Forza jazz

Rome, the morning after the night before, and rainwater is tumbling down the Spanish Steps. Watching from a cafe across the piazza is trumpeter Enrico Rava. I join him for coffee and he talks about how Italians were deeply involved in jazz's beginnings.

'At the turn of the twentieth century, New Orleans had one of the highest concentrations of Italians in the United States,' he says. And one of its sons, Nick La Rocca, he points out, led the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a group that made the first ever jazz recording in 1917. 'Jazz wouldn't exist without Europe.'

Slightly built, Rava is now 65, and two years ago won the Danish JazzPar prize, whose substantial bursary makes it the biggest jazz award in the world. While his music is built on the conventions of American jazz, it is washed with Italian hues.

His appearance on stage for a concert at the Parco della Musica the night before had been greeted with a huge roar. The opening number, 'Rain', offered a Mona Lisa smile to an otherwise straight-faced idiom, and there were shouts of 'Bravissimo!' at his sumptuous tone and a solo that headed up unexpected turnings and down dark alleyways before returning to the theme. By the end of 'Cromosomi', with its tricky harmonic sequence that descends in semitones, he had the audience in the palm of his hand. He played all nine originals from his new album on ECM, Easy Living , climaxing with 'Drops', a duet with his pianist Stephano Bollani.

It confirmed what I had thought: the Italian is one of jazz's greatest talents.