Explore

This is an interesting title in the wake of the notion that Stefano Battaglia composed most of these pieces and has performed them on earlier recordings — both solo and with various groups — and that Tony Oxley is such a renowned improviser. Regardless of the circumstances surrounding this music, all listeners have is this music, and this meeting is as awe-inspiring on record as it is on paper. Battaglia is Italy's premier new jazz pianist. Deeply influenced by the pointillistic chromaticism of Paul Bley, Battaglia is at home playing in both vanguard and "straight" settings. Here, listeners get his lyrical side for the most part, relying on Oxley as a percussionist more than as a drummer. Of the 13 selections on this set, Battaglia and Oxley collaborated on only two. So Oxley is free to roam, holding up whatever light stick he wishes to the prism of Battaglia's timbral panorama and illustrating it any way he wishes. The clear standout tracks here are the more experimentally arranged ones such as "RTA," with Battaglia playing both the inside and the outside of the piano simultaneously, improvising on a melody he wrote based on a folk song from Sardinia. It's all different shades of D minor, and Oxley, delighted by the turn of the strings being plucked, uses rattles and shakers on his cymbals and his skins while Battaglia rumbles across the middle register inverting each of the sequential chords and turning them inside out with two pedals down the entire time. Also notable is the joint composition in two parts that serves as the title work, where Oxley assumes his role as one of a melodist along with Battaglia, who opens up shimmering harmonic vistas to create room for the drummer's shards of bells, sticks on wood, rattles, etc. There isn't a weak or unbeautiful moment on Explore; it is the mature work of two grand masters of modern music.