The best pieces by the Italian quintet featured on this album are the ones contributed by the leader, who was 26 at the time of this recording. His tunes express a down home blues feeling even at the fastest tempos. Unfortunately,
Bosso only wrote three, and co-authored one, of the ten charts. (Two takes of his incredibly blistering "Fast Flight" are included.) The conventional instrumentation of trumpet, sax, and rhythm does a fine job of running through the tunes in the usual head-solos-head structure.
Bosso is a mighty technician on trumpet, as particularly evidenced on the faster tunes -- his proficiency is as good as it comes. Unfortunately, he is not quite as adept on the slower moving tracks, where although he boasts a sweet tone (especially on flugelhorn), he exhausts his ideas. His cohort, Rosario Gulliani, plays a mean alto and soprano sax, and has no difficulty keeping up with the trumpeter. The Italian rhythm section is rather bland, though pianist
Salvatore Bonafede is more than capable of an expressive solo now and then. The primary appeal of this album is likely to be the virtuosity of
Bosso, which is well worth hearing. ~ Steven Loewy