The forces involved in this album are pleasingly international: an American label offers an Italian saxophonist playing music of his own country, backed by a famed Russian orchestra with an Armenian-American conductor. It speaks to the growing popularity of the music of Italian film composer Ennio Morricone, which seems to be making the transition from cult object to topic of hip conversation to mainstream repertory constituent. The five Morricone excerpts here, not all of them familiar, work well on the saxophone, ...
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The forces involved in this album are pleasingly international: an American label offers an Italian saxophonist playing music of his own country, backed by a famed Russian orchestra with an Armenian-American conductor. It speaks to the growing popularity of the music of Italian film composer Ennio Morricone, which seems to be making the transition from cult object to topic of hip conversation to mainstream repertory constituent. The five Morricone excerpts here, not all of them familiar, work well on the saxophone, especially in the arrangements provided here by composer Roberto Molinelli. Saxophonist Federico Mondelci is an impressive player, with uncannily smooth tone production in legato passages and way of communicating nervous energy in sharper attacks without letting the possibility of jazz sounds run away with the instrument. The Morricone arrangements, with fine, jazzy piano contributions from Russian pianist Basinia Schulman, capture the lowdown, raw quality that makes this composer's music so...
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