FRANCESCO BEARZATTI TINISSIMA 4TET FOR MALCOLM X

“X (Suite for Malcolm)” is a concept album dedicated to the Afro-American leader Malcolm X, who through his actions and his thinking helped to change the relationship between colored and white people in the United States. The cd is produced by the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome and it’s thoght as a multimedia project.   A slow march and funeral melancholy tones introduce the movement’s opening suite, entitled “Hard Times” is: sax and trumpet announce the sinister atmosphere of the main theme, Falzone simulates complaints with the dirty trumpet endnotes and alternates to the interpretation of his instrument with screams, echoing in the background the main theme sung by the clarinet Berzatti to which it is, then, a swinging solo, some more vivid, until you return to the theme tune in unison. “Smart Guy” is open from the original solo Zeno De Rossi on drums, featuring sounds “deaf” that evoke the image of common objects like pots and pans, leaving the wind flow and the melody and come together with short sequences and dry; Falzone alternates still the trumpet to sound effects and lines created with the voice as Danilo Gallo offers to a bass solo by the stamp of dull and dirty. The battery takes us quickly to the rhythm dance to “Cotton Club” where the horns in unison mentioning the issue of Funkytown by Lipps Inc, projecting in a ballroom, the leader’s solos on tenor saxophone vibrato alternates on high notes to treble the most strident and then move on to the hand while Berzatti Falzone improvising riffs and creates a level in order to return to the summons before.   That’s how we see, from the succession of these first three movements, the quartet attempts to create a soundtrack to accompany the key moments in the life of Malcolm, recalling or imagining the atmosphere, often conflicting with each other, with great freedom of expression and teaching of a variety of sound which is sometimes abstract and elusive but which are still receiving an overall coherence.

“Prince of Crime”, composed of several rhythmic steps, now suspended funky hours, see Francis and John Falzone Berzatti alternate clarinet and muted trumpet to sax and trumpet without mute. The rapid re-phrasing of the trumpet takes a mournful attitude, then a second model that we see repeated in the suite, from the scat and sax accompanied by verses by Falzone, to arrive at the closing obsessively repeating a sequence of notes. In “Satan in chains” Berzatti phrasing nervously and noisily in his brief solo Falzone and choose a dull sound blown and, to go immediately to “Coversion: the cascade of blows that creates Zeno De Rossi on drums, abandoning its rhythmic function , there is the slow and solemn hypnotic melody saxophone and trumpet. Then takes the sax tone arabesque while closing again sees the winds with the main theme.   The pace of “A new leader supported by the battery funky De Rossi, restless and shadowy atmosphere continues on in an arrangement that draws on fusion, and is broken by a distorted solo Gallo succeeded by saxophone and trumpet.

With “Betrayal” back to the sounds of the first movement of the suite. Francesco Berzatti becomes more passionate and dramatic drawing to a slow melody sax, alternating high and low notes rapidly almost to be a debate within. The clarinet Oriental opens in the rapid isolation “Hajj”, the rhythm section is in addition to driving this movement then that leaves room for a solo tribal drums.   The tenth chapter is entitled “Epilogue”, a song that reinterprets the introduction of hip hop melody, enhanced by a text sung by the rapper Napoleon Maddox. The album closes with “Kinshasa (to Muhammad Ali), characterized by the phrases chanted in unison by the horns and rhythm dance.   Francesco Bearzatti: saxophone, clarinet, Xaphoon, electronics John Falzon: trumpet, human effects Danilo Gallo: bass, electric bass Zeno De Rossi: drums and percussion