Giovanni Guidi Trio - City Of Broken Dreams (2013) [Official Digital Download]

"City of Broken Dreams" is the ECM leader debut of the prodigiously gifted Italian pianist Giovanni Guidi. Guidi has previously appeared on two discs for the label with Enrico Rava – “Tribe” with the Rava Quintet and the live “On The Dance Floor” with the Parco della Musica Jazz Lab band. Now he introduces his new international trio with US bassist Thomas Morgan and Portuguese drummer João Lobo, and a shimmering inner-directed music of striking originality. Lyrical free-floating ballads predominate, and the tunes seem optimally set up to showcase the strengths of his confrères. Bassist Thomas Morgan has as much room to move in this unit as Scott LaFaro had in the Bill Evans trios, or Gary Peacock in Paul Bley’s groups – invited in other words to interact in the foreground of the music. Guidi is generous with his space in these pieces, all from his pen, every one of them turning some unexpected corners.

City of Broken Dreams is Giovanni Guidi's debut as a headliner for ECM. The 28-year-old pianist led several dates for Japan's Venus and France's Cam Jazz labels, and has appeared on ECM before on Enrico Rava's Tribe (2009) and On the Dance Floor (2012). Guidi wrote all this set's ten compositions. With the pianist backed by American bassist Thomas Morgan and longstanding Brazilian drummer João Lobo, City of Broken Dreams is very different from anything he's issued before. On the title track that opens and closes the date, Guidi uses the most skeletal of folk elements to sketch his melodies, making room for space, resonance, and depth, before he begins to fill them in with lyric chord statements that walk elegantly between the grand melodic Italian jazz piano tradition and the more speculative harmonic considerations of modern creative jazz. By contrast, "Just One More Time" borrows from classical and theater music with knotty rhythmic arpeggios that challenge Lobo as Morgan stridently holds the tightrope between them. "The Way Some People Live" opens almost cautiously, with shimmering upper-register arpeggios laid down gently as Morgan illustrates them with lower-string caresses and occasional chords that lengthen the melody's shadows. Underneath Lobo dances. Midway, Guidi begins to wind inside his own melody and burrow into its timbres and tones, creating tension and mystery with a delicate yet insistent touch. "Late Blue" uses thematic repetition in a seemingly restricted palette that moves along a ledge at once inquisitive and brooding, yet never anything less than lyrical. As he and Morgan move to more abstract terrain, Lobo's cymbal work underscores their exploration, beginning with taps and skitters, but eventually giving way to their darker notions by scraping them to moaning effect. "Ocean View" makes use of modalism and post-bop without ever engaging either fully. Much of the considerable charm of City of Broken Dreams is evidenced by the mastery of musical suggestion this trio commands. They make use of many different forms of music in their approach to jazz, if merely to use their colors, dynamics, and intonations to create something other. This a piano trio album that has plenty and gracefully relies on subtlety to express it.

Tracklist:

01 - City Of Broken Dreams
02 - Leonie
03 - Just One More Time
04 - The Forbidden Zone
05 - No Other Possibility
06 - The Way Some People Live
07 - The Impossible Divorce
08 - Late Blue
09 - Ocean View
10 - City Of Broken Dreams, var.

Produced by Manfred Eicher. Engineer: Stefano Amerio.
Recorded in December 2011 at Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera, Lugano.

Musicians:
Giovanni Guidi - piano
Thomas Morgan - double bass
João Lobo - drums


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