Sunday, October 28, 2018

Omit Five - Omit Five (CALIGOLA RECORDS 2018)



Omit Five was born in 2010 in the Conservatory of Rovigo, as an extension of the laboratory of improvisation of the Master Degree courses. Drawing his inspiration from jazz masters such as Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Dave Douglas and Dave Holland, the quintet has quickly elaborated a proposal that is more and more personal, succeeding in creating a repertoire of original tunes which have become part of this first but already convincing recording. Certainly the self–esteem of the band was enhanced by the victory obtained in the jazz section of the National Prize of the Arts 2010/2011, in which bands from all over Italy had taken part. Only one year later Omit Five have other new finished songs, already played live and that will constitute their now forthcoming second album. Tying the post–bop tradition with completely acoustic sonorities, the quintet winks at what new has emerged during the last years from the New Yorker and north–European vanguard scene. Even if they are all about 25 years old, the musicians have been able to lessen juvenile passion and enthusiasm with the rationality derived from their studies with the Rovigo’s teachers Moreover, Omit Five express the attempt to merge two different geographical areas, a southern one, represented by the drummer Simone Sferruzza, from Palermo, and the guitarist Joseph Circelli, from Campania, and a Venetian one. This area is related to the trombonist Filippo Vignato, from Vicenza, who has moved some time ago to the Venice dry land, where the saxophonist Mattia Dalla Pozza and the double bass player Rosa Brunello work too. Among the ten tracks, if the suggestive Oclupaca, which is one of the little–known songs of the last Ellington’s production, and Shiny things, by Tom Waits, are excluded, two compositions are by Brunello, two by Vignato, one by Sferruzza and three by Circelli. 

Thus Omit Five’s music is the result of a really collective and equal work, where even the varied timbric and rhythmic–harmonic solutions, resulting from the taste and sensibility of the different composers, are nevertheless attributable to a well–defined sonority. This could already suffice to be satisfied of what has been achieved in such a short time by five jazzmen we shall surely hear a lot about soon.