Kihnoua is a classical Greek word which might have meant “the difference” or “the difference-makers” Continue reading
I guess at 70 something minutes overall, this is not exactly an easy listening, still a solo viola album (excluding the four bass tracks) is extremely uncommon. (I don’t know any other) and as ambitious as it is, it succeds greatly. On the final note. Happy Birthday to Szilard who was born on the 12th of february. — jazzowy alchemik | 11.02.2011. Continue reading
…sometimes I wonder just how many gifted improvisers known & unknown are there around the world… hundreds? thousands? even more? There seems like an endless supply as more independent label emerge and release so many interesting discs. Take this disc, for instance… strong, careful, minimal, acoustic avant jazz with tenor sax, trumpet, acoustic bass and drums. This could be a quiet section from an Art Ensemble disc or a Henry Cow album or any other acoustic improvisers showing a good deal of restraint. All four members of the quartet are of even ability and temperament. Is that Don Cherry or Nate Wooley or someone new & as yet unknown? There is something very natural and righteous about this music. On the second unnamed track, the sound is still subdued with moments of joyous dreamy groove-like blends. It is actually that calm center that makes this so magical at times. In a blindfold test, you would certainly come up with numerous more famous musicians but you wouldn’t be too far from this does sound like. — Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery Continue reading
4 ½-stars…. Satoko Fujii. She and her band are the perfect synthesis of modern music, going beyond jazz, integrating anything from classical over folk and traditional music, with jazz, free improvisation and avant-garde, but then pushing it all over the edge. This enables her to explore composition/improvisation with a musical richness which is given to few…. The last piece’s title, “Vapor Trail” is a good descriptive of the music, which comes as a kind of soothing finale, when catharsis has been reached, a moment of acceptance, of resignation, of awe for the beauty that arises after the violence, the fire has died down, after the sun has set. Brilliant!” ― Stef Gijssels, Free Jazz Continue reading
The Satoko Fujii Quartet makes full use of their characteristic musical density and speediness. Satoko Fujii’s powerful left hand, Takeharu Hayakawa’s fat, distorted and rolling electric bass sound, busy but extremely solid drumming of Tatsuya Yoshida and Tamura Natsuki’s trumpet conveying linear power and lyricism altogether pump out impending groove which is maximized by the slick and radical mixing technique incorporating compression and reverberation.” ― Koji Murai, Swing Journal Continue reading
This is music that grips by the throat from the first note. — Mark Corroto Continue reading
This live date features legendary free jazz pioneers Peter Brötzmann and Joe McPhee, and Chicago’s leading rhythm section, bassist Kent Kessler and drummer Michael Zerang. The four also make up 4/10 of Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet, maybe the most successful large new music jazz ensemble ever assembled. As they have in the past while touring with the Tentet, they step away and perform in this more intimate lineup. This quartet has released two previous recordings, Tales Out Of Time (hatOLOGY, 2004) and Guts (Okka, 2007), with The Damage Is Done’s two discs recorded live at Alchemia in Krakow, Poland in March of 2008. While the players can (and do) perform volatile energy jazz here, their preference is for music that’s dissectible enough for the players to be distinguished in parts and direction. — Mark Corroto – All About Jazz Continue reading
The beauty of a short story of course, is that it can be taken in at a sitting, indeed is so structured and formulated that it represents a single, continuous verbal performance, unlike the episodic or architectural structure of a long novel. It is, to that extent, a form that lends itself rather well to musical analogies, though not at first glance to improvised music, which tends to subordinate artful structure to moment-by-moment invention. And yet the greatest short stories can often seem improvised: brief, epiphanic flashes where the next step and the eventual outcome remain in doubt to the very end. There’s something of the humane embrace of Chekhov, Hemingway’s muscle, reticence and resistance to mere abstraction, but perhaps it’s Henry James, that master of indefinable atmospheres and of the tense dialogue between Old World and New World cultures. This is the realm Howard Riley occupies with magisterial confidence, jazz given not just a catch-all cisAtlantic accent but with Howard’s distinctive burr, classical language not simply swung but put through a harmonic and rhythmic gate that transforms it utterly. How to hear him? Italo Calvino, another master of the short form, put it perfectly: ‘It is not the voice that commands the story; it is the ear.’ — Brian Morton Continue reading
The trio in fact is dedicated to that “doing it well in the moment,” and they succeed fully. McManus is too pomo to stick to pure sound as the late Derek Bailey mostly did; and he is too restlessly creative to remain in the land of tone for long periods. He shows throughout that he is one of the more interestingly inventive out guitarists working today; and the trio comprises some of the very best avant improvisers. So you should try and support this music by buying the CD. You want to know what frio-trio with guitar is all about, here’s a good example. For those who know all that, McManus has his own vision which is apparently in the process of congealing nicely. It’s an encouraging recording for the future McManus and quite interesting listening beyond all of that. — Grego Applegate Edwards Continue reading
Five acoustic guitar duos that flirt with flamenco forms, five electric duos that seem to come from Fripp & Eno territory. “Bludget” is squarely in the soundworld of No Pussyfooting, though with “Cobblescrabble” a more nuanced and detailed language is in play. The level of empathy is extraordinarily high, further testimony to Cline’s no-borders eclecticism.–The Wire Continue reading