Enrico Rava, Stefano Bollani, Mark Turner, Larry Grenadier, Paul Motian New York Days (2 LP)

180g Vinyl Double LP Reissue!
New York Days features Italy's highly inventive jazz musicians Enrico Rava and protégé Stefano Bollani, together with three leading American jazzmen: master drummer Paul Motian, bassist Larry Grenadier, and, in his ECM debut, saxophonist Mark Turner. This album is a magical European/American collaboration, recorded in the jazz capital of the world.
The album is both a transatlantic project and a kind of "homecoming". Rava found his musical direction while living in New York in the late 60s/early 70s. Since then, an increasingly "Italian" lyricism has also made itself felt in his playing. Rava's soulful trumpet is strongly contrasted with the lean, analytical playing of Mark Turner. Bollani's playful harmonic imagination shapes bridges between them. Larry Grenadier is "present and focused in every moment" as Rava says, and Paul Motian is as idiosyncratically creative as ever.
The Rava/Bollani/Motian trio album of 2004, Tati, was a popular and critical success. New York Days takes the combination to the next level.
A new transatlantic quintet headed by Italian trumpeter Rava, recorded in New York in 2008 and a first ECM appearance for US tenorist Mark Turner, whose distilled, lean sound references Coltrane, Warne Marsh, Wayne Shorter and others. Turner’s searching, analytical tone is in marked contrast to Enrico’s lyrical flourishes, but the two make a fascinating pairing – especially with the resolutely musical pianist Stefano Bollani finding points of contact, and making his own statements. Add in the gifted bassist Larry Grenadier (last heard on ECM with Charles Lloyd) and that most unpredictable of all drummers, Paul Motian, and you have here a truly remarkable band.
"The neo-noir textures of Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava's fine ECM release, New York Days, recall evocative, jazz-based film scores such as Gato Barbieri's Last Tango in Paris or Miles Davis's Elevator to the Gallows...Rava conjures a rain-soaked, black-and-white urban fantasia on a finely produced, 77-minute set of moody originals...one of the outstanding jazz releases of 2009." - Richard Mortifoglio, allmusic.com
"Italian exploits are a case in themselves. However, the highly controlled power and glory with which trumpeter Rava leads Mark Turner, Larry Grenadier, Paul Motian and Stefano Bollani to chamber jazz grandeur is sensational. If the eleven tracks are bursting with complexity and richness of detail, magical weaves of the tenderest bands of sound unfold – an ingenious masterpiece, timelessly beautiful." - Sven Thielmann, Stereoplay
"Once again in New York, musically and physically, was Enrico Rava, the doyen among Italy's jazz trumpeters. A few days in the metropolis, where he spent formative years of his career around 1970. ... There are rava classics ..., even free collective improvisations, of an atmosphere that evokes black-and-white images in the mind when you get involved in it. Conversely, the composed pieces, all from Rava's pen, live from interplay and improvisation. Motian is once again a magician of dissected rhythms, the interaction of the two winds is simply fantastic." - Berthold Klostermann, Fono Forum
"If there are two poles to Rava’s music they lie in his unstinting admiration for Miles Davis and in his instinctive understanding of the music of his homeland. There is a lightness and, even, serenity to these 11 tracks that evokes Rava’s hero in his early to mid-1960s incarnation but the compositions are like nothing Miles would have used. It is in their space that Rava’s gifts find their best expression. …This is not music of grandiloquent statements but rather that of elegance and quiet emotion. If it were any better, New York Days would be almost too perfect." - Duncan Heining, Jazzwise
"New York Days is a long and an unusually entertaining trip. And, right at the beginning, undoubtedly one of the CDs of the year." - Peter Rüedi, Weltwoche
"The impact of Enrico Rava is no longer limited to his homeland. Today, the northern Italian trumpeter is considered one of the very great jazzmen worldwide; therefore, as one who has managed to achieve with the wise lyrical serenity of his playing and the elasticity of his improvisational concepts what every artist strives for – to speak a contemporary and authentic language that is unique and generally understandable at the same time." - Alessandro Topa, Jazz Aesthetics
"Enrico Rava has remained true to the surprises: his new record ... is full of unexpected twists, a great document of musical curiosity – with the exception of two improvisations, all are pieces by Enrico Rava – and intellectual freedom. The trumpeter always gives only economical specifications in his compositions, and this presupposes that the other musicians act with an alert spirit, design independently and bring a lot of their own." - Norbert Dömling, Süddeutsche Zeitung
