Paolo Lattanzi Group

"I am impressed with the way the individual talents of the five musicians are blended together to create a group sound as they complete the journey of each of the tunes. They listen to each other and each episode follows in organic continuity with the one before it, whether it be phrase to phrase or from soloist to soloist [...]. Nikolay Moiseenko (saxes) and Aurelien Budynek (guitars) are an exhilarating “front line” [...] Pau Terol (Piano) and Marco Panascia (bass) are also great improvisers and provide a consistent and energetic comping foundation throughout the CD. Paolo Lattanzi, the composer of these tunes, provides a unique time ride accompaniment as the drummer. [...] Paolo knows what he wants and what rhythmic color choices will best support his melodic/harmonic ideas and he delivers the drum part with inspired confidence."

- Ken Pullig -
Chair Jazz Composition
Berklee College of Music
- Ken Pullig

"It's the first album in my recent memory which begins by plunging immediately into a deep swinging groove but relaxed as hell. Smooth. Very nice move [...] These people love music. Can you hear it? [...] That's what Night Dancers is doing: releasing the music a little at a time to us… Killer! There are no weak links! [...] Dare I say the pacing and arranging border on brilliant! [...] Metric modulation. I have been quitely playing and loving metric modulation since my work in 1977 with Brand X (plus Tom Pierson, Aydin Esen, Wayne Shorter), Gil Evans, Delmar Brown and Gary Chaffee. You’ve got to love it. Hopefully with people like Sting helping introduce some of it to the public and people like Paolo Lattanzi Group keeping metric modulation alive in jazz, we'll have our better world right here as we listen to Night Dancers."

- Kenwood Dennard -
World Renowned Drummer / Composer
(Wayne Shorter, Miles Davis, Sting, Chick Corea, Jaco Pastorius, among others)


- Kenwood Dennard

Stars: ****

The first release of this young band leaded by Italian drummer Paolo Lattanzi is a real impressive one, with a surprising force wave, thanks to the maturity of the artistic concept fixed on the disc. It is a multinational group in which together with Italian bassist Marco Panascia we find the Spanish Pau Terol on piano and keys, the French Aurelien Budynek on guitars and the Russian Nikolay Moiseenko on alto and soprano saxophones. They all come from the Berklee College of Music in Boston and show, as if it was needed, that it is possible to obtain the better results only by studying.

The music of the young drummer is characterized by a nice rhythmic charge rooted in what today is considered modern jazz, with its bop cadences and suffused with dashes of electric sounds provided with diligence by Budynek’s guitars and, when he is called on it, by Panascia’s electric bass. A couple of tunes are memorable, like “Just a Story” with Russian saxophonist Nikolay Moiseenko playing a la Kenny Garrett (one of the most interesting saxophonists of the last generation) with great proficiency, able to accelerate and slow down his stream of notes in a genial way, at will, telling a story rich of rests and suggestive moments, with a dramatic voice and an overall fierceness.

Lattanzi’s compositions are all successful, showing his preparation at all levels. The general impression left by this album is that of a group of veterans, ended up by mistake in a label interested in some contemporary developments like Giorgio Dini’s. On the contrary they are newcomers and release one of the most interesting works of this year for what concerns Italian jazz.

- Cosimo Parisi


- MusicBoom.it (October 2006)

Night Dancers is a strange mix of tradition, groove and experimentation. First of all the setup of the group: an ensemble composed of musicians coming from different geographic backgrounds, but all characterized by a significant linguistic and instrumental openness; then the combination of the soloing instruments, sax, guitar and piano to which other colors are added by the organ and the fretless guitar. Night Dancers meets the tradition filtering it through contingent and necessary elements.

The quintet gets together in America where the five individuals studied at the Berklee College of Music. You can recognize each different language, five styles that blend together with the language of the tradition, as it developed in the US. The intention to unify the swing with a more aggressive rhythmic idea is clearly hearable: an intent to create a groove by picking rhythmic concepts from different sources. On this purpose the contribution of bassist Marco Panascia is significant, on upright and electric basses, shifting from pulsating to lyrical depending on the circumstances.

