The spirit of Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath hovered over this second instalment of a collaboration that was instigated for last year's jazz festival.
McGregor's troupe was an amalgamation of his fellow South Africans with some of the most adventurous players from the 1970s London jazz scene, while this team draws from Sardinian, Italian and Scottish talents, but the two bands share a taste for blending ethnic traditions into jubilant, hard-swinging jazz in a line-up that falls just below big band dimensions.
One short of the advertised dozen, Stone Islands nonetheless created a rich, vibrant sound. Trumpeter Colin Steele's Kirsten's Jig danced its way into a full-on Scottish boogie and his colleague, saxophonist Enzo Favata, brought a raw Sardinian introduction to David Milligan's nominally small but sonically large and punchy Minor Bump.
There was plenty of space for improvisation and a high-quality cast of improvisers on trumpet, saxophones, trombones and guitar, as well as the co-leaders, but what impressed particularly was the way the music was arranged so the improvised sections carried each composition forward. Milligan's brilliantly developed piano solo on Favata's roaring Ballao became all the more exciting for being buoyed by the arrival of the full ensemble at a crucial phase and other configurations, such as duelling saxophones brought into action on a nudge and propelled by the marvellous whip-crack drumming of Umberto Trombetta and sumptuous bass figures of Danilo Gallo, added to the sense that what we were witnessing was both accomplished and pregnant with possibilities.
Stone Islands
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