Over the last two years, Kind Of Jazz has tried to highlight some of the fine jazz coming out of Italy. Two weeks ago we highlighted the wonderful Chet Baker tribute by Italian bass player Riccardo Del Fra, and in the past we have highlighted recordings by the likes of pianists Enrico Pieranunzi, Danilo Rea and Claudio Filippini, as well as the genre-hopping duo, Musica Nuda.
Contigo En La Distancia is fronted by Italian jazz singer Barbara Raimondi, who is blessed with a stunning voice, and surely deserves greater recognition.
She has been a recording artist for fifteen years. Her debut album, Vita Da Altoparlante featured a mix of standards and her own compositions. Her most recent recording was the ambitious Singin’ Ornette!!!, which came out in 2013, and was showcased at the Revoice Festival in London.
Her Latin American project, Contigo En La Distancia, started back in 2010, and features her regular musical partners, Roberto Taufic on guitar and Enzo Zirilli on drums and percussion. It’s an impressive line up. Taufic was born in Honduras, but moved to Brazil at an early age. He moved to Italy in 1990, and has made a number of jazz and Latin-style recordings over the years. He is also an accomplished singer, and his soft, warm background vocals are an essential element of the group’s sound. The band’s drummer, Enzo Zirilli, is a regular on the London jazz scene, and has played with the likes of Enrico Pieranunzi, Dada Moroni and Antonio Forcione, to name but a few.
Their new CD, Floricanto, was released in the UK two weeks ago at a well-attended event at Jazz Café Posk in Hammersmith. The new album does not simply feature well-known Brazilian and bossa-nova tunes, but is designed to showcase a range of South American classics.
The best-known song here is Jobim’s standard, La Pioggia Di Marzo, also known as Águas de Março (The Rains Of March). The definitive version of the song was recorded by Jobim and Elis Regina in 1974, but the version here is also sublime, and shows off Raimondi’s crystalline voice and Taufic’s liquid guitar sound to good effect. But for the most part, the band focus on songs that are less familiar to Western audiences, from great songwriters in Cuba, Mexico and Argentina, as well as Brazil.
This approach does not make Floricanto any less accessible; in fact, it’s a delight to listen to from start to finish. The interplay between the musicians, both on the CD and in a live setting, is superb. That can also be seen from the recording information, with the entire album being recorded between 11:52am and 8:54pm in late September last year – which makes a refreshing change from seeing CDs that were years in the making, with multiple songwriters and producers! The quality of the sound recording is also worth highlighting; the album was recorded, mixed and mastered by Carlo Miori, who has managed to capture the band’s sound superbly. The word Floricanto has no real meaning, but is meant to represent flower and song; in short, something that will brighten your mood on even the dullest of English summer days.
