This fascinating CD, due for release on May 25, teams up pianist Farrugia with saxist Frahm for the first time on records, though it’s Farrugia’s fourth album and the duo has been playing together since 2009 as part of drummer Ernesto Cervini’s band, Turboprop. At first listen, it sounds up like ambient jazz, except that Farrugia plays changes that no ambient jazzman (or woman) would play, and as soon as Frahm enters (on soprano sax) the music takes off into exploratory territory. They are both on the same wavelength, listening intently to each other’s playing in their exploration of the music and taking it out on interesting limbs. Moreover, this is just a warm-up for what follows, an exploration of Ray Noble’s famous tune Cherokee played in such an “outside” fashion that I seriously doubt anyone listening to it without knowing the title will recognize it…until the last chorus, when Frahm finally plays the actual tune on his tenor sax. This is clearly intuitive music-making on the highest order.
Yet, interestingly, Farrugia’s original For Murray Gold, which follows, is a tuneful ballad with more tonal and conventional chord changes. They play it very well, with Frahm’s solo—nicely played—also sounding like more like club jazz, almost in the manner of G.E. Smith and the old Saturday Night Live band. Gospell is also a ballad, but a bluesier one, with a nice swagger and some interesting changes, which both musicians again get into with wonderful results. Recording engineer Tommy Tedesco did a wonderful job in recording both musicians with close miking and no phony ambience, which makes the record sound as if they are playing right in your living room. Frahm really goes out on a limb on this one, with Farrugia accompanying him in fine fashion, and his own piano solo is quite good as well.
By contrast, their version of Jerome Kern’s Nobody Else But Me sort of combines the approach they presented in Cherokee of using extended chord changes with the actual melody, played by Frahm on tenor. Farrugia’s highly syncopated playing really make the tune jump in a way you’ve probably not heard before, and there are some wonderful moments in the midst of the piece where they take the song “outside” for some interesting excursions, including brief paraphrases of Harold Arlen’s Over the Rainbow! This is outstanding music-making on a very high level. In his solo, Farrugia also alludes (but does not state) the Over the Rainbow theme while giving the song some fascinating reconstruction. Cool Beans is also a somewhat outside piece played like a blues, with both soloists also in fine fettle.
Cherokee I is just as fascinating, and far removed from the original tune, as Cherokee II, and here the duo plays even more intricately, interweaving their musical ideas as if one mind was at work. In the concluding track Half Moon (for Sophia), the duo returns to the cool, introspective mood of Blued Dharma, and Frahm again picks up his soprano sax. The result is a delightful piece in an almost samba-like rhythm, with both musicians again locked into the same wavelength.
An outstanding album. I can only hope this duo records again in the future, maybe the next time with Cervini on drums…a little subtle color from a drummer would work beautifully.
—© 2018 Lynn René Bayley