adEIdJ – Associazione delle Etichette Indipendenti di Jazz

Press Release

Between 2008 and 2012, Stefano Onorati and Marco Tamburini (1959–2015) went to a fertile creative period. In 2010, their group Three Lower Colours – completed by drummer Stefano Paolini – recorded a new score for the silent film «Blood and Sand», released on DVD. Those sessions later gave rise to «First Take», the trio’s debut album, followed the next year by «Contemporaneo Immaginario», with the Vertere String Quartet. Onorati also retrieved the trio’s earliest studio recordings, dating back to 2009, which were released posthumously as «Red» (2021). While revisiting his archives, Onorati has recently uncovered another remarkable recording from that same period: nine tracks by a previously unreleased duo featuring drummer Walter Paoli, his companion in many projects both before and after. With Paoli in outstanding form, fully attuned to and able to expand on the constantly evolving ideas of the Livorno–born keyboardist, the duo created and recorded extraordinary music. Thankfully preserved, these recordings can now, fifteen years later, finally be heard and fully appreciated. Composer Stefano Bellon writes in the liner notes: “… «The Box» overflows with invention, taste, talent, imaginative power, and poetry. The sound is exquisitely crafted, and every track – marked by an unwavering expressive intensity, without faltering or lapses – emanates instinctively from the personality and close rapport of the two musicians”. And again, a few lines later: “... an album with such communicative force does not arise from nothing. The ghosts of noble lineages and vast aesthetic distances are deliberately invoked (from Zawinul to Stravinsky, whose discreet reference appears veiled and remote). Yet this is no exercise in emulation or stylistic display…”.

Track List

1) Desert Flower
2) Jan Mayen
3) The Future of Jazz
4) Thar
5) Odissey Beyond Mars
6) Fellini
7) Night View
8) Strawartok
9) Infinity

All compositions by Stefano Onorati and Walter Paoli

 

Personnel

Stefano Onorati (piano, keyboards, live electronics)
Walter Paoli (drums, live electronics)

 

Recording Data

Recorded in April 2011 at Simple Sound Studio, Castelmaggiore (Bologna); mixed and mastered in August 2025 at SOP Studio, Serravalle Pistoiese (Pistoia), by Stefano Onorati.