Coming from a musician like Jacques Schwartz-Bart, this sort of comment is worth its weight in peanuts. Salted, needless to say. As Jacques would say about La Rocca’s writing style, “that’s it”. A singular album that sounds like a plural and that can be conjugated in the past, present and future; a contemporary jazz record that reads like a travel book. At each stop, we get a song to hum and high-level soloists to follow in their harmonic and rhythmic excursions. Let’s be clear: a record signed by a bassist-leader often resembles other releases recorded by bassist-leaders, a heavy revenge on the status of accompanist; spotlight on the bassist, all the themes are for me, the first chorus and codas…This second album by La Rocca deftly avoids that trap.
With the exception of “Crescent”, all the compositions are signed La Rocca but the rest is impeccably balanced and each musician comes out of the adventure with something to remember. Could this be the end? “No way, José”, replied the echo!
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