'Sparks' by Ludovica Burtone
Violinist Ludovica Burtone doesn’t incorporate the full breadth of experience she has had playing in myriad genres including chamber music, prog rock, and hip-hop on her debut as a jazz bandleader, Sparks. That might be unwieldly. But the septet she helms exhibits such variety from enough disparate elements to make for a singularly impressive debut.
What are arguably Burtone’s sweetest spots throughout the album’s half-dozen pieces explore her affection for smoothly serpentine Brazilian rhythms and the jauntiness of the Gypsy jazz of a musician who could be considered one of her instrumental forebears, Stéphane Grappelli. Incorporation of stylized scat singing on half of Sparks’ tracks adds alternate levity and solemnity to the proceedings; the grounding that intermittent vocalizing lends, however, only accentuates the balance Burtone maintains between compositional ambition and melodic accessibility.
Her affections for sounds coming from South America’s biggest country manifests itself not only in Burtone’s own writing for the two violins, cello, viola, piano, bass and drums in her combo; her remake of a piece by popular Brazilian artists Chico Buarque and João Bosco is among the album's lengthiest selections but sunny and animated enough to merit being a single (or emphasis track, what with how jazz radio works nowadays)
