Poésie Pour Pasolini / Poesie Pour Pasolini

Massimo De Mattia is a vanguard flutist in both the classical and jazz traditions. His trip here, with assistance from Glauco Venier on piano and bassist Giovanni Maier, is to attempt something of the impossible: musically engage the late Italian filmmaker and populist poet Pier Paolo Pasolini in both his vocations. This series of original pieces, which encompasses two long suites, consists of deep musical meditations that are acrobatic in architecture, visionary in their attempt to unify three interdisciplinary approaches to language, and ultimately wondrously realized exercises in composition. Now, whether this is jazz or contemporary classical music is for the listener to judge, given how wildly notated the music is and how interjected the spaces for improvisation are. It is ridiculous to try to take one or two or even an entire suite apart for criticism. This is knotty work — it doesn't separate easily, it moves quickly along very detailed and arcane melodic and harmonic principles, and thus it is a very literary work (at least in the metonymic sense of the word). It succeeds, this album does, because it neither attempts to enlist the aid of or pay attention to any musical convention of this period. It does look back, but that gaze is ancient, staring through the ether at figures that may or may not have passed before. And it squints violently into the future for other perceptions with which to gauge how wide the arc of composition should be. In either case, it makes for a compelling, deeply satisfying, and emotional listening experience that would no doubt make its spiritual inspiration proud were he here to listen for himself. If jazzers and classical heads had any wits about them, they would be fighting one another to claim this CD as the prize it is for their very own.