Nick Garbett Quintet - Lontano

2020 CD release.
 
Lontano features an extraordinary lineup of Australian performers, all master improvisers, each with their own unquestionably unique voice on their instruments. Featuring Nick Garbett (trumpet), Peter Farrar (C melody and alto saxophones), Daniel Pliner (piano), ARIA and AIR Award winner Jonathan Zwartz (double bass) and James Waples (drums), the quintet was formed in 2018 in the lead up to the Freedman Fellowship awards, though Garbett has been performing and collaborating with the various members for over 15 years.
 
All five pieces on the album are Garbett compositions, four of them composed during the northern winter of 2018/19 while he was living on the remote Italian island of Lampedusa, situated deep in the Mediterranean roughly 200km off the coast of Tunisia. During winter Lampedusa can be an eerily quiet and isolated place to live, with either the cold northerly wind from Europe or the dust laden 'Sirocco' wind from Africa lashing the island for weeks on end. This stark and ruggedly beautiful landscape was the inspiration behind the opening piece 'Lampedusa' and track three 'Lontano'.