Enrico Rava

New York Days (ECM)

Miles Davis’ red hot and cool still melts trumpets from Berklee (Tiger Okoshi) to Poland (Tomasz Sta´nko), with a layover in New York (Terence Blanchard) for the red eye to Italy on Enrico Rava’s thick, rich, vintage brass smear. Five years – 2004’s Easy Living to 2009’s New York Days – leave smoldering ash in the wake of the Italian trumpet sage, 70 this year, whose best bluster this millennium remains in partnership with Stefano Bollani (The Third Man) and in trio with said Milanese pianist and cymbalist extraordinaire Paul Motian (Tati). Rava trades four fellow countrymen from 2007’s The Words and the Days for Bollani, Motian, bassist Larry Grenadier, and tenor sax sympatico Mark Turner, with whom the session leader melts into a late-night haze of horn. Backroom blues (“Interiors”) as insular as Little Italy (“Certi Angoli Segreti”) savor Big Apple fare both Uptown (“Thank You, Come Again”) and Downtown (“Count Dracula”). Ravishing.

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This article appears in February 20 • 2009.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.