Enzo Favata Makes ECM Debut With ‘Ritornare’
The Sardinian reed player recorded the five-piece set in Munich under producer Manfred Eicher.
Enzo Favata, the Sardinian saxophonist and clarinettist, makes his ECM debut with Ritornare, his first recording for the label and an album made with his Atlantico quintet. The album was recorded in Munich in January 2026 and produced by Manfred Eicher.
Favata leads the group on saxophones and clarinet, while longtime collaborator Marcello Peghin plays guitar and Daniel Di Bonaventura adds bandoneon. Salvatore Maltana and UT Gandhi complete the lineup on double bass and drums. The quintet’s approach connects jazz and chamber-music dynamics with improvisation, while also drawing on traditional musical dialects from Southern Italy and the wider Mediterranean.
Travel, memory and imagination are central reference points for Ritornare. The album also takes inspiration from cultural crossings across the Atlantic and from the literary worlds of Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges. Favata’s reeds, Peghin’s guitar and Di Bonaventura’s bandoneon carry much of the melodic material, with Maltana and Gandhi providing the rhythmic framework underneath. All About Jazz previously summed up the group’s collective character by writing that “in Favata’s world, and like all great groups, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
Favata’s recent releases include Paucartambo, an eight-track album issued on March 13, 2026, with Pasquale Mirra, Marco Frattini and Fabio Giachino. In 2025, he released the six-track Out of Trane on June 30, featuring Alfonso Santimone, Danilo Gallo, Riccardo Pittau, UT Gandhi, Brian Quinn, Tony Cattano and Massimo Carboni. Favata also served as artistic director of the 25th Musica sulle Bocche festival, which ran from August 7-31, 2025, with 40 concerts presented across northern Sardinia. In October 2025, Favata joined pianist and singer Eri Yamamoto at Rome’s Casa del Jazz for Una Striscia di Terra Feconda. Later that same month, the Enzo Favata Band appeared at Baku Jazz Festival’s 20th edition at the Azerbaijan State Musical Theatre.
