DISCOVERY in music can take many forms for creator, performer or audience; and the concept takes on a more specific definition in ‘research’ recording Phylum from Italian vibraphonist, percussionist and composer Nazareno Caputo.

Caputo, who studied classical percussion at the conservatories of Gesualdo da Venosa, Potenza, and Luigi Cherubini, Florence, contributed much to double bassist Ferdinando Romano’s outstanding 2020 debut release Totem (a lush, contemporary jazz sextet/septet album featuring trumpeter Ralph Alessi). But this more challenging trio recording arguably stems from deeper, more studious origins. Combining indubitable skill as a musician with his architecture-graduate passion for structure and non-structure – viewed through evolution, elaboration and dissolution – the project documents the vibraphonist’s close dialogue of exploration with Romano and drummer Mattia Galeotti.

“The word ‘Phylum’”, he explains, ”is used in zoology and botany to indicate a precise taxonomic group. Organisms belonging to a certain phylum share the same structural plan but not necessarily [does] their morphological development [lead] them in the same direction. The music of the trio starts from similar concepts. In architecture … structure is an element that is often hidden and only there to support. Sometimes, however, [it] is also exposed and therefore becomes part of the external morphology and acquires an aesthetic value”.

So this album is conceived as an imaginary path through the concept of structure in which the ‘journeys’ are presented in shapeless, chaotic form but may then evolve into, or retreat from, more cohesive rhythms and phrases. This can perhaps be more directly assimilated as a blend of free jazz and composed forms. Recorded by renowned engineer Stefano Amerio in the crystal-clear surroundings of the Artesuono studio, Udine, these 70 minutes are indeed an organic experience, requiring full attention.

Nazareno Caputo’s sleeve notes comprehensively describe the nine tracks from his own perspective, though each is very much open to individual interpretation. Preludio’s disparate voicings succinctly demonstrate ‘order out chaos’ as they stumble upon a single note and rhythm, whereas the tentative vibraphone elegance of 13-minute Adi possesses a melodic, recognisably jazz-inflected beauty that suggests a five-note bass figure to Romano; and that becomes the basis of a crescendoing adventure which erupts to Galeotti’s frothy display at the kit. This is the first of four expansive numbers, followed by the lively vibraphone-led delirium of Dulce where Caputo’s tireless improvisations lead to solid rhythms and eventual arco-bass placidity.

Like a number of composers, including Liszt, Caputo’s basis for Abside (a polygonal, vaulted recess) is the four-note motif B-A-C-H, which persistently encourages the trio towards accelerating, percussive frenzy; and episodic Adam R. (referencing Adam Rainer – historically, the only man whose life was affected by both dwarfism and gigantism) fizzes with myriad, unpredictable expressions of animation and repose. Searching solo vibraphone introduces three-part suite Phylum, whose dreamlike central waltz suggests a more classical inspiration. Its concluding movement is the album’s closest reflection of contemporary jazz and rock, sparking a thrashing fervency from Galeotti, while the album’s brief Postludio pares down all that has gone before into the shady abstractionism of sustained chimes, knocks, cymbals and restless bowing – does this even possess a structure … or must everything?

The album trailer (linked below) presents the trio in the sympathetic environment of Giovanni Michelucci’s Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista, Florence – a fine example of the artistic bond between music and architecture which Nazareno Caputo values so highly. For the listener, late-night calm or the ‘cathedral’ of pastoral spaciousness, too, can amplify the trio’s offbeat creativity – the rest is down to our imagination.

Released on 22 February 2021, Phylum is available as CD or digital album at Bandcamp.

Nazareno Caputo vibraphone, percussion, composition
Ferdinando Romano double bass
Mattia Galeotti drums

Trailer (1:27), Movie (9:30)

nazarenocaputo.com

Aut Records (2021)