Stories: Nello Toscano and jazz as small nocturnal cinema

Nello Toscano's Stories was released on Anaglyphos on 19 April 2024. All compositions are by Toscano, performed by the same quartet as Inside (2022): Alessandro Presti on trumpet, Seby Burgio on piano and keyboards, Peppe Tringali on drums, with Toscano on double bass and electronics.

A small nocturnal cinema

The album moves between two poles: the blue, languid atmospheres of Chet Baker's vocabulary on one side, and the darker, more rhythmic references of the Miles Davis who scored Ascensore per le patibolo (Lift to the Scaffold) on the other. A review on Segnali Sonori openly speaks of a record that lends itself to becoming a noir soundtrack, and the observation captures the project's nature: pieces like Late Night with its dark, nocturnal atmospheres pierced by electric flashes, or Wait for Me and In Dim Light, evoke the late-night club jazz idiom rather than the concert-hall variety.

The nine tracks

1. Periwinkle (4:40)
2. Wait For Me (5:19)
3. The World Behind the Glass (4:05)
4. Late Night (5:06)
5. In Dim Light (4:58)
6. Along the Street (5:03)
7. Tell Me About Yourself (4:30)
8. No Reply (4:06)
9. I Turn Around To Look At You (4:06)

Forty-two minutes in total. The opening track, Periwinkle, sets the color of the album: periwinkle, says Toscano, is the combination of serenity and liveliness. It is in that hybrid zone that the quartet finds its voice.

The bassist's stance

Toscano does not place himself as a foreground soloist. The double bass remains a narrative voice that articulates the compositions and yields space to the brass and the piano; the electronics is used functionally, never decoratively, as an extension of the acoustic register. It is the same approach that has run through the bassist's catalog from Inside onward.

I'm not interested in being in the spotlight. What I like is playing my music with friends.

The line is from Toscano himself, and is the key to the record: Stories is, first of all, the intimate dialogue of a quartet that knows itself thoroughly.

Available on all digital platforms.