Francesco Sotgiu

“Francesco Sotgiu has forged a unique and very swinging project of songs. With a quintet consisting of Luigi Bonafede on piano, Emanuele Cisi and Riccardo Luppi on woodwinds, Salvatore Maiore on bass, Francesco on drums, and with special guest Paolo Fresu on trumpet to cap off this heartfelt collection. There is also a nice diversity of groups within this larger collection. A nice trio piece called “Calm” featuring Paolo Birro sitting in with Marco Micheli and Francesco. And one called “Lotus Blossom” where Francesco shows his considerable skills and soul on violin. But the bulk of the material is straight ahead jazz and is totally swinging and soulful, proving that jazz has no borders and is a worldwide language to wich Francesco has added to that tradition with this project and all the great voices he has included here. Bravo maestro.” This is the comment of Gil Goldstein, American accordion player who won 5 Grammies and collaborated with giants such as Gil Evans, Wayne Shorter and Michel Petrucciani. This record was recorded in the middle of the pandemic times and most of the work for preparing this record took place via the telephone: the selection of the songs on paper, the exchange of ideas on arrangements, staff and instruments, a sort of "phone rehearsal" of the structure of the songs, with the choice of a solo; everything else, everything that will happen in the recording sessions, is the result of a controlled improvisation, a jam session masterfully captured in the studio through the use of well-positioned ribbon microphones.