Fabrizio Sotti is onto something new and fresh. With Forty (Sotti Entertainment, 2016), the guitarist marks not only a milestone as in how many years he’s been alive, but also a quest for new musical discovery.

Sotti plays an EX-SS Fabrizio Sotti Signature Model guitar. With him are Peter Slavov, bass; and Francisco Mela, drums.

“Dangerous Walk” is brief but engaging. Sotti’s play is clean as a he parades through one series of single-note phrases after another, some of them in rapid succession. At times, an effect is used to suggest a keyboard is performing a duet with the guitar.

The trio goes bossa nova with Sotti’s arrangement of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “How Insensitive.” This track conjures a visual of an evening or nighttime stroll along a beach in Rio. This feeling is enhanced by Mela’s syncopated rim shots. Slavov lets his fingers do the snapping during an elegant middle solo, Sotti providing subtle rhythm chords underneath.

Sotti moved from Padua, Italy, to New York in 1991. An ambitious, jazz-obsessed teenager at the time, he would go on to produce hits for such artists as Tupac, Whitney Houston and others. Latter collaborations included Cassandra Wilson, Randy Brecker, John Patitucci and Al Foster. Recordings to date include This World Upside Down (1999), Through My Eyes (2003) and Inner Dance (2010).