Alla Boara announce new LP, Tessere, fusing Italian field recordings and modern jazz

Percussionist Anthony Taddeo founded the group five years ago as a way to explore his own heritage. “As the son of an Italian immigrant I’ve always been very proud of my ancestry but it wasn’t until I started doing research into the incredible archive of recordings Alan Lomax left us that I was inspired by the diversity and beauty of my culture to create something that would add to the generational conversation of Italian folk music,” he says. “And in doing so, for the first time as a musician, I felt connected to this tradition in a real and profound way.”

Tessere features vocalist Amanda Powell alongside Dan Bruce on guitars, Mark Micchelli on accordion and piano, Tommy Lehman on trumpet, and Ian Kinnaman on bass. The album opens with “Che Bera Sta Figghiola”, a tarantella originally sung by mothers bouncing babies on their knees. In Alla Boara’s hands, it becomes a spiky, time-signature-hopping jazz workout, driven by Taddeo’s drumming and Powell’s punchy delivery.

Maggio Delle Ragazze” is a Northern Italian spring celebration given street-parade energy by guest violinist Yaryna Tsarynska, and “Jesce Sole” is a centuries-old Neapolitan piece reshaped with electric distortion and a rock backbeat. Taddeo acknowledges the linguistic hurdle built into the material. “Even if you’re Italian and you come to one of our shows, you probably still don’t know what these songs are saying, because they’re in all these different regional dialects from around Italy.”

The record’s centrepiece is “Questa Mattina”, a slow-burning track stretching to nearly nine minutes. It was built from a field recording of men singing call-and-response while breaking rocks in Puglia. “The arrhythmic hammering of the rocks was sampled for the sound effects in the intro,” Taddeo explains.