the south african Abdullah Ibrahim and the Italian Enrico Rava have collected these days the Donostia Jazz Festivalthe highest distinction of the San Sebastian festival, shared this year with the Japanese Yosuke Yamashita. And a halo of nostalgia crept into the city, accompanied by the first rains. The South African is more noticeable of the passage and weight of time than the Italian, although the latter admits to being on the threshold of his winter quarters. However, the man from Trieste continues to look for new stimuli surrounding himself with young talents, this time around the Fearless Five project, where the trumpeter highlighted the double bassist Francesco Ponticelli and the drummer Evita Polidoro. Very different from the pianist from Cape Town, formerly Dollard Brand, who seems to see the evening fall without further ado.
Ibrahim has performed in a trio format with saxophonist and flutist Cleave Guyton and double bassist and cellist Noah Jackson. They sign a recital where it is convenient to look at the essences that come from the keyboard, because, even if they are minimal, they are still luminous. It is not that of which he had-retained; in this case it is that he had created it all as a pioneer of African jazz along with that legendary formation that was The Jazz Epistles. And there should be all the attention, in an illustrious history that continues to have a present and a future for the new generations.
In the audience, Lucía Rey, a participant these days in the jazz cycle in Ele of the SGAE Foundation that promotes Spanish talent, did not miss a detail. This great lady of our jazz does not miss a pianist, like Iñaki Salvador, local and national glory, who looks for pianos in all corners of the city that one day would see him play among its streets. She is happy and comforting to see musicians listen to other musicians.
Despite his eighty-year-old age, Enrico Rava is something else. He confesses that traveling tires him, but he cannot avoid the vertigo of the stage, nor the ability to be surprised “with those musicians with whom I have the same vision, whether they are 12 or 90 years old”. That connection, Rava says, “is a democracy [musical] perfect; each one receives what he needs · “. The trumpeter, considered one of the creators of what can be called” European jazz “, made referential vanguardto then use his own musical reverie, traversed by a melodic poetry of impossible beauty.
We remind Italian his performances with Gato Barbierito whom he owes his jazz life: “In the beginning I also worked in my father’s company, at a stage that was not very good for me. It was Gato who encouraged me to leave everything and dedicate myself entirely to music, he invited me to a concert in Rome and until today”.