Uccello Project – Symmetria (Independent) Steve Uccello (aka Uccello Project) cut his chops as a jazz bassist. He was the first Jazz Studies graduate from CSU Monterey Bay and he still plays in the Monterey Bay Jazz Orchestra, with whom he was a featured soloist at this year’s Monterey Jazz Festival. Symmetria is the 3rd of his self-composed, arranged, performed, engineered and produced albums. Basses (be they upright, electric, dobro or washtub) take the lead and all possible nuances are eked out of them. To compliment these bass tones Uccello appears to have a whole world of folk instrumentation at his disposal and he meshes these, and technological experimentation to often hypnotic, often transcendental, but outwardly beautiful effect. It is fastidiously precise and overtly spiritual and its conjured scenery is a collision of the exotic and the imaginary. The attention to detail is staggering: much having been paid to the sleeve art, production and stereo mixing, especially. Uccello’s own words: “Fourteen songs, weaving golden darkness with other worldly joy, unfold. Seamlessly, canopies of free form jazz give way to mystical folk, and passages of languid Prog become swarming baroque lines” sum up this album’s intent; to test certain waters but continually float upstream. www.steveuccello.com Willsk Next