"Fabrizio is a player with beautiful melodic sense and a sound to back it up!"
Bob Rockwell "Fabrizio Mandolini is, what I call, a lovely musician. His instrumental skills are impeccable,
and by focusing on the soprano-saxophone, he has acquired a rare control over this instrument and has a very personal sound. But his greatest force is his heart.
He is a particularly profound musician, honest, devoted and humble towards the music.
Qualities, that appear clearly in his playing. Musicians like that are a rarity nowadays."
Fredrik Lundin
"Fabrizio Mandolini has a sound and spirit rarely heard. I love it...."
Iain Ballamy
"Sentiment without sentimentality", as Ira Gitler wrote about Thelonius Monk's number,
"Ruby, My Dear". The same goes for Fabrizio Mandolini's "La Spiga".
There is a musical connection between the scandinavian and the italian,
that Mandolini has discovered so well.
Italians have their romantic/lyrical tradition, that we know from the classical world (Verdi, Vivaldi, Puccini etc.) and Scandinavians can find something similar in their song-tradition.
With that in mind, it's very apt,
that half the crew on this recording come from Scandinavia and the other half from Italy.
In terms of composition, "La Spiga' is a gold-mine, with numbers that bring the old
Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays cooperation to mind.
David Reuss, Jazz Kælderen
"It is hard to discribe this great saxofone player in a few words, but i think the word
"dedication" covers it all."
Engqvist Orkester
