All About Jazz - Italy | CD Review 11/21/2006
author: Vincenzo Roggero
A French guitarist, a Russian saxophonist, a Spanish pianist, an Italian bassist as the drummer and leader, a day of recording at the famed Rear Window Studio in Brookline, the attention of Silta Records and there you have Night Dancers, first release of the Paolo Lattanzi Group. Wonders of the recording industry globalization? Not at all, it is simply the power of Berklee College of Music, the legendary sanctuary of jazz which witnessed the meeting of these musicians but, most of all, their desire to leave a sign of the artistically happy moment they are living at such an early stage of their career.
Nigh Dancers bears Berklee’s trademark: a great technical facility, respect and knowledge of the tradition, mastery of the stylistic languages with a preference to the modern mainstream, a focus on the form that results in tunes with a well defined harmonic and rhythmic structure.
Night Dancers, however, has an extra merit: a typically Italian innate predisposition to melody that characterizes the whole recording. It can be heard not only in tracks of painful beauty such as “14/2”, of veiled melancholy like “When it Doesn’t Matter” or rich in suggestions as the title track, but also in those that are distinguished by a more active and articulate rhythmic approach.
Paolo Lattanzi, additionally, is capable of rearranging the settings of the disc at times as standard acoustic jazz, at times as an electric jazz which is never predictable, supported by a unique attention to the arrangements and the interpretation of the music.
Interesting.
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ONE WAY Magazine
author: Issue #23 (Oct/Nov 2006)
Italian drummer Paolo Lattanzi leads his sophisticated ensemble through focused, ornately performed original compositions. The recording quality on Night Dancers is very impressive and unlike some percussionist bandleaders, Lattanzi gives the quintet much space to explore. The percolating “In a Dark Room” shows his strength at laying down uptempo grooves, while “14/2” features beautiful piano chord clusters.
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CD review on CoolClub.it (Italian Magazine - November 2006)
author: Gianpaolo Chiriacò
Smooth, broad, focused as well as carefree, rich of colors and evocations: the repertoire in Night Dancers offers a complete panoramic view of all the possible variants of the theme “melodic line plus improvisation”. Paolo Lattanzi’s group is young (although you wouldn’t expect it), polyglot, rampant (in a good way), omnivorous. The five musicians are jumping like crickets between the relaxed pace of Cicerchì’s Wanderlust and the slight inquietude of the title track; between the polyrhythms of In a Dark Room and the cinematic mood of When it Doesn’t Matter. Emotional and propulsive stimulations, an incontestable and steady pulse, a vigorous approach – incisive but always comfortable – these are the necessary resources for a group that finds its place among the most appealing proposals in contemporary jazz. The different proveniences of the five – two Italians, a Spaniard, a Frenchman and a Russian – guarantee the spontaneity of each intervention. With the growing of their experience they will eventually become an unfailing musical apparatus.
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