Xangorchestra is an Italian, Bologna-based twelve-member ensemble that was founded in 2022 as a collective laboratory for musical experimentation among a group of friends, in response to an institutional music environment perceived as arid and inhospitable. Quando le tigri (When tigers smoked) is its debut album, recorded at Duna Studio in Russi in May 2025.

This ensemble juggles improvisation and composition tactics, including conducted improvisation, game pieces such as John Zorn’s iconic Cobra, free improvisation, and graphic scores, attempting to blur the distinction between the composed and the improvised. Xangorchestra’s music draws on both jazz and classical traditions, filtered through irony and a deliberately grotesque perspective. Its list of inspirations includes Misha Mengelberg and the ICP Orchestra, the Italian Instabile Orchestra, selected works by Henry Threadgill, Charles Mingus, and Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, as well as local experiences including Collettivo Bassesfere and Orchestra Creativa dell’Emilia-Romagna.

But despite the impressive list of Seminal, innovative musicians and ensembles, as well as the diverse compositional and improvisational tactics, Xangorchestra’s music is heavily rooted in carefully structured mainstream jazz or chamber jazz. The eleven short pieces highlight the ensemble’s playful, joyful, and occasionally theatrical interplay, the infectious melodic themes,  as well as its healthy sense of humor. Unfortunately, Xangorchestra sounds as if it is still hesitating whether it can fully immerse itself in an eccentric edge, take subversive, genre-bending risks, or embark on sound-oriented adventures that rattle the relaxed dynamics into freer, wilder, and more imaginative terrains. Maybe its next album will prove otherwise.

Eyal Hareuveni

Giulio Ferraro (trumpet), Enrico Erriquez (clarinet), Giulia Carriero (soprano sax), Marco Porcelluzzi (alto sax), Olmo Minarelli (bass clarinet), Lorenzo Negroni (guitar, tres), François Ndayambadje (guitar), Vincenzo Bosco (piano), Sergio Mariotti (bass), Mattia Bassetti (drums, percussion), Vincenzo Vasi (voice, theremin, objects)