Mut(e)azioni I-XV

Personnel & credits

• Gianluca RenziBass
• Mirco MariottiniClarinet
• Alessio RiccioDrums
• Paolo CorsiDrums, Percussion
• Vincenzo VanniEngineer [Sound Engineer (Mixing)]
• Alessio BarbieriEngineer [Sound Engineer (Recording)]
• Michele LippiEngineer [Sound Engineer (Recording)]
• Luigi NaroLayout [Graphic Layout]
• Stefano BattagliaMusic By
• Riccardo IennaPercussion
• Stefano BattagliaPercussion
• Caterina Di PerriPhotography By [Cover Photo], Photography By [Inside Photos]
• Stefano BattagliaPiano
• Associazione Siena JazzProducer
• Stefano FranceschiniSoprano Saxophone [Soprano Sax]
• Mirko GuerriniTenor Saxophone [Tenor Sax]
• Daniele MalvisiTenor Saxophone [Tenor Sax], Soprano Saxophone [Soprano Sax]
• Michael GassmannTrumpet

About this record

Genre

Jazz

Style

Contemporary Jazz

Discogs

View on Discogs ↗

Press

“Battaglia is by far the strongest improviser”AllMusic ↗

Reception

Critical reception traceable online is thin and centers on a single English-language review at AllMusic. That review frames the record as a cycle of 15 leader-composed "sketches" performed by shifting small groups (trio to quintet), judges the writing as ambitious but unevenly focused, and singles out Battaglia's piano as the dominant improvising voice, with the horns described as appearing intermittently between the composed structures. No dedicated reviews from the Italian, Swiss, or German specialist jazz press (Musica Jazz, All About Jazz / AAJ Italia, JazzConvention, jazz'n'more, jazzthing, Down Beat, JazzTimes) surfaced for this specific title; coverage that exists tends to be about Battaglia's later, higher-profile ECM work rather than this Splasc(H) date. Several sources also block automated access (AllMusic, Discogs, jazzmusicarchives all returned HTTP 403), so additional gated reviews could exist that were not retrievable here. Overall this reads as a small-label release that received minimal documented critical attention.

Background

Mut(e)azioni I-XV is one of a cluster of Theatrum recordings Stefano Battaglia made for the Italian label Splasc(H) around 1997-1998 (alongside Gesti and the Pierre Favre duo Omen). Theatrum was Battaglia's large ensemble (often described as a ~16-piece group) growing out of his Permanent Workshop for Musical Research in Siena, founded 1996; on record the writing is realized by smaller sub-groups drawn from the collective. The music is a suite of 15 short composed pieces ("I-XV"). Sources indicate the material was recorded in June 1997 at Spazi Sonori Studio in Livorno (the sister album Gesti is documented as recorded there June 16-21, 1997) and mixed in Siena in December 1997; CD catalogue number CDH 902.2. The album was later made available on streaming/digital platforms (a 2015 digital reissue/redistribution date appears in aggregator metadata). Michael Gassmann appears as a trumpeter within the Theatrum horn section (his credited role being a section/ensemble Appearance rather than a featured solo billing); the AllMusic review's framing of the horns as collective punctuation between composed passages is consistent with that ensemble role. Battaglia's broader output of this period spans ECM-style and chamber jazz, avant-garde, and modern-classical idioms, which contextualizes the through-composed, suite-like character of this date.