Precocious and Prime

SERGIO SALVATORE

“Always a Beginning”

Concord

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SINTI (FEATURING JIMMY ROSENBERG)

“Sinti”

Columbia

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Prodigies are not as common in the jazz world as they are in classical music. Perhaps the spontaneous invention of music taps a part of the brain that matures more slowly than the part that directs the articulation of written music. Or perhaps the mysteries of jazz are just more fundamentally elusive.

But exceptions do turn up, and Rosenberg, a 16-year-old guitarist from the Netherlands, and Salvatore, a 15-year-old pianist from New Jersey, are prime examples. Amazingly, they have emerged as potential major talents despite the fact that they are too young to perform in most of the nightclubs that are the jazz profession’s typical work spaces. But having to perform in concert-type venues hasn’t limited their creative growth in the slightest.

They both play so well that it is almost irrelevant to speak of their age, since the quality of the music they produce demands that it be considered on its own merits. If there is anything that may reflect their youth (“may,” because any number of older, established musicians have the same problem), it is a tendency to play a bit too busily, to not allow room for their lines to find sufficient breathing space.

Salvatore has matured dramatically since his first album (this is his third--his first was recorded when he was 11), both as an improviser and as a composer. And putting him together with the first-rate rhythm team of John Patitucci and Peter Erskine has triggered his imagination in all sorts of productive ways.

He is at his best in the less structured numbers--originals such as “Revolving Door” and “Lullaby in Time” and standards such as “Isn’t It Romantic” and “Darn That Dream.” Less effective are attempts to squeeze pieces such as “Moon River” into unusual frameworks.

Even in the settings that do not permit as much improvisatory freedom, however, Salvatore is an exceptional player. That he has been listening closely to world-class models--Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans and Kenny Barron--is obvious, especially in his soaring, lyrical soloing on “Revolving Door” and “Darn That Dream.” And his brilliant technical skills are on full display in the faster-than-a-speeding-bullet tempo of “What Is This Thing Called Love.”

Rosenberg recorded his album in 1994, when he was 13. His trio, with cousin Johnny Rosenberg on rhythm guitar and Rinus Steinbach on bass, is named for Sinti, the Gypsy tribe heritage in which he was raised. In Sinti society, the great guitarist Django Reinhardt is still a much-admired figure, and Rosenberg’s extraordinary playing was modeled on Reinhardt’s early on. This first recording from the group is a vision of Reinhardt revisited, and one suspects that the legendary guitarist would have given Sinti a firm thumbs-up and then offered to sit in to test their mettle.

As with Salvatore, what is most remarkable about Rosenberg is not just his technique--which is awesome--but the stunning maturity of his phrasing. His ability, in tunes such as “Limehouse Blues,” “Caravan” and Reinhardt’s “Blues for Ike,” not simply to play a melody but to spin it out with subtle inflections and twists of phrase, is the kind of thoughtful expression that can take years to achieve.

Salvatore and Rosenberg have accomplished it while still in their mid-teens.

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