Admir Shkurtaj Trio - Gestures and Zoom

Startlingly strange music from Albanian/Italian trio led by Admir Shkurtaj, who combine free jazz with folk, Baltic and Eastern European sounds.

The starting points for Shkurtaj's music are not themes or melodies but what he refers to as musical mechanisms or extra-musical ideas; frameworks to build themes on - musical series, rhythmical series, series of sounds or sonic gestures. The trio's improvisation guided or forced by these frames unleashes surprising freedom. Elements of traditional music, from the Albanian tradition, burst here and there more in a distant memory than a living reality. Albanian musicians Shkurtaj and Hasa crossed the Adriatic to join Distante in his home province of Lecce in the part of Italy called Apulia, to record the album.

Personnel: Admir Shkurtaj (accordion, pianoforte), Giorgio Distante (trumpet), Redi Hasa (cello)