Savant SCD 2099 | Bergozi (ts, ss), Bruce Barth (p), Dave Santoro (b), Andrea Michelutti (d). Rec. Dec 2008

Boston’s saxophone sage pitted his regular Italian contacts, Santoro and Michelutti, with seasoned US pianist Barth for this studio date, a winning combination. The whole album was recorded in one session and there’s a strong feelgood factor about it, a stimulating blend of energy and relaxation. While never straightforward, Bergonzi’s music always swings, so one can enjoy it on both physical and intellectual levels. Like so many tenorists his plane comes mainly from Wayne and Trane, but over the years his work has gained in personality.

His sound is now more imposing, warm yet incisive. His ideas spill out with the fluency and invention of a mature master, and the hot Barth is not far away. Their material includes seven Bergonzi originals, melodic yet probing themes of which ‘Casadiche’ is probably the deepest. There are also three standards, whose structures have been tweaked here and there, though never as drastically as in the Standard Gonz album. A few major chords stray into the minor, McCoy Tyner style, but the songs’ original composers would still recognise them. ‘Dancing in the Dark’ finds the leader at his gentlest whereas ‘Come Fly With Me’, taken slightly faster than Sinatra would have done, becomes a real burner.

A medium-paced latin beat permeates ‘Out of Nowhere’, where Bergonzi’s tenor makes a hearty meal of one of the juiciest chord sequences in the Real Book. He switches to soprano sax for ‘Malaga’, a Moorish piece in 11/4 time, counted 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3. Clearly there’s nothing stale about the Gonz. “Jazz is an evolution,” he says. “I can see it in my students and I feel I’m one of them.” Jack Massarik