Look ma, no piano

Enrico Rava's "Full of Life" from CamJazz has the great Italian trumpeter in a Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker-like pianoless quartet, but with more of a Mingus feel musically. Rava is joined by Javier Girotto on baritone sax (mostly, he plays a nice soprano otherwise), a bassist and drummer. Most of the CD is compositions by Rava and Girotto along with a few standards, "Moonlight in Vermont," done as a fetching ballad with avant-garde touches, and "Nature Boy" among them. "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" is somewhere under the heavy and inventive improvising they do over it. Check out "Happiness is to Win a Big Prize in Cash," a calypso-sounding hoot I can see myself skipping down the street to, if I could still skip. A delightful disk top to bottom.