Trumpeter Alessi skates over the music in the best possible sense in the opening tracks but that doesn’t preclude engaging with his talented fellow players throughout all nine tracks on Imaginary Friends.
Listen to track one, Iram Isella – his eight-year old daughter’s name, spelled backwards – and you sense a player working in the high cirrus cloud, reaching up through the azure, coasting along like a delightful contrail. This is music that aspires to blue sky thinking and Oxide, the second track continues in the same high-flying vein.
On this album, Alessi is joined by Ravi Coltrane on tenor and soprano saxes, Andy Milne on piano, Drew Gress on double bass and Mark Ferber on drums. The result is an unhurried tone poetry based around trumpet and sax harmonies, with piano and rhythm section fundamental to the overall charm.
The quintet recorded the album at La Buisonne in France, following at least 12 dates in Europe so by the time they got into studio the tunes were clearly well-honed and the creases ironed out. Yet, who knows, maybe they left plenty of creases here which we know nothing about - who is to say how much improvisation is involved and do we care, a question that can be asked of most jazz records?
Fun Room is bouncy and sprightly in its own modest way while Imaginary Friends, the title cuts its own bold dash, with slices of Stanko-like trumpet cutting through the rich texture. Melee, meanwhile, is deliberately challenging In a Jackson Pollock, throw-on-the-paint manner.
In sum, an enigmatic album which, aside from its celebratory delight in, well, playing expansive music, is occasionally probing and introspective on tracks like Around the Corner.
