"Brother and Sister" - Swing2Bop review by Bruce Crowther

http://www.swing2bop.com/reviews.html#261

Gazzara: Brother And Sister (Ritmica SILRIT 0010)

Italian-based pianist, keyboard player and guitarist Francesco Gazzara here offers a selection of music that while leaning towards contemporary pop has a lively and highly rhythmic appeal. Throughout there is an air of fluid grace that subtly renders some attractive pieces, most of which are composed (or sometimes co-composed by Gazzara). There are four instrumental tracks, the rest having vocals, most of which are taken by Yasemin Sannino and are mainly sung in English. Instrumentalists appearing on this CD include flautist Eduardo Piloto Barreto, guitarist Marco Lamioni, bassists Luca Fogagnolo, Massimo Sanna, percussionist Mauro Mirti, while other singers are Jo Oakley, Desiree Mohammad, Wendy Lewis and Ithamara Koorax. Gazzara's regular live band includes guitarist David Giacomini and drummer Giuiliano Ferrari as well as Fogagnolo and Mirti. One of the songs from this CD, 'O Passarinho', composed by Gazzara, Koorax and Arnaldo DeSouteiro, has also been separately released in four versions on an EP. This song has attracted a lot of attention in Europe, especially in Italy. An attractive contemporary pop album by a band that deserves widespread attention.
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A renowned jazz historian, regular contributor to UK's leading jazz magazine "Jazz Journal", and a published author since 1975, Bruce Crowther's credits include 30 books, along with magazine articles, short stories, essays, hundreds of record reviews, several thousand encyclopedia entries, a few television screenplays, and a stage play ...
About half of the books are crime fiction; most of the rest are divided between jazz and popular cinema.
Some of the jazz and movie books are biographies: Gene Krupa, Benny Goodman, Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, Laurel & Hardy, Michelle Pfeiffer and many others.
Other books are thematic: jazz singing, big band music, myth & reality in the movies, film noir, prison movies, television comedy ...
So, I feel really proud everytime he reviews an album on which I am involved as a producer, composer, musician or annotator.