ANAPHORA “[Bloom]”

Filippo Deorsola first caught our attention on Sound, one of the five albums curated last year by drummer Domen Cizej as part of the box set Introducing. His duo performance stood out as one of the most compelling moments of that ambitious release. Now, the young Italian pianist—who proudly affirms his queer identity—returns with a new trio and a debut album that expands on his creative vision. The trio is named Anaphora, a title that functions as both a conceptual declaration and a poetic device. In rhetoric, anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive sentences or verses—a structure that here becomes a living principle of musical composition.

The opening track, “Le Nomade,” is a thrilling rollercoaster of pauses and accelerations that immediately translates theory into kinetic sound. Built on the joyful reiteration and recombination of rhythmic phrases, the music weaves together layering, subtraction, return, and collision. Playful accentuations, serendipitous overlaps, and skewed pairings abound, defining a language in constant motion. Deorsola employs a prepared piano, filled with wooden and metallic elements, to evoke the timbral universe of Balinese gamelan—a reference made explicit in the hypnotic “Archéologique 1.” His bandmates match his energy and sonic curiosity with equally imaginative contributions, expanding the trio’s dynamic palette and helping shape a soundworld as intricate as it is exhilarating.

This is music that moves. It’s no surprise that the vibrant “Athletic Pusheen”—another dazzling rhythmic vortex—has been set to video, just like “Le Nomade.” Both tracks revel in physical expression, celebrating the body through sound. By contrast, the title track “[Bloom]” offers a welcome change of pace: a reflective interlude that opens with jazz-inflected lyricism before gradually dissolving into abstraction. “Année Zéro” finds Indonesian resonance once again converging with the spare logic of Western minimalism, two streams in continuous pursuit of one another.

At its core, anaphora is also the engine behind much minimalist music, and the final track, “Blossom,” is arguably the album’s crowning moment. Drawing inspiration from Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, the piece distills that influence into something more intimate yet no less radiant. With grace and momentum, the music builds—then disappears, like mist at dawn.

Deorsola and his trio deliver a debut rich in structure and spontaneity, theory and emotion, where repetition is not limitation but liberation.

—Gennaro Fucile