Did someone say Summer?

Sicily is what Cuba is to the Caribbean, sun, sea, easy and friendly people with lots of troubles!

You won’t find anything better around that identifies the summer more than this album by Enzo Randisi who at the beginning of the 80s put together a Swing Ensemble as a tribute to that “cheerful” movement of Jazz music.

But Enzo and his fellas just couldn’t stay on track and put in the best that the alternative Palermo area could offer in that historical period, like the sisters Cinzia and Loredana Spata, who brought the production to a next level in the vocal version of All Blues or in Chic Corea’s Spain.
But what really struck us was Charles Cables’ version of “Quite Fire” (here missspelled as “Quite Fair”), released a few months earlier only in Japan and which would only become famous in the 90s with the Acid Jazz movement, and this tells us a lot about how hungry Enzo and Riccardo were of musical knowle, to be able to find some pearls in a city with basically no record shops and isolated…well…it’s on an island!

Swing Ensemble is the second album we released by the Palermo (Sicily-Italy) based Vibe player Enzo Randisi. This album has a more vocal and less experimental approach than the previous one (which is still available on our bandcamp page). It’s what you would expect from a swinging hard modal bop jazz album made in Italy, but with a decidedly exotic approach, thanks to the voices of the Spata sisters, two true self-taught champions (Loredana is a dear friend of Norma Winstone). Think of the vibe of Kitty Winter or Rimona Francis.

For this re-press we enlisted Tony Higgins, who recently finished a very long commitment and greenlight to delight us with his polished English…Welcome back Tony!