In April 2018, in a café, outside, sitting at a small table, with our motorcycles parked in front of us, I jokingly said to Mauro Manzoni, “But wouldn’t it be nice to take a motorcycle trip through Europe to Oslo and record a record when we arrive?” Mauro replied, “We would need bigger motorcycles and then Oslo is too far away, let’s go to Berlin.” We finally did it, and it was crazy. “Vanishing Point” is the ideal follow-up to the first record, “Vanishing Point”-which Mauro Campobasso and Mauro Manzoni released in 2004: a timeless journey into jazz music, once again paying homage to Richard C. Sarafian ‘s 1971 film.

“Vanishing Point” is released ten years after the first record made for Parco della Musica Records, “Eyes Wide Shut” dedicated to Stanley Kubrick. This time the music takes inspiration from a motorcycle trip across Europe in their BMWs in August 2019. The destination: Berlin. The idea was for a route that would draw inspiration from places, stops, inner reflections, human comparisons and the direct, naturalistic and physical impact that only motorcycle travel since time immemorial can offer. The two musicians set off for Germany with both their own instruments and a series of well-defined and organized pieces and others that were not too elaborate: compositions that in some cases represented a real canvas to be developed in the recording studio in Berlin. In other cases, some compositions were inspired directly by the places visited. This is precisely where the idea of associating each composition on the record with a stage of the journey came from. In Berlin, meeting with friends Gaia Mattiuzzi, singer, and Walter Paoli, drummer, to create the album together. But as often happens in these cases, time was not enough: on the return home, the need arose to better define the work, deepening and adding ideas born during the return trip in a sort of ideal axis that linked Berlin with Bologna, the city of residence of the two musicians.

During these reflections, in the midst of editing and editing and with the additional participation of other valuable musician friends (the double bass of Stefano Senni, the voices of Arianna Cleri, Federica Orlandini, Claudia Pantalone and Andrea Giovannitti who overdubbed multiple trumpets in the section), the pandemic broke out, forcing a violent setback to the project. Only as the restrictions on dating and socializing faded, the two musicians, assisted by Walter Paoli as co-producer, were able to peacefully finish the record. Centered on the music of Campobasso & Manzoni, but with a shared trio vision of arrangement with Walter Paoli, the disc ranges from song form, declined through the aid of the suite, to purely instrumental compositions. The style and what Campobasso & Manzoni have deepened and nurtured over their many years of collaboration together: a vision of current and modern jazz music, which at the same time feeds on different styles and cultures, from song and progressive rock to contemporary and concrete music, with a great passion for sound, made explicit through the use of digital and analog electronics, all mixed with acoustic instruments.