Franco Ambrosetti - Voices (Vinyl LP) PRE-ORDER

Expected Release Date: 20-November-2026 - This Pre-order will be shipped on or just before this date. Release dates are subject to alteration.

Voices by trumpeter Franco Ambrosetti is an album steeped in nostalgia, yet it also possesses a timeless elegance. Ambrosetti harkens back to the early 1960s - to the era before the Beatles and his first encounters with early Miles Davis, but also to the sounds of the Hi-Lo's, Ray Conniff, Bert Kaempfert, and those quirky, jazz-infected film scores featuring sophisticated vocal arrangements.

The group consists of the tried-and-tested trio of Alan Broadbent (piano and arrangements), Scott Colley (bass), and Peter Erskine (drums), yet the album's true stars are the members of the top-tier, five-voice vocal ensemble led by singer Janis Siegel - a founding member of the Grammy-winning group The Manhattan Transfer. The group also features soprano Aubrey Johnson, alto Carolyn Leonhart, tenor Kevin Osborne, and Janis's former Manhattan Transfer bandmate Trist Curless on bass-baritone.

Broadbent is said to have honed his vocal arrangements by studying Gustav Mahler, and indeed, the harmonic progressions possess a late-Romantic, floating quality - occasionally accompanied by the kind of elusive shimmer found in Debussy's music, such as in the a cappella version of Ambrosetti's "Desert Rose," set to lyrics by Giorgia Mancio.

The album starts with Miles Davis's early, swing-infused bop tune "Four" and closes with the elegiac "Waltz for Debby," a classic by Bill Evans. The tracklist includes Michel Legrand's "Once upon a Summertime" and Jerome Kern's "I'm Old Fashioned" (featuring Ambrosetti's son Gianluca on soprano sax), as well as the bossa nova smash hit "Dindi" by Carlos Jobim - one of three tracks featuring New York guitar legend John Scofield. Scofield strolls casually and with utter relaxation through the arrangements, doing exactly what he does best with his unmistakable tone: simply being John Scofield.

Ambrosetti, too, has nothing left to prove to himself or anyone else. He carries the songs with a velvety, weightless flugelhorn sound - or with a mute, serving as an homage to the early Miles Davis. Mature, laid-back, and carefree.

Tracklisting
Disc 1
Side 1
1. Four
2. Five Notes
3. Once Upon a Summer Time
4. So Many Stars
5. Desert Rose
6. I'm Old Fashioned
7. Dindi
8. Vida Real
9. Waltz for Debby