TRACKLIST

1. STEPS #1

2. STEPS #2

3. STEPS #3

4. STEPS #4

5. STEPS #5

6. STEPS #6

7. STEPS #7

8. STEPS #8

9. STEPS #9

10. STEPS #10

Personnel

Harri Sjostrom, soprano saxophone

Andrea Centazzo, percussion, mallet kat

Sergio Armaroli, vibraphone

Recorded at Il Pollaio by Piergiorgio Miotto

Biella, Italy, December 2019

Mixed, edited, produced by Andrea Centazzo

at ICTUS Studio Long Beach, California, USA

October 2020

Executive producer Sergio Armaroli

Cover photo and art by Andrea Centazzo

Inside cover notes by Sergio Armaroli

www.ictusrecords.com 192

IMPROVISATION AS A PRACTICE OF CROSSING

Steps, passages and dialogues.

by Sergio Armaroli

The number three is perfect form: the trio is the condition of listening in its perfection. Circularly, step by step, the music remains suspended, cultivated in the secret of the mind until the day of the meeting.

The day has already been fixed since long time: it's the Sixth of December 2019. I meet my friend Andrea Centazzo and, for the first time, I meet Harri Sjostrom.

The art of meeting, as in life, is a slow construction and a daily exercise: a culture of respect and waiting.

Music is a life of steps, passages and dialogues in an elongated time.

For this three-way dialogue, the recording studio is the place on the sidelines, out of time, unique condition for making music together with the steps necessary to reach the recording room and hide one's sound by sharing nascent forms and dreams.

It is therefore difficult to describe this three-way meeting where the spoken language cannot translate the mystery of a sound into its nascent state.

Only the soundtrack of a constant practice of crossing unknown worlds and remains is left: Steps.

Milano, Italy October 18th 2020

REVIEWS