Nicola Conte - Love & Revolution (2024)

Review by Thom Jurek

On each of his recordings, jazz auteur Nicola Conte has explored a different side of his multi-faceted personality as a conceptualist, a composer, and a guitarist. While there is some overlap on each of his last three offerings, he combines various styles in new and compelling ways -- all with large casts of players. Love & Revolution -- gorgeously arranged by Magnus Lindgren with many returning players from 2009's Rituals -- employs the sounds of sunshine Euro-pop, jazz balladry, and Eastern-tinged and modal jazz. There are eight different vocalists, and stellar soloists including trumpeters Till Brönner and Flavio Boltro, saxophonists Lindgren, Timo Lassy, and Tim Warfield, a stellar rhythm section, and other selective personnel. Conte plays guitar, but it's his direction, compositions, and choice of cover material that really shine. Gregory Porter's singing and Bridgette Amofah's backing vocals fuel the groovy "Do You Feel Like I Feel," that has traces of a big-band arrangement of "Workin' on a Groovy Thing," with its sprightly, warm horn section and shimmering tambourines and snare drums topped by a sax break from Lindgren. José James and Nailah Porter duet on the smooth soul-jazz nugget "Love from the Sun," backed by a smaller group. Lindgren's arrangement borrows its opening vamp from Mario Biondi's hit "This Is What You Are." James takes the lead on a beautiful reading of Dave Mackay and Vicky Hamilton's "Here" from their 1969 self-titled offering. The reeds and winds swoon and swoop yet leave room for a fine solo by Brönner. Another real groover is "Black Spirits" with Nailah Porter's vocal leading the Afro-Cuban strut. Melanie Charles' voice fronts the airy, flute-heavy samba arrangement of "Shiva." Speaking of Charles, her voice on Conte's title track -- the album's funkiest -- is simultaneously steamy and declarative, holding in its grain a new and savvy hope. The covers of Jackie McLean's "Ghana" (with lyrics by Conte) and Cal Massey's "Quit Dawn" with Gregory Porter's and Charles' vocals, respectively, are excellent interpretations of these classics for the 21st century. Ghalia Benali's vocal in front of the knotty tentet on the traditional "Ra in Egypt" is transformative, with its Middle Eastern modes infused with Italian jazz classicism. Likewise, the swirling reading of Ed Rose's "All Praise to Allah" and the languid, deeply soulful interpretation of Mal Waldron's "Temple of Far East" (the latter with lyrics by Conte, and James' finest vocal on the album), move the set's direction into a new sonic terrain that blurs jazz's subgenres while remaining faithful to the intent of the originals. Love & Revolution finds Conte at an energetic, focused, creative peak; he's making new music that solidly points at the global future of jazz, even as it unabashedly gathers information from the deep sources of its rich, varied history.