Review: STEFANO BATTAGLIA BAND at Rizzoli Book Store A Season Highlight

It’s summertime in New York City, and what that means is that there are even more amazing and exciting adventures to be had around town than there are on a regular basis.  The key is simply in finding the adventures.  On May 31st, I caught wind of a jazz combo putting on a show in the back of a bookstore in Chelsea.  Who knew?   Who knew there were still bookstores in the world, and who knew that you could find a jazz show taking place on a Sunday afternoon amidst the stacks, the shelves, and the various categories of coffee table books, travel guides, and gardening tips?  Well, this writer and jazz lover thanks his lucky stars that this happenstance happened along because the STEFANO BATTAGLIA BAND put on not only one of the best shows I’ve seen this season, but one of the best jazz shows I’ve seen, ever.  The Rizzoli at Broadway and 26th is a sweet location to catch a show like this, and I’ll tell you why:  it is intimate, and you get to see the action up close.  But I’ll also tell you this: this band should be playing Birdland or the Blue Note or Dizzy’s Club, that’s how good they are.  So the patrons of the May 31st afternoon performance should count themselves lucky, for they have had a chance to be in a small space with these five exciting musicians - anyone else who finds themselves with that opportunity should grab it.

A joint venture between the Peperoncino Jazz Festival ‘26 and the Rizzoli Music Aperitivo Series (organized by Ludovico Granvassu under the Mondo Jazz banner), the May 31st event was also an album release celebration.  Battaglia’s new album ONE MILE AWAY (on EMME Records) was released on February 19th, and he and his four brilliant colleagues played a healthy selection of songs from the album, along with a few tunes not on the recording (available on most streaming platforms).  The Peperoncino Jazz Festival is an Italian event more than two decades old, using multi-venue locations to play jazz music in the Calabria region of the country.  New York City is in its fifth year of presenting the New York Session of the festival during the last half of May and slightly into June.  Among the participating venues are Smoke Jazz Club, Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo NYU, Italian Cultural Institute, National Jazz Museum Harlem, and The Hot Club of New York, and some of the artists appearing in these concerts have been Benny Benack III, Italian Quartet, Jerry Weldon Italusa Quartet, David Cerreta Quintet, and multiple Grammy Award winner Nicole Zuraitis.  Sadly, it was at the Stefano Battaglia Band’s concert that I even found out about the festival, but you can bet I will be strongly invested in it in 2027 (visit their Facebook page HERE).   The Rizzoli Music Aperitivo Series is created by Mr. Granvassu, purveyor of the Mondo Jazz radio show, and has an Instagram page HERE.  Both organizations should be looked into for some of those New York adventures we all crave and love, because, after seeing the Battaglia show, this writer is ready to endorse everyone connected to the magic.

For his spectacular concert in the Rizzoli bookstore (where extra seats had to be added to accommodate the crowd, so well attended was the event), Mr. Battaglia enlisted the aid of Trumpeter Daniel Sky, Saxophonist Daniele Germani, Pianist Emanule Filippi, and Drummer Avery Logan, and chiefly among the reasons to be at this particular performance is the ability to be up close enough to see the fury of the fingers as each musician plied their craft.  It is one thing to listen to an album; it is another thing to hear such exceptional music, live and in person, and it is another thing, still, to be close enough to see the athletic accomplishment that goes into the playing of the instruments, and with audience members on three sides, every musician had personal sets of eyes trained on their skill, whether they were playing as an ensemble or executing one of several intricate solos that rang through the room.  It was, in a word, thrilling… as thrilling as the music itself.

