Enrico Rava

Widely viewed as the foremost figure in Italian jazz, trumpeter and composer Enrico Rava maintains an ongoing involvement in wide-ranging musical pursuits, moving fluidly among avant-garde, jazz-funk, hard bop, modal, and folk-jazz idioms through his signature lyricism and refined phrasing. He entered the European jazz landscape in the early 1960s and quickly gained recognition as a soloist. In 1967 he relocated to New York, where he collaborated with Cecil Taylor, Carla Bley, Roswell Rudd, and Charlie Haden. His 1973 debut album, Katcharpari, introduced a distinctive approach to jazz fusion. Both the expansive 1975 recording The Pilgrim and the Stars and the 1978 album Enrico Rava Quartet appeared on ECM, though he has worked with dozens of other labels over the years. Carmen, released in 1995, presented a reflective jazz reading of arias drawn from the opera. Following the 1999 duo project Rava Plays Rava with Italian pianist Stefano Bollani, the two have sustained their partnership through continued tours and recordings. Easy Living reached the jazz-chart Top Ten in 2004 and stayed on the list for six months. On the Dance Floor, issued in 2012, served as a musical homage to Michael Jackson. Roma, released in 2019, found him co-leading a quintet with Joe Lovano. That same year he appeared at the Middleheim Jazz Festival with a sextet of younger musicians who revisited earlier Rava compositions. He joined drummer Andrew Cyrille and bassist William Parker for the 2022 tribute album 2 Blues for Cecil before teaming with pianist Fred Hersch on The Song Is You.

Born in 1939, Rava started on Dixieland trombone in Turin, yet after encountering Miles Davis during high school he changed instruments and adopted the trumpet along with hard bop. He first met Gato Barbieri in 1961, and by 1962 the two were recording soundtrack sessions together. During this time he also met and formed a friendship with trumpeter Chet Baker, who was then working in Italy. Rava began playing sessions with Steve Lacy, linked up with South African expatriates Louis Moholo and John Dyani, and recorded the live album The Forest and the Zoo (ESP) in Argentina.

He moved to New York in 1967 and performed with Roswell Rudd, Marion Brown, Rashied Ali, Cecil Taylor, and Charlie Haden. During a short return to Europe he recorded with Lee Konitz (Stereokonitz, RCA) and Manfred Schoof (European Echoes, FMP). From 1969 to 1976 he again resided in New York, contributing to Carla Bley’s Jazz Composers’ Orchestra on Escalator Over the Hill. After leading his first album as a bandleader, Il Giro del Giorno in 80 Mondi (Black Saint), he formed his own pianoless quartets and quintets. His discography now exceeds one hundred recordings, more than thirty of them as a leader.

ECM released several of his landmark 1970s albums, among them The Pilgrim and the Stars, The Plot, and Enrico Rava Quartet, while Soul Note and Label Bleu issued CDs by his innovative Electric Five (in practice a sextet, since he customarily omits himself from the count), which features two electric guitars. With keyboardist Franco D’Andrea and trumpeter Paolo Fresu, Rava recorded Bix and Pop (Philology) and Shades of Chet, paying tribute respectively to Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong, and to Chet Baker. Additional notable releases include Rava, L’opera Va and Carmen, both featuring striking interpretations of opera arias. In 2001 he assembled a new quintet with younger musicians Gianluca Petrella, Stefano Bollani, Rosario Bonaccorso, and Roberto Gatto, while also touring with longtime associates Roswell Rudd and Gato Barbieri; the 2004 ECM album Easy Living documented those reunions. Three years later, after Andrea Pozza replaced Bollani, who had begun pursuing a solo career, The Words and the Days appeared. In 2007 Rava and pianist Stefano Bollani issued The Third Man on ECM. Rava followed with New York Days in 2009, a set of atmospheric originals carrying a film-noir atmosphere, supported by Bollani, tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, bassist Larry Grenadier, and drummer Paul Motian. He introduced a fresh all-Italian quintet on Tribe, released by ECM in fall 2011; the personnel comprised trombonist Gianluca Petrella, pianist Giovanni Guidi, bassist Gabriele Evangelista, and drummer Fabrizio Sferra, with guitarist Giacomo Ancillotto guesting on several tracks. For 2012’s On the Dance Floor Rava took an unexpected turn. Remarkably, the trumpeter discovered pop singer Michael Jackson’s music only after the singer’s death and became deeply absorbed by it. Recorded with Parco della Musica Jazz Lab at the Rome Auditorium, the album consists entirely of Jackson material and stands as Rava’s tribute to what he regards as the singer’s lasting contribution to twentieth-century music. In 2019 he appeared with saxophonist Joe Lovano on the live ECM recording Roma.

That summer, long a mentor to successive generations of Italian musicians, Rava performed at the Middelheim Jazz Festival in Antwerp alongside six younger players who cite him as a central influence: tenor saxophonist Francesco Bearzatti, pianist Giovanni Guidi, guitarist Francesco Diodati, double bassist Gabriele Evangelista, and drummer Enrico Morello. The concert program drew from earlier Rava recordings as well as Michel Legrand’s “Once Upon a Summertime” and the Cuban folk song “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás.” The performance received a ten-minute standing ovation from the full house; ECM documented the event as Edizione Speciale in 2021.

In February, Rava reunited with fellow Cecil Taylor alumni drummer Andrew Cyrille and bassist William Parker in a Paris studio for two days. Together with producer Petri Haussila they captured the tribute project 2 Blues for Cecil, containing collective improvisations, original compositions by each participant, and a closing reading of the Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart standard “My Funny Valentine.” Finland’s TUM label released the album in January 2022. Also that year he collaborated with pianist Fred Hersch on the intimate duo recording The Song Is You.