Just when you thought classic jazz albums were a thing of the past, Italianvirtuoso Enrico Rava conjures up another one, writes Stuart Nicholson

Rome on a grey, wet, blustery spring day. It's the morning after the première of Easy Living, trumpeter Enrico Rava's new album, at the Grande Auditorium Parco della Musica.

Rava is Italy's most famous jazz musician and after seeing him play five encores to an ecstatic, packed house, there's little doubt he's also his country's favourite.

His appearance on stage was greeted with a huge roar, and from the opening number Rain - a beautiful, easy-tempo piece he wrote to feature his off-the-wall lyricism - there were shouts of "Bravissimo!" at his sumptuous tone and the way his solo took you up unexpected turnings and down dark alleyways before returning you the theme. And by the end of Chromosomi, another original - this time with a tricky harmonic sequence that descends in semi-tones - he had the audience in the palm of his hand.

By the end of the concert, Rava had played all nine compositions from Easy Living. Each song somehow seemed like an abstraction of a composition you'd swear you'd heard before. The tune Sand, for example, had subtle allusions, like a signpost glimpsed in the fog, to Duke Ellington's Caravan, but then took on a life of its own, demonstrating that while we may think we know the what about jazz, the how can be quite different.

It comes as no surprise that Rava, who is not given to hyperbole, describes Easy Living as the best album he has ever made.

That's quite a claim, since a quick visit to the All Music Guide at www.allmusic.com reveals that between 1972 and now he has recorded some 100 albums, including 30 as a leader. Rava, who describes himself as a "lazy writer" of music, wrote all the material, except the title track, and he did it in a way that brings out the best from his current quintet, which is now in its fourth year.

It's a band of extraordinary virtuosos who understand that technique is only part of the picture in jazz - you still have to construct meaning and convey emotion in what you play. On this showing, pianist Stefano Bollani is among the finest in jazz.

Clearly at one with the "jazz tradition", he is not limited by it, so reaches beyond it to find his own identity. Amid an astonishing understanding of the classics - he can signify on Glenn Gould yet work in a quote from Rachmaninoff - he peppers his playing with an abstract flourish here or a humorous aside there.

Trombonist Gianluca Petrella's svelte tone combines in haunting unison with Rava, but in solo has the panache to make this deeply unfashionable instrument fashionable again, as he showed on Algir Dalbughi - a good old shuffle rhythm in double time.

Rosario Bonaccorso on bass and Roberto Gatto on drums are the voices of reason that unite this remarkable quintet, whose mutual empathy has produced one of the best jazz albums of the last couple of years, a classic at a time when you thought classic jazz albums were things from the past.

In the cold morning light, there's a couple of hours before meeting Rava for a coffee and a chat.

You might think the damp and overcast weather might dull Rome's lustre. It doesn't. You just see it in another way. The rainwater pouring down the Spanish Steps, or the absence of tourists gazing into the Fontana de Trevi make these picture-postcard sights somehow more real. Even so, it is impossible to shake off the feeling that the culture of Italy is too great for even its inhabitants to comfortably consume, never mind the eager tourist. It looms so large - around every street corner, looking down on you from on high - and can overwhelm the senses, making Italy seem a country more about the past than the present.

To entertain the notion that a brash, 20th-century art form such as jazz can thrive in Italy in the hush of Galeria Borghese, with its fantastic array of Bernini statues, involves, for a moment at least, a leap of faith.

But there's a lot more to Italian jazz than meets the eye. Italians were deeply involved in jazz from the music's beginnings. At the turn of the 20th-century, New Orleans had one of the highest concentrations of Italians in the United States, immigrants originating from provinces such as Palermo, Trapani and Agrigento. Among them was Girolamo LaRocca (born in Salaparuta) and his wife, Vittoria DiNino (born in Trapani).

Their son Nick would lead the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a group guaranteed its place in jazz history for making the first jazz recording in 1917. The drummer in the band, Tony Sbarbaro, was also Italian.

Italy is very proud of its contributions to jazz, albeit at one remove, as Rava was quick to point out to me when we met, citing several early influential Italian musicians such as Leon Rappolo, Joe Venuti and "Papa" Jack Laine, a New Orleans bandleader whose real name was George Vitale.

Rava, who was born in Trieste in 1939, became a jazz musician almost by accident.

An avid record collector as a teenager - he still is, retaining a genuine fan's enthusiasm for the music - he took up trombone as a hobby, playing New Orleans jazz. When he heard the music of Miles Davis and Chet Baker, he says he "just had to swap to trumpet". An autodidact who never intended to pursue music full-time, he retains an air of amazement at how he developed a career in jazz, and that it happened so fast. He quickly established a reputation in Italy, then moved to New York where he soon was touring and recording with several top American jazz musicians, including Mal Waldron, Steve Lacy, Lee Konitz and Roswell Rudd.

On returning to Italy he had an international reputation, and in 2002 he was the recipient of the Danish Jazzpar Prize, whose substantial bursary makes it the biggest jazz award in the world.

Thus his Rome concert showcasing Easy Living took on the trappings of a major cultural event, although sadly it would be the last with his pianist Stefano Bollani, who was leaving the group to launch his own career. It is a shame, because Bollani understands and compliments Rava's music perfectly. It leaves the album as a permanent reminder of this remarkably cohesive group.

Built on the conventions of American jazz, Rava's music is washed with Italian hues. Serene yet enigmatic, with some exceptionally suave playing by the leader, it is an aesthetically rounded statement, perfect in its way and at one with the culture that helped shape it.

Enrico Rava's Easy Living (ECM 981 2050) is released this month