Italian pianist Leo Aniceto is a jazz formalist from the modern creative school who also leans toward late West Coast and hard bop as well as '70s fusionisms. That said, his musical voice is a startlingly original one: He caresses the keys with bright, sophisticated ostinatos and sharp, angular arpeggios that are imitated by his countrymen. L'Eco del Silenzio is, as an album, a showcase for the many faces of Aniceto not only as a pianist, but as a bandleader and composer as well. He composed all of the album's eight selections and is featured in a variety of settings that include duet, trio, quartet, and quintet. Along with his standard groupings that include two horns or a horn and electric guitar in the quintet, Aniceto also seems to favor -- oddly -- the sound of an electric fretless bass in his rhythm section, and it is present even on some of the otherwise acoustic numbers. "Oceano Smarrito" is a case in point: The tenor and trumpet go head to head in the complex, rough-edged melody as Aniceto plays a fleeting contrapuntal chromatic system in chords and single-note runs while the fretless punches in the rhythmic accents. On "Kite," Aniceto plays electric keyboards in addition to piano (the only cut on the album where this occurs) for texture, and goes head to head with Umberto Fiorentino's electric guitar and the loopy soprano stylings of Sandro Deidda. Most of the tracks, however, are far more traditional, with one of the three subgenres being the chosen mode of expression in an engaging, thoroughly provocative album of elaborate and complex jazz compositions by a composer and pianistic stylist (how often can that be said anymore?) who deserves to be heard far more than he is. ~ Thom Jurek