Reflections

I always try to create a story, Alex Sipiagin says. "For me, the pieces are totally connected, even if they don't sound that way - a standard could connect with some free composition or complicated odd meter. It's a very logical line from the beginning until the end." With an eye towards realizing that aspiration on his 14th Criss Cross leader album, titled Reverberations, Sipiagin booked a six-concert tour in November by a sextet of long-time friends and bandmates from several files of activity that constitute his thriving career. After a few days off, they convened at a well-appointed studio in Bassano del Grappa, the grappa capital of Italy, a 10-minute drive from Sandrigo, the village in the north Italian region of Vicenza, where Sipiagin resides with his wife, Melissa Tham. The album's back story dates to label founder Gerry Teekens' suggestion after the 2017 release of Sipiagin's Moments Captured that the trumpet grandmaster consider making a standards album as a follow-up. Teekens was responding to an exploratory session comprising seven characteristically episodic, harmonically challenging, rhythmically layered, contrapuntal, melody-rich Sipiagin originals evoking an ambiance, as I wrote in the liner notes to the similarly ambitious 2011 album Destinations Unknown [Criss-1336], of "long-form stories with multiple plot lines that reflect an array of moods and colors."Sipiagin and his band of potential poll-winners render them - as alto saxophonist Will Vinson put it in a profile I wrote about Sipiagin for Downbeat in 2016 - with "balls-to-the-wall, Coltrane-era energy." On two pieces Sipiagin inserted soprano singer Alina Engibaryan on the front line with all-world partners Vinson and Chris Potter on two tunes. On several others, he gave pianist John Escreet free rein to deploy the immense lexicon of bespoke sounds at his disposal on Prophet 6 synthesizer, and also included on "Evija Bridge" Escreet's verbatim, first-take overdub of Potter's extremely complicated tenor solo. "It's the New York sound, " Sipiagin told me several years later. "You go for it a hundred percent - there are amazing rhythm sections everywhere; everything is musical and perfect." The Album was recorded November 10 / 11, 2024 at the Art Music Studio in Bassano del Grappa (Italy). Recording engineer: Diego Piotto. Editing, mixing and mastering by Mike Marciano at Systems Two NYC. Produced by Jerry Teekens. Photography by Sasha Maschin