With PanOrchestra, Italian saxophonist/composer/arrangerTino Tracanna delivers one of the most accomplished and artistically resonant jazz albums of 2025. Released by Flying Robert Records, this live recording from 2018 captures the ensemble in its purest form (without guests) and celebrates the 70th birthday of one of Italy’s most distinctive and influential saxophonists.
Over the years, Tracanna’s PanOrchestra has welcomed remarkable soloists such as Jonathan Finlayson and Steven Bernstein, who have joined the ensemble on select live occasions. Yet this recording, performed solely by the core group, reveals the project’s essential spirit: a synthesis of compositional precision, collective intuition, and the fearless curiosity that has long defined Tracanna’s art.
The PanOrchestra expands the original Double Cut Quartet – Tracanna, Massimiliano Milesi, Giulio Corini, and Filippo Sala – into a powerful jazz ensemble featuring some of Italy’s finest improvisers, including Federico Calcagno on clarinets, Gianluca Zanello on alto sax, Paolo Malacarne on trumpet, and Andrea Andreoli on trombone. Together, they embody the excellence of a generation capable of blending freedom and structure, intellect and lyricism, in a fluid, organic language.
What truly distinguishes this album is the quality of the writing and arrangements. The ensemble sections are measured, sophisticated, and balanced with remarkable stylistic coherence. This is not a collection of independent improvisations but a carefully orchestrated mosaic in which each soloist intervenes within an intricate rhythmic and sonic framework conceived by Tracanna. Every improvisation is both individual and collective, a gesture that reinforces the larger design rather than interrupting it.
The sound world of PanOrchestra is dense yet lucid. Tracanna’s compositional voice – deeply informed by his long-standing work with the likes of Paolo Fresu and the most advanced Italian jazz scene – combines rhythmic vitality with melodic logic and a refined sense of orchestration. The ensemble breathes as one, alternating open spaces with sculpted interplays that reveal the leader’s ability to think compositionally even in the most spontaneous moments.
As a live document, the album possesses the warmth and immediacy of the performance, but also the focus of a studio work. It’s a music of layered textures and dynamic transparency, where even the densest passages retain clarity and direction.
In a season rich with outstanding releases, PanOrchestra stands as one of the year’s most inspired achievements – a celebration not only of Tino Tracanna’s artistic journey but of Italian jazz at its most vital and imaginative. It is a masterclass in how contemporary composition, collective improvisation, and orchestral vision can converge into a sound that is unmistakably alive.
PanOrchestra
Tino Tracanna: soprano and tenor sax, compositions, arrangements
Massimiliano Milesi: tenor sax, melodica, compositions, arrangements
Andrea Andreoli: trombone
Gianluca Zanello: alto sax
Paolo Malacarne: trumpet
Federico Calcagno: clarinet, bass clarinet
Giulio Corini: double bass
Filippo Sala: drums
