Enrico Rava New York Days (2008)

New all-star quintet session features trumpeter Enrico Rava, the greatest Italian jazz musician, and his prot 'g', pianist Stefano Bollani, together with three leading American jazzmen: master drummer Paul Motian, bassist Larry Grenadier, and saxophonist Mark Turner. The CD is both a transatlantic project and a kind of 'homecoming'. Rava found his musical direction while living in New York in the late 60s/early 70s. Since then an increasingly 'Italian' lyricism has also made itself felt in his playing. Rava's soulful trumpet is strongly contrasted with the lean, analytical playing of Mark Turner. Bollani's playful harmonic imagination shapes bridges between them. Larry Grenadier is "present and focused in every moment" as Rava says, and Paul Motian is as idiosyncratically creative as ever.

First ECM recording of a quartet formed in 2003. Originally billed as the Ethan Iverson-Mark Turner Quartet, it soon became the Billy Hart Quartet, and under this name has played shows to packed houses each year in New York City. The group’s first album for hard-bop label High Note in 2005 figured on many critics’ best-of-the year list. Since then, the ensemble’s music has gotten more free and spacious, a sensibility that aligns perfectly with ECM. While drummer Hart’s swinging beat and delicate cymbal tracery have previously been heard on the label behind Charles Lloyd and Bennie Maupin, and tenorist Mark Turner has appeared on acclaimed recording with the Fly Trio and Enrico Rava, “All Our Reasons” is a label debut for Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson and bassist Ben Street. Hart, Iverson and Turner all contribute material, which includes modern blues, a Coltrane tribute and an Iverson-penned homage to Paul Bley, the wonderfully.