The Zone is a concept album written by Italian composer Daniele Del Monaco for a band of performers from New York City who are usually affiliated with avant-jazz and free improvisation. This recording features Fay Victor’s urban jazz vocals, Marco Cappelli’s guitar, Satoshi Takeishi’s performance on the drums, and the virtuosity of bassist Ken Filiano, all guided by Del Monaco’s experimental sensibility on keys and sound generators. Del Monaco’s radical approach to creating music is rooted in a slow process of working through a score, balancing meticulous compositions with the setting of parameters for improvisation. In his lyrics, Del Monaco appropriates the words of Persian poet and mystic Farid al-Din‘Attar’s epic ‘The Conference of the Birds’  and Andrei Tarkovsky’s ‘Stalker’ to create a narrative in which the ideas and imagery of poets and philosophers interact.