Giorgio Azzolini

*2022 stock* Giorgio Azzolini was never a front man bt played with the best Italian musicians of the day, as well as American Expats going through like Chet Baker or Bobby Jaspar. Here he has a trio which is amazing for 1966 in that it combines fuild renditions of standards like "When I Fall In Love" or Bill Evan's "Interplay" or Bird's "Moose The Mooche" but here with the along with Franco D'Andrea (who was pianist in the famous Basso Valdambrini Quintet and along with Renato Sellani the godfather of modernist Italian Jazz pianists) and drummer Franco Tonani in 1966 cover the expected hard bop material yet half the album of originals are such that Paul Bley or Andrew Hill could have written them. Don't buy this CD unless this free style of playing appeals to you. But if you do this idiom then this CD where the lines almost become as independent and hard hitting as what Ornette Coleman was doing mixed with a reverence for the standard than this might be a genius CD to you.I think it's great and the musicianship is superb. Schema's Rearward divison has done so much to by having re-released Clarke Boland's work centered n Germany their won Italian Jazz that might have been fogotten like this gem. I tip my hat to them.
This CD is a winner.Check out the entire Rearward/Schema catalogue.