Tommaso Moretti's Inside Out releases today on BACE Records!
At its best, recorded music manages to be both wholly particular and thoroughly general; both specific and open ended; of the moment and outside of it; in motion and a snapshot; of lived experience and expressing the imagined. These tendencies and tensions give us some of the pathways into core values at work in this music. To the ears and heart, these are qualities that exceed genre and style: becoming rather matters of substance and content; things personal but also those held in common. It is about life. Moretti introduces this record with the reflection: “It connects the dots between the intimate dimension of an inspiration and the aesthetic need to translate it into defined musical languages. It’s a quest to find the inner layer of humanity that allows a connection between the meaning of three words: Sentimento, Saudade, Soul.” Feeling, longing, experience, and form are the narrative and musical themes here.
He offers us an album that communicates the particular circumstances of his life: a native Italian; a proud Chicagoan since 2013; a husband and father; teacher, collaborator, and bandleader. A student of the rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic world, especially the polyrhythmic jazz and samba traditions; a communicator of music fundamentals; a detailed listener; an operator of time and layers in sound; a singer and composer. The invitation with a record like this is to hear it as a journey and as a retrospective; looking at a path both backwards and ahead- giving us a way to hear the composition of a place. This is music of many homes- settings like Chicago and Rome - and also scenes and spaces - the samba bateria, the jazz session, the canzone napoletana, - and motion - it swings.
This is an album that is both expressive of decades of musical feeling yet given form in a necessarily particular period in Chicago, 2021: each instrumentalist recorded their part in the studio separately: starting with the percussive foundation and recording each layer of the composition individually. Building out musical drama and collectivity in such circumstances becomes possible by way of compositions that are deeply polyrhythmic, multi-sectional, and centered through shifting grooves. The forms of each piece give a common terrain for creativity, in which each musician responds in turn to the layers that preceded them. Feeling and form are necessarily entangled in the process here. To get beyond or extend that which has come before, moving from inside out (i.e rhythm first) towards figuring out how to play outside of the structure that had previously been laid down. It is a process that foregrounds the possibility of recontextualizing through layering. Moretti is always expressive in polyrhythm, which affirms that a new layer can transform overall meaning and value.
The rhythm section of Moretti’s drums and percussion, Ben Dillinger’s bass, and Edinho Gerber’s electric and acoustic guitars offers a foundation for Jake Wark’s saxophone, as well as the cornet of Ben Lamar Gay and Natalie Lande's flute. Moretti’s voice, xylophone, and electronics extend the sound pallet on multiple pieces, providing a deeply personal set of timbres: the voice is vehicle of language and lyrics here, detailed, and specific; the xylophone is playful and articulate; the electronics extend a sense of space and motion. Some careful overdubs grow the arrangements while keeping the focus on a naturalistic group sound, full of dynamic changes, interplay, and the sound of musicians listening to one another: supportive, balanced, and in dialogue.