Noe Tavelli & The Argonauts Collective

The opening tune, "Ruby's Blessing" is a waltz I wrote while living in Harlem. At the time my first New York home was a very simple room inside a "shared building" ran by an African-American family. Ruby was the landlady and for sure the spirit of the place. Living there, I had the chance to experience their way of life, from the culinary culture of the South, to the constant presence of the Christian-Baptist religion.

"Blanc Comme Neige" is a piece based on a very specific groove that can be heard on the introduction and on the heads. It is also built on an interval series that I have manipulated in different ways. Its title refers to the winter period in New York and its intense blizzards.

"Interlude 1" is an improvised duet between Francesco Geminiani and myself. We have known each other musically for a while now and this is some sort of a free musical dialogue we exchange here.

"Improvisation". This take is the result of a group improvisation that we recorded at the end of the session. To me it has something special because it sounds like it could have been a written composition. The two horns are floating on top as the bass and the drums maintain a surprising push and pull momentum.

"Byway" is the ballad of the set, it features both Matthias Spillmann and Francesco Geminiani, whose solo at times reminds me a bit of the great Joe Henderson.

"Interlude 2" reunites the trumpet and the drums in soulful duet: there is nothing here but the raw and "voice-like" brass sound of the trumpet and the round and warm snare-free sound of the drums.

I composed "Rush" around the very end of my musical studies at the Manhattan School of Music, a naturally very busy period in time! It is a pretty straight-ahead composition. Nevertheless, it is quite a driven tune with an unusual number of bars and an untypical set of changes. It brings some swinging phrasing into the set and features a beautiful bass solo by Fabien Iannone.

In "Interlude 3", Matthias Spillmann and Fabien Iannone improvise a musical story. Their sounds melt together in a unique way and they are not afraid of leaving some space in between their phrases. I really like the subtle complexity of their individual tones, the expressiveness they both deploy.

"Giasone", by Francesco Geminiani, pays tribute to the name of the Argonauts' mythological leader. It is introduced by an improvised horn duo that develops into a melody and a solo section, both of which navigate over changing time signatures.

The closing number "Moods", by Geminiani, is a contemplative and meditative piece in which each voice works together in a contrapuntal way. The melody gives the band a frame for a very open and collective improvisation before returning to its original statement.