigozzi Studio in Milan, with Giancarlo Barigozzi engineering, Giovanni Bonandrini producing and Gennaro Carone mastering. Roberto Ottaviano plays alto, soprano and sopranino saxophones and bass clarinet and Claudio Fasoli tenor and soprano, with Bruno Tommaso on bass and Giampiero Prina on drums. Gaslini wrote seven of the eight pieces and also wrote the poetic texts printed with the record. The exception is Chicago Breakdown by Jelly Roll Morton, which Gaslini transcribed for the group and which is the shortest track, at two and a half minutes. Interni is the longest, at over eight minutes, and follows the title piece and Ora. The second half opens with Piano-Sequenza, followed by Corteo, the Italian word for a procession, and Ornette Or Not, whose title points straight at Ornette Coleman. The closing La Risata means "the laughter".

This is a copy of the original 1988 Soul Note LP, catalogue number 121 220-1, on 140 gram vinyl: CAM Jazz, which now owns the label, describes it as the original vinyl edition, recently rediscovered in its vaults.