Featured artist: ALDO ROMANO
Despite
the ‘never heard of him’ status in North America,
Aldo Romano, now in his 60s, has played with most of the big names
in jazz, and, like the exceptional among them, is rightfully considered
one of the foremost innovators in his instrument: the drums.
That a drummer
could be more than just a friendly timekeeper was forcefully brought
to the fore by Elvin Jones in the early 1960s as a member of the
famous John Coltrane Quartet. In the spirit of a Grand Prix driver
challenging the laws of physics, Jones would lag dangerously behind
or ahead of the beat to the point where we feared he would lose
control. The effects were revolutionary as the drum delighted
in its new found voice and independence, opening up a new way
of thinking about jazz percussion.
In the late 1960s,
with Alice Coltrane and later Pharaoh Sanders, it became necessary
to introduce a second percussionist, who would be expected, beyond
the boundaries of tempo, to add inflections and articulations
that drew from the entire lexicon of sound in order to more fully
disclose the essence or mood of a particular composition. Nana
Vasconcelos, in collaboration with Gismonti (1976-79) and Metheny
(1981-82) was perhaps the first outstanding example of how the
drum machine, voice and body slapping could be fused into the
bio-rhythms of jazz.
Turning yet another
corner in the evolution of percussion, Aldo Romano -- within the
context of small ensembles that feature a single, unplugged drummer
-- generates his distinct and arrhythmic pulse by completely abandoning
a song’s meter in order to assume the role usually designated
for the second percussionist. At any given moment in a score,
he will devolve the responsibility of the beat to the listener,
so the now liberated drummer can devote his energies and accents
to the narration of the composition by making the percussion and
main instruments equal partners in the elaboration of the musical
concept.
In Threesome
(2003), which features Danilo Rea on piano and Remi Vignolo on
bass, the listener will discover wonderfully serene moments that
reveal unexpected transparency on the snare, and feelings poignantly
rendered through the uneven tap and tingle of the cymbals, all
contained within the remarkable spaces and silences of a drummer
at one with his instrument. Aldo Romano is a composer of uncommon
imaginative gifts, who is making his place in the history of jazz
percussion.