"In 1967 he came to the world capital of jazz, quickly became part of the emerging free jazz scene and stayed here for eight years. He had found his profile: as a rhapsode of the jazz avant-garde, as a musician who insisted on the emotional power of the melody in the great freedom. ... Although the new album is based on the idols of modern jazz, it also shows that Rava can follow familiar paths in a different direction. In his jazz, borderline experiences can thus be identified, encounters with other genres can be heard." - Stefan Hentz, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
"New York Days is an album that will stay. It contains some of Rava's finest compositions. And it sets standards not least because of the inexhaustible wealth of sound textures, with which the entire spectrum of a quintet is documented here. In this splendour of sound, of course, it is also the manifesto and legacy of a sensitivity that the New Yorker Paul Motian, none more than he, has given to jazz." - Alessandro Topa, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
"Throughout, the music is distinguished by both lyricism of the highest order and many a quicksilver shift in focus from the swinging to the free-touched to the intensely meditative. … The drummer’s trademark adagio-phrased, broken-accented approach is perfect for Rava’s music, rich in reflective accents and cross-rhythmic potentiality as it is. … Turner is a saxophonist of rare and pleasing dynamic and melodic sensitivity, as aware of Warne Marsh as he is of Coltrane: his lines breathe very effectively, offering lean, oblique counterpart to Rava’s full-on yet intelligently tempered lyricism… Overall, another album of surpassing excellence from the maestro." - Micheal Tucker, Jazz Journal/Jazzreview
"Rava blows with an effortless grace that can stretch from louche to dangerously dark when needed. All in all this may initially sound like a typically tasteful ECM album, but at its heart it holds some ingenious surprises. More please." - Chris Jones, BBC Online
"Rava and Bollani’s delicate agenda of rich tone-colours, illuminated by lightning-strikes of urgent sound, dominates the music. … Motian’s dazzling drumming always swings. Bollani’s piano lines glisten over his springy left-hand chording, and the two horn players – Turner often murmuring around the lower register, Rava splitting long sounds with taut upper-end ascents – both contrast sharply, and intertwine like intimates." - John Fordham, The Guardian
"On these beautiful pieces, the empathy shared by Enrico Rava, Stefano Bollani, Mark Turner, Larry Grenadier and Paul Motian is impressive. It’s in the details: their close, mutual awareness, especially Rava’s and Turner’s; Bollani’s uncanny sense of what’s needed as accompanist and soloist; Motian’s feel for texture; and Grenadier’s sensitivity all unite to make these performances complete. … There’s a sense of a journey taken and a story told, and of order aligned with freedom that only the best are privy to." - Ray Comiskey, Irish Times
"Fans of minimalist beauty would be hard-pressed to find a better combination than Enrico Rava, Stefano Bollani, Mark Turner, Larry Grenadier and Paul Motian. The Italian trumpeter’s New York Days shimmers like a gauzy landscape painting, with Turner’s husky, vertical phrases and the hiss of Motian’s cymbals the dominant textures." - James Hale, DownBeat
"Turner is the wild card because, even though he moderates his intensity to fit within the chamber jazz aesthetic of a Rava album, tonally and conceptually he is a stark contrast. His lines are austere and vertical whereas Rava plays sensuous, free, floating forms. Their dissociative counterpoint is intriguing for its subtle tensions." - Thomas Conrad, JazzTimes
"The year begins in a big way with this record recorded in New York by Enrico Rava. There is a Rava case: this trumpeter of vast stature, undoubtedly the most interesting in Europe with Palle Mikkelborg, plays his instrument better than ever, contrary to the rule that the lips deteriorate with age. The beautifully projected sound is becoming more and more moving, the style has become refined, it no longer reminds Miles Davis except by the melancholy and the absence of vibrato, a kind of pensive interiority, without the slightest pose." - Michel Contat, TV Drama
"New York Days is one of those albums that exude a special aura, atmospheric records whose climates resonate for a long time in the memory." - Vincent Bessières, Jazz Musician
"Meditative, tending towards the depth of sound. In New York Days, Enrico Rava, drummer Paul Motian, double bassist Larry Grenadier, saxophonist (tenor) Mark Turner and pianist Stefano Bollani do not need explanations to get along. Unconscious to unconscious, directly. Quiet days in New York." - Francis Marmande, The World
"The result is a refined music where the technical excellence of each one fades in front of the artistic emotion. All of them serve Rava's melodies with a rare sensitivity, whether they enter the music with leaps and bounds or whether they blow the orchestra away in an Outsider with an Ornettian scent. (...) a dream quintet composed of musicians at the top of their art and at the service of a music of depth." - Philippe Vincent, Jazz Magazine

• Double LP
• 180g Vinyl
• Audiophile High Quality Pressing
• Recorded at Avatar Studios, New York, February 2008
• Gatefold jacket
• Made in Germany

• Enrico Rava, trumpet
• Stefano Bollani, piano
• Mark Turner, tenor saxophone
• Larry Grenadier, double-bass
• Paul Motian, drums