DA VINCI PUBLISHINGWater Dance

Additional information

Artist(s)	Carlo Nicita, Federico Saccà, Marcello Conti, Strait Project, Tommaso Pugliese
Composer(s)	Carlo Nicita, Federico Saccà, Marcello Conti, Tommaso Pugliese, Wayne Shorter
EAN Code	7.46160917436
Edition	Da Vinci Jazz
Format	1 Cd
Genre	Chamber
Instrumentation	Double-Bass, Drums, Flute, Piano
Period	Contemporary
Publication year	2024

Description

Carlo, Marcello, Tommaso and Federico light up the environment with the light and colours of the Strait of Messina.
This album is the first great work dedicated to the Music of the Strait Project, and extraordinary accomplished collective that assimilates, elaborates on and fuses diverse influences and teachings. Their creative path unravels in a metaphoric labyrinth where the streets cross and mingle to the point of finding a unique, evocative style.
Eight original compositions inspired by the art of Wayne Shorter, saxophonist, philosopher and guru. He was the custodian of the artistic legacy of John Coltrane, one of the most refined composers and arrangers in the history of jazz. His was a life engaged in a continual reflection on the mystery of life itself. Buddhism, mysticism and art were the right connection for existence. “Music – said Shorter – has an intrinsic, extramusical meaning, playing means reaching unexplored places and spaces” and WATER DANCE conveys this message to the full.
The unexplored land is the Water element.
WATER DANCE is the Dance of Water or better Dance in the Water, Sea Water and the Sea is the Strait between Sicily and Calabria.
It is clear from the first piece that the musical space from where the dance begins is the seabed. Charybdis, mythological figure mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Eneide, is a whirlpool that, “swallows vast streams – three times a day, to then belch them back – rising to the stars”. The vortex here is produced by the currents of jazz, Spanish rhythms and Mediterranean dances of the pieces Cariddi, Bloom, Abuela Cigarra and Balla con me, the jazz waltz of Rebecca’s Theme, along with European Jazz. And those sound dimensions unequivocally traceable to the ECM label of Trying to do the Job, Dorico and Ron Miller.

A whirlpool first under then over the sea, a vortex from which elements emerge, as if launched by an underwater catapult, which lead us back to Shorter’s main stylistic feature and to those open spaces which sometimes convey a sense of displacement to the ear and which delightfully freshened by ever agile and flowing harmonic/rhythmic solutions. With grace and delicacy, the original compositions alternate with meditative moments that trace a transversal plane from afar to sublimate in the themes of Footprints and Infant Eyes, two absolute masterpieces by Shorter, as a sort of thanksgiving to the style and spirituality of the Maestro.
Waterdance feels like wading in deep waters, mysterious but benevolent, like immersing safely and rising to the surface, like exploring the abysses of the human soul where you advance to discover something that usually makes us better.
Salvatore Bonafede & Roberta Giuffrida

Artist(s)

Carlo Nicita, Flute
Marcello Conti, Piano
Tommaso Pugliese, Double bass
Federico Saccà, Drums

Composer(s)

Shorter, Wayne
(b Newark, NJ, 25 Aug 1933). American jazz tenor and soprano saxophonist and composer. He began playing the clarinet at the age of 16, then changed to the tenor saxophone. From 1952 he studied music at New York University (1956, BME) and played in a local band. He performed briefly with Horace Silver in 1956 before being drafted, and in 1958 he joined Maynard Ferguson’s group, in which he first met Joe Zawinul. Shorter then began an important association with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers (1959–64), ultimately serving as the band’s music director. After a brief period of rest and work on his own recordings he joined Miles Davis’s quintet in September 1964. He remained with the group until 1970, taking up the soprano saxophone in late 1968 as Davis experimented with electronic instruments and new ensembles, though during the same period he recorded regularly as a leader. Late in 1970, with Zawinul, he founded Weather Report, which the two men continued to lead into the 1980s. Shorter also recorded an acclaimed album presenting Milton Nascimento (1974) and returned to acoustic jazz when he toured and recorded with Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard and Tony Williams as V.S.O.P. (1976–7). From the mid-1970s he has devoted his time equally to playing tenor and soprano saxophones. In 1985 he greatly reduced his activities with Weather Report, concentrating instead on recording, making international tours with his new group and appearing in reunion concerts with many of his colleagues from the 1960s, most notably Hancock. He also performed in the film Round Midnight (1986). In 1988, with Carlos Santana, he led a Latin jazz-rock group which toured internationally. He toured further with Hancock in the 1990s.