The fact that the group is leaded by a drummer is highlighted by the choice to play, whenever it is possible, with time and rhythm, focusing especially on meter changes. Otherwise the drummer rarely seeks to emerge from the rest of the band (maybe with the exception of the end of In a Dark Room) and performs as a measured bandleader. The compositions proposed by Paolo Lattanzi coherently explore different fields, from the ballad and the mid-tempo up to faster paces, and offer a good setting for the solos and the different ideas of the soloists.

The strange mix I mentioned is also reflected in the compositions (obviously) and the order of the tunes on the disc. Let’s consider May, the tune that closes the work: a visionary guitar and saxophone unison, with the organ in the background to add an extra degree of psychedelics... but there are different feelings following each other in the course of this disc, they chase one another in the same track with sudden (although logic) changes, or develop through a well distributed growth of the various elements of the music.

Lattanzi’s singular approach to composing, ready to follow different inspirations and to handle different situations, emerges with the more reflective tunes, where he locates the elements in a particularly measured fashion and successfully gives breath to the different sections of the composition as well as to the voices of the soloists.

Last is the amalgamation of the three soloists. A particularly significant aspect of the CD is the creation of the sound that Nikolay Moiseenko, Aurelién Budynek and Pau Terol build with the use of their instruments. Each individual “pronunciation” of the jazz language brings to light both their background and the experience in the United States.

The different combinations of instruments, the acoustic, semi-acoustic or electric setups, respond to the needs of the composition and to the individual expressive necessities of the three. Besides (and considered the presence of a guitar and a piano this could sound paradoxical) the harmonies are often suggested more than stated: Lattanzi’s writing uses the three instruments as they were exclusively soloists. The harmonies are often constructed thanks to the participation of the whole group.

The work done on the sounds by the five musicians, especially in the electric version, delivers us an ensemble that commit to the several traditions and to the multiple musical stories that developed in the twentieth century. Their idea puts in relation different uses of various instruments and the five stories of the musicians.

You can sense specific influences and inspirations in these compositions and in the way the band plays, but this is not a main concern for Night Dancers. The Paolo Lattanzi Group shows a discrete, never exceeding, intention to explore a personal ground, without overdoing in the attempt of being original, never employing useless clichés. Lattanzi and his musicians praise the tradition – the swing, the necessity of a ballad, the pleasure to express themselves through the jazz idiom – but they also naturally add other atypical elements.

A particularity of the album is the long rest (almost twenty seconds long) that separates the fifth track from the sixth, in the middle of the CD. Maybe it is a coincidence; maybe it recalls the aesthetics of the vinyl, with the separation between the two faces of the disc…


Fabio Ciminiera - Jazz Convention Year 2006




- JazzConvention.net

Stars: ****

Smooth, broad, focused as well as carefree, rich of colors and evocations: the repertoire in Night Dancers offers a complete panoramic view of all the possible variants of the theme “melodic line plus improvisation”. Paolo Lattanzi’s group is young (although you wouldn’t expect it), polyglot, rampant (in a good way), omnivorous. The five musicians are jumping like crickets between the relaxed pace of Cicerchì’s Wanderlust and the slight inquietude of the title track; between the polyrhythms of In a Dark Room and the cinematic mood of When it Doesn’t Matter. Emotional and propulsive stimulations, an incontestable and steady pulse, a vigorous approach – incisive but always comfortable – these are the necessary resources for a group that finds its place among the most appealing proposals in contemporary jazz. The different proveniences of the five – two Italians, a Spaniard, a Frenchman and a Russian – guarantee the spontaneity of each intervention. With the growing of their experience they will eventually become an unfailing musical apparatus.

- Gianpaolo Chiriacò


- Italian Magazine, November 2006

Italian drummer Paolo Lattanzi leads his sophisticated ensemble through focused, ornately performed original compositions. The recording quality on Night Dancers is very impressive and unlike some percussionist bandleaders, Lattanzi gives the quintet much space to explore. The percolating “In a Dark Room” shows his strength at laying down uptempo grooves, while “14/2” features beautiful piano chord clusters.



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More Soon... - Issue #23 Oct/Nov 2006