Rava On the Dance Floor is a live album of Michael Jackson songs by the Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava and the Parco della Musica Jazz Lab, a twelve-piece band. It came out of a late discovery: only after Jackson's death did Rava realise he had overlooked, in his own words, "one of the great protagonists of 20th century music and dance". On these concert recordings his trumpet is at its most extroverted, set against brass, reeds, guitar and keyboards.
The music was recorded at two concerts at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, on 20 May and 30 November 2011. Trombonist and tuba player Mauro Ottolini wrote the arrangements for the ensemble, which includes Giovanni Guidi on piano, Fender Rhodes and toy piano, Dan Kinzelman on tenor saxophone and clarinets, Daniele Tittarelli on alto saxophone and flute, and others. Manfred Eicher produced the album, which was mixed at Artesuono with engineer Stefano Amerio, Rava and Ottolini.
Rava leaned towards Jackson's later work, songs from HIStory and Invincible, alongside Thriller and Charlie Chaplin's Smile. They Don't Care About Us starts in loose, free collective sound before settling into a reggae groove under synth strings, with a tenor solo by Kinzelman. In Privacy it is Marcello Giannini's electric guitar that drives the band, over an icy opening. The nine-minute medley begins with bassist Dario Deidda alone on I Just Can't Stop Loving You, then breaks into a strutting Smooth Criminal for guitar, bass and trumpets. Smile, at three and a half minutes the shortest piece, sits in the middle of the programme as a nostalgic interlude carried by Rava's open tone.
Critics took the record as a celebration more than an exercise in style. Writing in The Guardian in 2012, John Fordham said "it sounds like a laid-back jazz group having a party, not a Quincy Jones band nailing every hit", and heard it as a genuine tribute. In the Austin Chronicle in 2013, Raoul Hernandez closed his review by calling it "an everyone-on-the-dance-floor moment if ever there was one."
This is the CD edition, ECM 2293, first released on 24 August 2012.
