Ludovica Burtone: Migration Tales
Endectomorph Music

Violinist Ludovica Burtone's Migration Tales pays musical tribute to immigrant women in NYC by reflecting on the myriad challenges those coming to the country face as they attempt to establish places for themselves. Now NYC-based, Burtone is the living embodiment of the album's theme in having received classical training in Italy before moving to the United States and augmenting her classical background with a jazz composition diploma from Boston's Berklee College of Music. While she might have conceived the project with immigrant women in mind, the theme applies equally to the challenges facing immigrant people in general.

Burtone's self-produced follow-up to Sparks, her well-received 2023 debut, assembles a terrific sextet that includes flugelhornist Milena Casado (Spain), tenor saxophonist Julieta Eugenio (Argentina), pianist Marta Sánchez (Spain), bassist Tyrone Allen II (USA), and drummer Jongkuk Kim (South Korea)—a more multi-cultural mix difficult to imagine. Recorded at Brooklyn's Big Orange Sheep in November 2023, Migration Tales integrates jazz, classical, and world music idioms across seven compelling tracks whose impact is heightened considerably by the talents involved, especially when each brings a different cultural history to the group endeavour.

“Sono Parole” introduces the album with a delicate tapestry of voice murmurs and melancholy instrument expressions designed to explore how language shapes experience. It's more of a scene-setter for what follows, however, starting with one of the set's most memorable pieces, “The Name.” A lyrical melody renders the introspective tune alluring, but the lilting tune becomes lovelier still when Burtone coils her singing voice (“Say your name” the incantation) around the violin melody. The album's first violin solo's a thing of beauty too, with Burtone showing how seamlessly she's able to translate emotion into sound. A purring turn from Eugenio sustains the intimate mood, and in their support of the saxophonist Sánchez, Allen II, and Kim demonstrate why they're such in-demand players. With Kim liberally showering the performance with cymbals and toms, Casado and Sánchez move to the front-line for “In the Last Sun” and in their probing solos secure their rightful place alongside such distinguished company.

After the difficulties and frustrations immigrants experience is given frenzied expression in the aggressive tumult of “Is This Rage,” Burtone's arrangement of Egberto Gismonti's “Agua e Vinho” arrives to soften the blow with a piece that brings together Brazilian, jazz, and classical strains. The violinist's classical bona fides are well-accounted for in an unaccompanied intro before the music turns tender and romantic, her singing voice again part of a lamenting mix that includes eloquent violin and piano solos. Sprinkled with radiant round-robin soloing, the florid “Outside My Window” captures the sextet in harmonious and melodious form, after which “Our Voices,” an electro-acoustic soundscape-styled collaboration with Cleo Reed, meditates one final time on the immigrant experience.

November 2025