Album Notes

Massimo Sammi Creates a Movie for Your Ears
Italian guitarist Sammi’s ambitious debut album is a musical storyboarding of Academy
Award-winning film biography of mathematician John Nash, A Beautiful Mind
The seed for the ideas for this album was planted during Sammi’s education at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied with pianist Ran Blake, among others and became involved with Blake’s methods of composition and improvisation. “One that particularly struck me was the storyboarding technique, a musical transposition of the feelings given by a series of images from a movie,” Sammi explains. Using his “favorite movie of all time” Sammi combined both a musical storyboarding of the film with a musical application of mathematician John Nash's theories to free jazz improvisations.
The structure and content of the album closely parallel the film. “Nash’s arrival at Princeton and his sense of quiet solitude, realizing that he's somehow a little different from the other guys, inspired the title track,” Sammi says. “ ‘Encryption’ was inspired by the images of the numbers on the screen when he's hired by the Pentagon to decipher some secret codes. ‘Hallways’ is inspired by the images of the corridors of the psychiatric hospital, where Nash is treated for schizophrenia. ‘Ice Cream and Tears, Please’ is inspired by the image of Nash’s wife in tears, when he finally realizes that the little girl he's always seeing never grows and so must be a delusion. ‘Disappeared Friends’ comes from the last scene of the movie, when after the Nobel Prize ceremony, he says goodbye forever to his imaginary companions.”
The band takes the correspondences between the movie and the music and expands on them, creating an album that works as both a conceptual triumph and as music on its own terms. On “First Day,” Sammi proves to be an important new talent on his instrument, in a solo brimming with fresh and surprising ideas and gentle strength. Sammi spins out his lines to unexpected lengths, varies textures and colors, sharpens and softens his articulation, and decorates the primary melodies with sudden arabesques and grace notes. On “Encryption,” he plays with the beat, phrases ahead of it one moment, behind it another, sometimes floating over the rhythm section, at other times digging into the groove. It’s a subtle approach with few received ideas.
The rest of the band, all veterans capable of handling a wide range of approaches to improvisation, is equally impressive. Garzone improvises with masterful assurance and finesse on “First Day,” in an expertly paced and coherent solo. You can hear the warmth of the human voice in every note, especially on “Encryption.” Lockwood, Garzone’s long-time partner in Boston’s legendary free-jazz trio, The Fringe, plays with his usual supportive brilliance, giving the music and the soloists exactly what is needed. He steps out for a richly melodic and virtuosic solo on “Hallways.” Israel is a sensitive percussionist, carefully calibrating his dynamics and offering pointed interaction with the ensemble. Vocalist Eade appears in duet with Sammi on “Ice Cream and Tears, Please” and “Disappeared Friends,” bringing a heightened sense of beauty and sorrow to performances that seem to speak directly to the emotional core of the both the album and the film that inspired it.
“Prisoner’s Dilemma #1: Be Quiet” and “Prisoner’s Dilemma #2: Rat Out,” the two structured free improvisations at the album’s midpoint serve a dual function. They are based on Nash’s own work, and they are most closely associated with what Sammi feels is the heart of the album. “I wanted to bring some of Nash’s theories into my music in a way that wasn't forced and sounded natural,” says Sammi. “One day, reading about his game theories, I discovered the Prisoner's Dilemma. It's a scenario used to mathematically model and predict behavior in a certain situation. Two robbers are caught and interrogated separately. If they both remain quiet, they each get 2 years in prison. If they both confess (rat out), they
both get 5 years. But, if one confesses and the other remains silent, the one who confesses gets 1 year and the other gets 8 years. In this scenario, no matter what, both robbers, not knowing what the other will do, will be better off if they rat out. I found that the interconnection of behaviors reminded me of what sometimes happens in the live interplay of free jazz. So I decided to create a framework for free jazz improvisation, inspired by Nash's Prisoner's Dilemma.
“We divided the quartet into two teams: me and John Lockwood, and George Garzone and Yoron Israel. Each team had a robber (me and George) and a prosecutor (John and Yoron). Before starting the improvisations, the robbers write down a one-bar musical idea and exchange them without the prosecutors seeing them. By doing so, each robber will know if the other ‘confesses’ his own idea, which is held by the other robber. The two melodic instruments must decide whether to confess or not and listen to hear if the other robber confesses the idea he wrote down. On the other hand, the rhythm instruments have to try to understand if the robbers are confessing and what they were confessing, in other words, to understand the ideas written on the paper.
“We found an incredible flow and energy in both the tracks. I began noticing how the Prisoner’s Dilemma reflects the condition of the modern man, always trapped in a situation of doubt. The first part is a representation of the human state of doubt, of an unexploded energy that creates fear, as opposed to the second, in which the breaking out of the musical ideas is really a source of positive energy. I put the two tracks in the middle of the recording as a bridge between the beginning of Nash’s career and the Nobel Prize, a bridge that is colored with sorrow and sadness, but also an amazing and courageous creative energy. The main theme of the recording is the redeeming value of sorrow.”
Guitarist Massimo Sammi, a native of Genoa, Italy, came to the U.S. in 2006 to study Jazz Composition with Ken Schaphorst and Michael Gandolfi at New England Conservatory, where he also performed with Dave Holland, Cecil McBee, Don Byron, Rakalam Bob Moses, and John McNeil. He performs throughout Italy with his own quintet, featuring saxophonist Mike Campagna, pianist Michel Reis, bassist Tal Gamlieli, and drummer Paul Geresy. As pianist-educator Charlie Banacos observes, “Massimo Sammi is a really exciting guitarist. … He has a lot of chops but he never uses them for their own sake. The music for him always comes first.”
Although an underlying concept plays a large role in First Day, it’s the music’s emotional depth, and Sammi’s superb musicianship that stand out. It is beautiful music inspired by a beautiful mind, in more ways than one.