Virone, Gianni & Alessandro Chiappetta
Axes Duo
The album Axes Duo condenses more than two decades of shared practice between Gianni Virone and Alessandro Chiappetta into an ascetic chamber configuration, a resonant crucible in which the jazz standard is subjected to subtle structural scrutiny. Music by Sonny Rollins, Irving Berlin, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane and Spencer Williams is reimagined within the stripped texture of a duo without double bass or drums, where tenor saxophone and guitar alone articulate the rhythmic and harmonic field. Occasional incursions of clarinet and acoustic guitar heighten the projects timbral experimentalism, casting the Afro-American tradition in a quasi-chamber light and allowing the melodic and formal skeleton of the standard repertoire to surface, through deliberate subtraction, with renewed clarity.