Italian Jazz Drummer, Tommaso Moretti's New Album "Inside Out" Featuring Ben Lamar Gay

At its best, recorded music manages to be both wholly particular and thoroughly general; both specific and open ended; of the moment and outside of it; in motion and a snapshot; of lived experience and expressing the imagined. These tendencies and tensions give us some of the pathways into core values at work in this music.  To the ears and heart, these are qualities that exceed genre and style: becoming rather matters of substance and content; things personal but also those held in common.  It is about life.  Moretti introduces this record with the reflection: “It connects the dots between the intimate dimension of an inspiration and the aesthetic need to translate it into defined musical languages. It’s a quest to find the inner layer of humanity that allows a connection between the meaning of three words: Sentimento, Saudade, Soul.” Feeling, longing, experience, and form are the narrative and musical themes here. 

He offers us an album that communicates the particular circumstances of his life: a native Italian; a proud Chicagoan since 2013; a husband and father; teacher, collaborator, and bandleader. A student of the rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic world, especially the polyrhythmic jazz and samba traditions; a communicator of music fundamentals; a detailed listener; an operator of time and layers in sound; a singer and composer.The invitation with a record like this is to hear it as a journey and as a retrospective; looking at a path both backwards and ahead- giving us a way to hear the composition of a place.  This is music of many homes- settings like Chicago and Rome -  and also scenes and spaces  - the samba bateria, the jazz session, the canzone napoletana, - and motion - it swings. 

This is an album that is both expressive of decades of musical feeling yet given form in a necessarily particular period in Chicago, 2021: each instrumentalist recorded their part in the studio separately: starting with the percussive foundation and recording each layer of the composition individually. Building out musical drama and collectivity in such circumstances becomes possible by way of compositions that are deeply polyrhythmic, multi-sectional, and centered through shifting grooves.The forms of each piece give a common terrain for creativity, in which each musician responds in turn to the layers that preceded them.  Feeling and form are necessarily entangled in the process here.  To get beyond or extend that which has come before, moving from inside out (i.e rhythm first) towards figuring out how to play outside of the structure that had previously been laid down.  It is a process that foregrounds the possibility of recontextualizing through layering.  Moretti is always expressive in polyrhythm, which affirms that a new layer can transform overall meaning and value.                                                                                           

The rhythm section of Moretti’s drums and percussion, Ben Dillinger’s bass, and Edinho Gerber’s electric and acoustic guitars offers a foundation for Jake Wark’s saxophone, as well as the cornet of Ben Lamar Gay and Natalie Lande's flute. Moretti’s voice, xylophone, and electronics extend the sound pallet on multiple pieces, providing a deeply personal set of timbres: the voice is vehicle of language and lyrics here, detailed, and specific; the xylophone is playful and articulate; the electronics extend a sense of space and motion.Some careful overdubs grow the arrangements while keeping the focus on a naturalistic group sound, full of dynamic changes, interplay, and the sound of musicians listening to one another: supportive, balanced, and in dialogue.  This dance-  of the group of individuals playing within a shared structure - gathers around eight pieces grounded in the specific textures and concerns of Moretti’s life - at once particular and broadly human; of motion and about place - manifesting some specific thematic concerns expressed in each:

1. Italiano In America

This sounds out some of the dynamics of Italian self-perception: echoing the way we might perceive ourselves at home and abroad; and the ways we think that we are perceived. Who thinks what of whom?  Who thinks what where?  Creating a chain of mirrors and reflections, these questions of identity play out as an alternation of musical Drama and Comedy - used to set up and undo a listeners’s expectations and sense of anticipation and assumption.  Tension, propulsive change, and upended resolution emerge as a recurring Italian folk motif is positioned in a slippery rhythmic context: the joyful play with and defiance of expectations; the sonic and the social in modulation. 

2. Redefine The Purpose

With a feel both placid and restless, Moretti notes, “the lyrics reflect a common feeling during the first months of the pandemic: a wish that humanity could learn from mistakes and break out the vicious circle of greed.” The instrumental pallet here documents the eclectic collection of instruments Moretti had on hand at home during the 2020 lockdown- drums, classical guitar, xylophone, percussion, and the voice- augmented in this recording by bass (Ben Dillinger) and flute (Natalie Lande). 

3 ESM

“A song inspired by my 5 years old daughter's moods and motions, with a particular emphasis on her energy and sweetness.”

4. Edge Of A Decade

Inspired by the Afro-Brazilian percussion art-form "Batucada" and a sincere tribute to a rhythmic language that is increasingly central to Moretti’s practice and work in Chicago’s Brazilian music scene.  The title reflects the fact that the song was composed on New Years Eve of 2019, at the edge of a new decade. Ben Lamar Gay's cornet improvisation unfolds as three overlapping takes, creating “a slow burn build up effect evoking a dreamy dystopian Carnival.”

5. Taming The Bitterness

This is “a song that emerged in my mind during a particularly stressful moment and I kept rearranging it and modifying it until I realized it was becoming an attempt at self-therapy. On the bridge of the melody the tempo slows down and the sound texture changes creating an introspective feel.”

6. A Call For Awareness

Another song conceived in 2020, where the “vibe reflects the dark times we are facing, leaving some room for hope. Hope can be real only If we are willing to leave the culture of denial behind and embrace a new kind of Awareness.”

7.Going Home-Flying Away From Home

Grappling with the “emotional complexities of the immigrant's ever evolving perception of home” in this piece Edinho Gerber 's acoustic guitar is at the center of the mix:  “imbuing every soloist with saudade-filled harmonies. The music is simultaneously a tribute to the eternal masters of Brazilian jazz (Hermeto Pascoal, Edu Lobo, Baden Powell etc..) but also includes references to one of my favorite Italian soundtrack composers: Piero Piccioni.”

8. Era De Maggio

The closing piece is an arrangement of a canzone napoletana: the traditional song of Naples. This selection, composed by Mario Costa in the late 19th century with lyrics by Salvatore Di Giacomo, is a love song that revolves around the concept of separation and reunification following the season's cycle. The contrasts of minor and major keys, a typical formula in the tradition, which musically sustains the narrative and emotion of the lyrics.

~ Will Faber