Stefano Maltese - (1999) Open Letter To Mingus - MJCD 1122

Stefano Maltese

Biography by Francesco Martinelli

Since the '70s, Sicilian composer and multi-instrumentalist Stefano Maltese has worked in a variety of situations ranging from solo to large ensembles including strings and unusual instruments like harmonica and glockenspiel. He has actively explored the interaction between writing and improvising, and followed his own personal path inspired by music, literature, and other arts, independently arriving at results similar to those reached by musicians of other post-jazz environments, such as Chicago's AACM Amsterdam's ICP Orchestra. Similar to John Tchicai or Roscoe Mitchell, Maltese is very much his own man, and his aesthetics stem from jazz as much as from the rich artistic and philosophical heritage of his beloved Sicily

In 1987, Maltese set up the first orchestra that grouped avant-garde musicians from different areas of Italy, a forerunner to the Italian Instabile Orchestra. In 1990, he created the Open Sound Ensemble to which he invited musicians from different areas of the worl (Living Alive, Leo 2000), and in 1993, organized the As Sikilli Ensemble (the Sicilian in Arabic) to play his own articulated suites (Seven Tracks For Tomorrow, Dischi della Quercia 1997). His impressive CDs in duo with Marilyn Crispell on Black Saint (Red And Blue) focus on open improvisations, as does the ad hoc quartet with Evan parker, Keith Tippet adn Antonio Moncada (Double Mirrro, Splasc(h) 1996). He regularly collaborates with excellent vocalist Gioconda Cilion, a major song stylist and improviser (Sounds Of My Soul Dischi della Quercia 1995) and performs solo (Good Morning Midnight Splasc(h) 1998). In his town of Syracuse, he promotes the Labirinti Sonori Jazz Festival.

Stefano Maltese Open Music Orchestra
Alberto Mandarini (tp, flug), Lauro Rossi, Sebi Tramontana (tb), Stefano Maltese (as, cb, arr), Eugenio Colombo (ss, as, fl, bfl), Carlo Actis Dato (bs, bcl), Umberto Petrin (p), Giovanni Maier (b), Antonio Moncada (dr), Gioconda Cilio (vcl)

Recorded in rome 1999, october 26 and 27 in Sala B Radio Rai.


Pithecantropus Erectus
Pow Wow Mingus
Peggy's Blue Skylight
The Blue Meets The Moon
Celia
The Wings Of The Night
Duke Ellington's Sound Of Love
Love Call
Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting
A Stormy Night
Eclipse
Things We Said

Astonishing italian new jazz "all star" ensemble assembled in 1999 to celebrate Charles Mingus' 20 years after his death. In this deep tribute the predominant feeling is respect and a great knowledge of Charles Mingus compositional and arranging skills. In this concert, later published as enclosed to the italian jazz magazin "Musica Jazz", we find a selection of 9 among the best italian musicians in a program of six Mingus compositions alternated with 6 original Maltese compositions inspired to those ones. Even if this is an important and very fine record, perhaps is not the most rapresentative of Stefano Maltese's originality; but it's an OOP and a very rare album to find even in Italy.
My aim here is mostly that of pointing to the attention of a highly qualified group a name perhaps not so largely known despite the amazingly beauty of his music.

A Link to Stefano Maltese recording company website: http://www.labirintisonori.it/english/stefano/frame_stefano.htm