Federico Ughi ‘Songs for Four Cities’ one of the best CDs of 2012 Mark Corroto from All About Jazz and Hank Shteamer (Time Out NY and Darkforcesswing) ~ ‘Federico Ughi—check out his outstanding recent Songs for Four Cities’ Time Out New York ~ Federico Ughi ‘Songs For Four Cities’… one “of the best music releases of 2012″ Marc Corroto, All About Jazz ~ “Ughi is to be commended for his distinctive songwriting and playing, as well as for creating a multifaceted work that celebrates the richness of the many worlds in which we live.” Florence Wetzel, All About Jazz ~ Best of 2012, Time Out NY’s Hank Shteamer The band on drummer Federico Ughi’s Songs for Four Cities features both Darius Jones and pianist Eri Yamamoto—whose own 2012 full-length also made my list—not to mention [...] Ed Schuller. The Ughi was a real sleeper for me; unlike [...] many other records I chose, this one didn’t benefit from any sort of PR push whatsoever. I doubt I’d have heard of it at all if it weren’t for my weekly TONY duties; I checked out Songs for Four Cities after I noticed a listing for a record-release show at Firehouse Space (a show I unfortunately didn’t get to see). Before this, I had a sense of Ughi as a staunch free-jazzer, mainly affiliated with William Parker, Daniel Carter and other Vision Festival mainstays, as well as with guitarist Adam Caine, an old friend and former bandmate of mine who currently works with Ughi in a rousing freeform duo known as The Moon. But while there are moments of old-school ecstatic-jazz catharsis on Songs, that’s not the prevailing vibe here at all. No, on the contrary, this is one of the warmest, most straightforwardly approachable records I’ve heard in 2012, jazz or otherwise. The Songs in the title is no accident; the pieces here—inspired, as the title would suggest, by four cities around the world where Ughi has lived—feel as elemental as deep, old hymns, and as catchy as great ’70s soul. Once you’ve heard tracks like “Tolmin” and “Claygate,” I can pretty much guarantee they’ll be looping in your head. And the band plays the material with such loving respect; the themes aren’t just improvisational fodder, stated and then jettisoned; Jones and Yamamoto, both proud guardians of melody in their own work, really dig into these compositions, nurturing them, seeing to it that they bloom. I’m thinking of moments like Yamamoto’s solo on “Claygate”—it’s just so lush and bluesy and fun and heartfelt, so extremely not about hip jazz sophistication, geared entirely to bringing out the essence of Ughi’s writing and sharing it with the audience. Again, there are hints of free-jazz fire in this music, as on “When We Cry,” during which the band reaches a hectic, increasingly abstract crescendo, but even here, it’s not at the expense of the tune. The straighter pieces are what really put this one over the top for me, though; every time I put this record on, I marvel at its unpretentiousness—how it’s not some knowing gloss on a sort of pop-jazz aesthetic (and I use pop-jazz in a totally non-pejorative sense), but a fully realized embrace of that idea, the notion that jazz, whatever its “school,” should be about the song first and foremost, and about how improvisation grows from that like a flower from soil. Whatever your particular tastes, you need to hear what Ughi and his band are doing here. ~ “Ughi’s ability to pull cogent music out of somewhat over-sentimental pieces is a tribute to his arranging and this extraordinary band.” Mark Corroto, All About Jazz