TEN YEARS AFTER
Vibraphonist Enzo Randisi has been on the Italian scene for years. His quartet is modeled after the Modern Jazz Quartet and plays mostly canonical jazz texts. With Sal Bonafede on piano (this was an apprenticeship for him to be sure), Giuseppe Costa on bass, and the fine drummer Mimmo Cafiero, the band works through a subtle, nuanced set that includes “When I Fall in Love,” “The Song Is You,” “Everything Happens to Me,” “Con Alma” (a little-known tune by Dizzy Gillespie), “My Foolish Heart,” and others. Randisi is a fine soloist; he has a light touch and a deep appreciation for timbral subtleties as well as individual and group dynamics. The problem is that the pace of the program doesn’t offer a lot of room for those dynamics to shine through. The tempos are mostly slow and the soloing follows the same formula in every tune. While Bonafede and Randisi are fine foils for each other, they never seem to quite spark it off. The closest comes on the Dizzy Gillespie tune, where Bonafede is comping during Randisi’s solo and sets off a flurry of 16th notes that clearly startle the vibist, who has to respond with some colorful eighths and chords of his own, but it stalls there. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this session, it’s just not varied enough to create any real excitement. This is a journeyman date all the way.
Thom Jurek