Jazz CD

Carla Bley, The Lost Chords Find Paolo Fresu

4 out of 5 4
The Lost Chords Find Paolo Fresu

Carla Bley, the great American jazz composer whose imagination and wit shelters under deceptively artless guises, says she kept imagining a gracefully eloquent trumpet while she was writing new music for The Lost Chords. That quartet's only horn is Andy Sheppard's saxophone, so he wasn't the answer - except that she happened to hear the poetic Italian trumpeter Paolo Fresu's music leaking from Sheppard's headphones one day, and the next step was the invitation to Fresu that produced this album of typically classy idiosyncrasy.

In recent times, Bley has sounded more like a straightahead jazz composer than the quirkily Nino Rota-like impressionist of earlier years, and there are plenty of gently unfolding mid-tempo swingers, soft Latin grooves and riffy finales here. But it's the extended improvising released by Bley's left-field lyricism that's the point of The Lost Chords. Fresu's sublime muted sound, his glossily unhurried phrasing and startling variety within a narrow dynamic range contrasts beautifully with Sheppard's slow builds from wispy notes and soft multiphonics to anthemic crescendos. Bley's sometimes churchy, sometimes Monkish chords, Billy Drummond's propulsive percussion and Steve Swallow's gliding bass complete a very seductive mix.

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