Are they completely attuned to one another? Or are they only just approaching each other, getting to know their counterpart a little better with every note? The facts are clear: Luise Volkmann, German saxophonist, and Kiko Dinucci, singer and guitarist from Brazil, are certainly familiar with one another. The year before last, the two had already recorded an album together; they have toured together too.
And yet what gives Canto del Olho its effect is the feeling of witnessing a delicate movement towards one another. The album has something theatrical about it. In the best sense. The way saxophone, guitar and voice circle one another, the way they first seek resonance with small gestures, only then, with the gained assurance of having been recognised in their own feeling, becoming more expansive, more courageous – there one sees the drama of bodies in a room.
Again and again, the temperature changes. Tension is built up and released. Volkmann knows how to use her alto saxophone to hang restrained questions between the bodies. Just as she knows how to make statements. Always at the moments when, in dialogue with Dinucci’s gentle guitar, the connection has become intimate.
One might too hastily want to label it chamber jazz. But that is not enough. Where, in Dinucci’s singing, especially at the beginning of the album, one can certainly hear MPB, Música Popular Brasileira, he sounds on the third song like African folklore. The way »Com Flores« then starts rolling recalls the energetic, mantric steam-locomotive passages of Don Cherry.
When, at the end, the final movement has been performed, the final step danced – then the search continues.
