Franco Ambrosetti Band - Lost Within You (2021)

For this third recording on the Swiss-based Unit Records label and 25th overall in his long and illustrious career, trumpeter-composer and bandleader Franco Ambrosetti demonstrates his soulful command of ballads on Lost Within You. Coinciding with his 79th birthday, this all-star outing, which finds the Swiss jazz icon once again in the company of guitarist John Scofield, pianist Uri Caine, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Jack DeJohnette (all of whom appeared on Ambrosetti’s 2019 Unit release, Long Waves) has Franco concentrating strictly on flugelhorn as he digs deep on a beguiling program of ballads by such jazz greats as Bill Evans, Horace Silver, and McCoy Tyner, along with a couple of well-chosen standards and two new Ambrosetti originals. Pianist Renee Rosnes also appears on five songs, including Tyner’s “You Taught My Heart to Sing” and the delicate Bill Evans-Miles Davis composition “Flamenco Sketches.” The leader imbues each of the nine tunes on Lost Within You with a golden tone, his signature lyricism and a depth of feeling that comes directly from the heart. Combining all of those inherent qualities with a masterful sense of storytelling, he is able to pull heartstrings throughout the affecting program.

“As a young man, my goal was to play fast,” recalled the Lugano native. “Then slowly but surely I started to discover ballads, and Miles Davis was one of the great inspirations for that. From listening to Miles play ballads I started to understand and I was able to go inside the ballad and play these long notes that he was playing. Miles showed me how you stretch the notes out like you’re really singing or crying, and I think I can express my feelings better that way.”