Francesco Turrisi

Songs of Experience Taquin Records***

Dublin-based Italian pianist Francesco Turrisi is the very model of a modern jazz musician, drawing inspiration from a wide variety of sources – everything from jazz and Arabic to early Baroque and Italian folk music – and from them, over a series of excellent releases in the past five years, a unique and distinctive voice is emerging. When it comes to musicians, Turrisi is also apt to look beyond his nose, on this occasion recruiting rising Italian trumpeter Fulvio Sigurta and sensitive Portuguese drummer Joao Lobo. The pianist's compositions for this bass-less trio are deceptively slight, epigrammatic fragments which merge seamlessly with passages of collective improvisation. The tone throughout is ruminative, even sombre, but it's cut through by the leader's playfulness, Sigurta's spare, bluesy trumpet lines and Lobo's keen sense of dynamics. francescoturrisi.com