Sax Four Fun

Here is an Italian version of the jazz saxophone quartet, and in a couple of places, a sextet. The name of the band and the album is fitting because these cats are a long way from the wayfaring odysseys of Rova, the deeply lined pathways of the African Diaspora explored by the World Saxophone Quartet, or the neo-serialist improvisation of the New York Saxophone Quartet.

What Stefano Menato, Hans Tutzler, Luca Donini, and Giorgio Beberi (with their friends Fiorenzo Zeni and Pepito Ros) do is create driving, tightly arranged, swinging jazz tunes that use the unique timbral and harmonic capabilities of the saxophone family for the purpose of creating a new palette of expression within the medium. No more, no less. And it's plenty.

There's the opening Basie-like stomp of "77 Hungry Time," with its staggered alto and soprano solos against a baritone and tenor backdrop of riffs and basslines; the shimmering glissandi in "Cool Nights," where every horn takes on the airy soulfullness of Ben Webster; and Astor Piazolla's "Oblivion," where the tango is a foundation for an intricate weave of alto and baritone improvisations against a tightly contrapuntal melody and harmony covered by tenor and another soprano that cascades from one end of the register to the other in sharply delineated harmonic changes. And this is just to mention three of the album's 14 glorious tracks.

Sax Four Fun is a highly developed, deeply serious group of players, arrangers, and improvisers who extend the jazz tradition by participating from the inside and lending a particularly European sense of humor to the proceedings. Wonderful.