Jazz albums round-up

Jazz soloist + string section = slush, is a fairly dependable equation. That wading-through-treacle effect so commonly engendered by sentimental strings tends to clog up the freedom of movement required by improvisers, leaving the music becalmed in an ocean of mush.

An exception, however, is Round About Roma (Blue Note), by the Italian saxophonist Stefano Di Battista. Recorded with the 50-strong Les Archets de Paris, conducted by Vince Mendoza, the album features music written by Di Battista, Nino Rota, and Mendoza himself, who orchestrates it all with relentless good taste. The rhythm section of Di Battista's jazz quartet keeps the pulse ticking along, while the leader's soprano or alto sax tootles grandiloquently against Mendoza's subtle settings, whose governing tonalities derive partly from Nino Rota's composition for Romeo & Juliet. "The emotion was so strong I felt dizzy," Di Battista recalls of the sessions. The saxophonist – who had already received the accolade of being selected by Elvin Jones– chose Mendoza because of his work on Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now album.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there's a strong sense of film music, with Di Battista's "The Other Side" conjuring up a romantic vision of Rome worthy of Fellini and Rota, while Mendoza's arrangement of Rota's own Romeo & Juliet sounds like the ultimate Hollywood log-fire and fur-rug love theme. Throughout, the strings swell sublimely, yet sometimes with an almost Bernard Herrmann-esque tension, while ickiness is kept at bay by a judicious dose of woodwind. Di Battista plays like an angel, while also sounding remarkably like our own Andy Sheppard, whose tone on soprano sax he has obviously taken a shine to.

There are no strings bar those of Orlando Le Fleming's double bass on The Christmas Concert by the Tommy Smith Quartet (Spartacus), but the repertoire of Santa's favourites ensures a fair (and rather welcome) dollop of mush all the same. Smith on tenor saxophone succeeds in communicating a suitable richness of sentiment even when, as on the headlong modal bop of "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen", the tunes are taken a long way from Lapland. Recorded live and "unplugged" in Glasgow on 22 December 2001, with Gareth Williams on piano and Sebastiaan De Krom on drums, along with Smith and Le Fleming, the album demonstrates once again how masterful a saxophonist Smith has become.

'The Christmas Concert' is available for £10 from www.spartacusrecords.com