The Netherlands-based AVA Trio – Italian baritone sax player and wind instrument player Giuseppe Doronzo, Turkish-Dutch double bass player Esat Ekincioglu, and Swiss percussionist Giuseppe «Pino» Basile, always looked for unconventional ethno-musical destinations and rich, diverse sonic surroundings, especially the folk music traditions of the Mediterranean.

lunae (of the moon in Latin) is AVA Trio’s fifth album, and it celebrates the trio’s first decade. It was recorded in Apulia, southern Italy, in August 2023, inside a centuries-old trullo (in the Cagnazzi Estate in Itamura), a traditional Apulian limestone chamber with a conical roof, surrounded by olive trees and ancient caves. This trullo became the band’s fourth instrument. Doronzo released the album on his label, Tora Records.

This site-specific album triggered an archeo-musicological exploration of sound and space. The album comprises six ritualistic lunar phases – untitled «Phasis» – arranged as a long suite. AVA Trio traces and imagines ancient or forgotten devotional full-moon rituals, built around repetitive cycles of chants, rhythmic patterns, and silences, «vanishing into night yet circling forever». The reverberating trullo adds a mysterious, resonant layer to AVA Trio’s trance-like sonic rituals. Doronzo’s playing on the traditional double reed mizmar and a gong, Ekincioglu’s commanding bowing work, and Basile’s own tuned-friction cupaphon intensify the timeless, mysterious atmosphere of these lunar rituals, all the way to the ecstatic, cathartic coda.

Eyal Hareuveni

Giuseppe Doronzo (prepared baritone sax, fluxophone, mizmar, gong), Esat Ekincioglu (double bass), Pino Basile (cupaphon, percussion) 

https://torarecords.bandcamp.com/album/lunae