Starting off with his own “Under Construction,” Battaglia grabbed the audience and jumped into the deep end.  This is modern-day jazz, layered with complex time signatures and musical characterizations that give each of the instrumentalists their own space to rise to the surface, all the while creating a joint experience through which all their individual voices meld together as one, not unlike the city in which we live.  When you hear a title like “Under Construction,” you can’t help but think of all the construction sites we pass every day, here in Manhattan, and maybe the name of the track refers to all the parts of our life that are under construction, but let’s be honest about it - those are just as cacophonous as the city construction sites.  It’s like an opera, with all the different conversations taking place at once, layering in on top of one another, until it becomes a symphony of glorious, sometimes discordant, sometimes harmonious, melodic noise.   This writer found it extremely appropriate that this was the opening number of a jazz set being experienced just after strolling through a summer night in one of New York City’s most socially active neighborhoods.  It was a wise and significant choice for the start of the show.  The number is right off of the One Mile Away CD (which I have been playing on a loop since this performance - it is worth checking out), but the second number of the night, “Brothers” is not, and more’s the pity.  Hopefully, Battaglia will record this composition at some point, for the piece immediately fills one with emotion.  Honestly, it’s like a cut from a Dave Grusin movie soundtrack, with the story being rich inside of the music AND the arrangement.  The melodic and harmonic lines actively talk to each other and with one another.  It is music, compositions, performances, like this that make people like, need jazz.  In a 2020 interview that I did with Glenn Close, the legendary actress said that jazz “is the closest expression of who we are as humans. I think it expresses our nervous system, basically,” and this very composition and performance were a perfect example of what Ms. Close is saying.  We don’t know why the piece is called “Brothers” but the way that the treatment paired the musicians with one another for segments, and then back again, it felt like we were listening to sets of siblings having a conversation.  It was an intricate and elegant musical dialogue between all five proficients, telling us that these men and their instruments are all the brothers.   

For the ninety-minute performance, Battaglia and company played, and they played with each other - you could see the joy they took from creating together.  There were cuts from the album, like the visceral “A Bushwick Tale,” in which each player seemed to represent a different life, a different street, a different apartment or person in Bushwick, and there were cuts that are maybe being saved for a future album, like an extremely satisfying homage to Chi Coltrane, with a stunning intro that felt like the rush of blood or of breathing before seguing into the most glorious, sumptuous music you’ve ever heard.  And for all the excellence all afternoon, a highlight (for this writer) came near the end of the program, when the company played the title song from Battaglia’s new album, “One Mile Away” - and while the music itself was a highlight, it was compounded by Battaglia’s comment that he wrote the song because “we always put our happiness one mile away.”  Remarking on the human tendency to say, “I’ll be happy when…” Mr. Battaglia struck a real nerve with this writer.  I’ve done it.  Have you done it?  Well, since the day I heard Stefano say those words, I have been laser-focused on choosing happiness every moment of every day.  I hope I can sustain it.  I think that I might, if only I listen to the recording frequently, because it represents (in these musically-inclined ears) all the things we encounter in one day that make us happy.  The song seems (for me) an audible depiction of sun coming down through trees, people watching in New York City streets, an orange at four in the afternoon, or dancing to a favorite tune while cleaning the house.  There is a kind of eloquence to the composition that comes across both on the album and in the room at Rizzoli, for a ddeliciously lengthy amount of time.  That’s one of the great things about going to a jazz show (and this one was a right proper example of it) - each number is a ten or thirteen minute story that you can get lost in.  This ain’t no three and a half minute cover of “Moon River” - it’s a composition by a New York City artist that, if you listen the way you can and should, will tell you the tale of this city and the people who walk the streets beside us.  This entire show, start to finish, was an abundance of art, an embarrasment of riches, and, really and truly, looking around the room at Rizzoli, seeing the faces of the people in the seats out front, watching them sway their bodies or bob their heads in time with the music, seeing the appreciative and understanding expressions on their faces that said they GOT what they were being told, it was clear that they were happy.  Happiness, on May 31st, was not one mile away - it was in the room with the Stefano Battaglia Band.   The next time they play, make sure you’re in the room, too.  Trust me. 

Stefano Battaglia has an Instagram page HERE and a Linktree page HERE.  Listen to ONE MILE AWAY HERE.

Learn more about the Peperoncino Jazz Festival on their Facebook page HERE.

Visit the MONDO JAZZ IG page HERE and the Rizzoli events page HERE.

Photos by Stephen Mosher