Tommaso Perazzo & Marcello Cardillo | "Kind of Blue" Single Release

Tommaso Perazzo/Marcello Cardillo/Buster Williams Converge Musical Visions to Capture

Portrait of a Moment

Enigmatic Debut Album Memorializes the Recording Session that Transformed Mentor and Students into Collaborators

Available May 30 via Red Records

Portrait of a Moment Available for Pre-Order Now

Today, Italian pianist Tommaso Perazzo and drummer Marcello Cardillo release “Kind of Blues,” the second single from their forthcoming album, Portrait of A Moment, featuring legendary bassist Buster Williams. Like the unique title suggests, the album is a snapshot of congenial international, intergenerational jazz that is fresh and spirited. Composed by Cardillo, “Kind of Blues” is a swinging, playful and atypical blues.

“I was inspired by the way Thelonious Monk used to compose” he says. “I wanted it to swing throughout, and I added in a little spice by changing the conventional blues form, making it eleven bars with the second to last bar in ¾ time. The melody is based on a rhythmic displacement of small melodic cells.”

Perazzo, Cardillo, Williams – Portrait of A Moment Tour

June 17 – Peperoncino Jazz Festival (NYC)

July 6 – Levanto Music Festival – (Liguria)

July 7 – Pisa Jazz Festival – (Tuscany)

July 8 – Ancona Jazz Summer Festival – (Marche)

July TBD – (Rome)

July 11 – Masseria Torre di Nebbia – (Puglia)

July 12 – “Note di Luna Piena” – Santa Maria di Leuca – (Puglia)

July 13 – Peperoncino Jazz Festival – (Calabria)

About

Marcello Cardillo

Naples-born drummer/composer Marcello Cardillo, at only 28 years-old, has performed alongside some of the world’s most renowned musicians. Currently residing in New York City, where he regularly plays in some of the city’s most historic venues, he has been called “an Italian who bewitched New York,” by Napoli Today. He won many prestigious awards while still in college, including the Downbeat College Award and the Bucharest International Jazz Competition, and earned full scholarships to the

Conservatory of Amsterdam, where he received his undergraduate degree, and to Manhattan School of Music where he earned his Master’s Degree. While there, he studied with contemporary masters such as Kendrick Scott, John Riley and Miguel Zenon. A regular face on the bandstand in New York City’s jazz scene, he’s performed at Smalls, Dizzy’s, The Django, Nublu, and Minton’s Playhouse performing with

legendary bassist Buster Williams, Steve Wilson, Stacy Dillard, Logan Richardson and Fabrizio Bosso to name a few.

Tommaso Perazzo

Born in Angera, Italy, Perazzo , 28 years-old. started playing piano at five years old, showing a strong predilection for jazz and blues at that young age. After moving to The Netherlands for studies at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in jazz piano, he captured 1st prize in the best soloist category in the 2018 Keep an Eye International Jazz Award. In the same year, he also won the prestigious Massimo Urbani International Jazz Award in Italy. Subsequently, he

recorded his debut album leading a trio, entitled What’s Coming Next? (Musicamdo Records). After graduating Cum Laude from the Conservatorium Amsterdam in June 2019, Perazzo moved to New York City to pursue a Master’s Degree in jazz piano at the Manhattan School of Music. While there, he studied with jazz luminaries like Buster Williams, and since then has been sharing the stage with great musicians such as Williams, Alvin Queen, Gregory Hutchinson, Miguel Zenón, Flavio Boltro, and Fabrizio Bosso. He has performed at prestigious venues in Europe and in the USA including the Bimhuis in Amsterdam, Torino Jazz Festival and Umbria Jazz in Italy, Moãna Jazz Festival in Spain, Guimarães Jazz in Portugal, and Dizzy’s Club in New York.

Buster Williams

An enduring American jazz bassist, composer, and educator, Buster Williams, at 83, has flourished through many periods of changing fashions in jazz due to his fat, authoritative, dark tone and his highly refined technique on the acoustic bass. Though he began his recording career in the early 1960s with Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, Sarah Vaughan, Jack Wilson, and the Jazz Crusaders, his earliest celebrity was as a member of Herbie Hancock’s exploratory Mwandishi Sextet from 1969 to 1973. As a leader, he began recording with a trilogy of albums on Muse Records in the mid-70s. Of these, Pinnacle, is widely considered a modern jazz masterpiece. His notable achievements include appearances as a member of Sphere for 1982’s Four in One, and later in the decade as a member of pianist Kenny Barron’s trio. In addition to working in Denny Zeitlin’s and Lenny White’s groups in the early 21st century, Williams released the celebrated Griot Liberte in 2004 with White on drums and Stefon Harris on piano

and marimba. After a break from recording, lasting from 2009 to 2017, he focused on both teaching and touring until returning to the recording studio for Cyrus Chestnut’s There’s a Sweet, Sweet Spirit. Williams’ 2023 recording Unalome for Smoke Sessions, in a Downbeat review, received four stars citing his intuitive “balance and way of assembling and finding a center of expression for disparate musical tendencies.”