We introduced Italian-born piano virtuoso Tonino Miano in this space earlier this year while examining his FluiDensity encounter with trumpet player Brian Groder. Here’s another one-on-one meeting with another trumpeter, fellow Italian Mirio Cosottini.
The Inner Life Of Residue is the name of this particular trumpet/piano duet, again all-improv, but this is not follow-up to that album; the two made The Curvature Of Pace a few years earlier (2008).
Whereas FluiDensity has linearity to it, Residue goes down a jagged path. Whereas Groder approaches his sessions with Miano as a jazz musician with a majestic tone, Cosottini’s tone is sharp-edged, often more unpredictable, and he can be purely emotional. Whereas the earlier album is often dense, the new one is often more diffused and delicate.
Beyond that, the overall approach taken to The Inner Life Of Residue differs in its duality: it can be abrasive and it can be pretty; it can dissonant or gorgeously melodic; it can sound composed in one moment of a song and suddenly become completely extemporaneous the next. Miano obviously understood the need to make an album that conforms to the strengths of his trumpet player and complemented him at every turn.
That duality is implemented in so many ways. Cosottini plays sparse and achingly on the wittily titled “There Is A Swagger About Your Stagger” as Miano fills up the voids left behind, before Miano takes control of the song’s direction, moving from tonality to atonality. “Ricercare Ars Revelare” begins energetically, but soon decelerates into solitude. “Emergence” opens with an intense intro, and then opens up like the sun breaking through the clouds. Just when you think that’s the whole song, the clouds come back and the thunder returns. “Breaking Away” sounds like they are about to launch into a classic ballad, but instead they break out into some freewheeling, even energetic coaction.
It’s that surprise element, the turning on a dime, that gives The Inner Life Of Residue a reason to engage with it beyond just good musicianship. Mirio Cosottini and Tonino Miano find a wealth of ideas that spring forth from just a trumpet and a piano.
*** Purchase The Inner Life Of Residue here ***
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The Inner Life Of Residue will be available for sale October 6 from Impressus Records.
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