Giorgio Gaslini

CD version. Multipli is a quintet record by Giorgio Gaslini, the Milanese pianist, composer and conductor who had scored Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte and who called his blend of twelve-note composition and jazz improvisation "total music". He had worked with free players such as Steve Lacy, Don Cherry and Roswell Rudd, and in the early seventies had brought jazz courses into the Santa Cecilia conservatory in Rome. Here, for Soul Note, he leads a band of Italian musicians through eight pieces, all but one his own.

The quintet recorded on October 6 and 7, 1987 at Barigozzi Studio in Milan, with Giancarlo Barigozzi engineering, Giovanni Bonandrini producing and Gennaro Carone mastering. Roberto Ottaviano plays alto, soprano and sopranino saxophones and bass clarinet and Claudio Fasoli tenor and soprano, with Bruno Tommaso on bass and Giampiero Prina on drums. Gaslini wrote seven of the eight pieces and also wrote the poetic texts printed with the record. The exception is Chicago Breakdown by Jelly Roll Morton, which Gaslini transcribed for the group and which is the shortest track, at two and a half minutes. Interni is the longest, at over eight minutes, and follows the title piece and Ora. The second half opens with Piano-Sequenza, followed by Corteo, the Italian word for a procession, and Ornette Or Not, whose title points straight at Ornette Coleman. The closing La Risata means "the laughter".

This is the Soul Note CD, catalogue number 121220-2, issued in 1988 alongside the LP, with Gaslini's poetic texts printed in Italian and in an English translation by Rosemary Statham.