After “Intervals I,” Franco D’Andrea releases “Intervals II” with Parco della Musica Records. “Intervals I” and “Intervals II” are the two episodes of D’Andrea‘s jazz octet recording project, focusing on the particular combination of intervals or from single intervals from which collective improvisations arise. The octet, consisting of. Andrea Ayassot, Daniele D’Agaro, Mauro Ottolini, Aldo Mella, Zeno De Rossi, Enrico Terragnoli and Luca Roccatagliati, aka Dj Rocca, follows the intervallic logic in an extremely rigorous way, dragging us into a single sound world, coherent and unified, capable of collecting the multiplicity of worlds visited by Franco D’Andrea during his long career. “Intervals” is the culmination of a decades-long quest. A search that does not produce answers, but each time new questions and new explorations.

It encapsulates in one coherent and unified sound world the many worlds visited by Franco D’Andrea during his long career. Worlds sometimes little frequented over the years, such as electronics, but remained in memory. And it is revealing that the outcome of so much traveling is a close investigation of the smallest element of musical organization: the interval. The minimal element capable, both harmonically and melodically, of characterizing and directing the sonority of a piece. Thus, an investigation and experimentation with sound involving every musical parameter as one: pitches, timbre, rhythm. The second volume collects songs recorded during rehearsals for the concert on the 21st, held on the same day as the concert and the day before. Compared to the concerto, one has the feeling of being confronted with small closed episodes in which the octet plays following the intervallic constructive logic in an extremely strict manner, almost as if they were as many small studies on a given interval or intervallic combination.

The decision to release the recordings separately in two volumes and at two different times stems precisely from the different character of the two sessions, as well as the consideration that such impactful, disruptive and powerful music needs time to be internalized. Alongside more structured pieces, D’Andrea‘s workhorses, which although born in a narrow and characterizing intervallic framework, there are totally improvised pieces based on a single interval or a pair of intervals. In them, each musician uses the interval or interval pair as the basis for thematic improvisation by generating melodic developments, riffs and improvised counterpoint.