Stefano Bollani album

Joy In Spite Of Everything

(ECM)

Stefano Joy resThe title of Easy Healing is perfect: a pick-me-up song riding on a breeze of calypso charm. Stefano Bollani, the exceptional Italian pianist long associated with Enrico Rava, could well have written this with Bill Frisell in mind, so perfectly does the guitarist’s elfin playing converge with the blitheness of the melody. Even Mark Turner, a tenor saxophonist whose work has tended to be so Spartan and shadowy that he could find the dark-alley implications in a teddy bear, lightens up and skates across the groove created by bassist Jesper Bodilsen and drummer Morten Lund.

The amusingly-titled No Pope No Party is actually rather straighter, like a something from a Blue Note album of 50 years ago. More beguiling are the pieces that give full rein to Bollani’s innate lushness and melodic invention. The interplay between the guitar and piano on Ismene is so fragile you feel it might snap before they reach the end, while Tales From The Time Loop offers Turner a context to indulge a little of his existential angst.