Chris Weller’s Hanging Hearts | Chris Weller | Cole DeGenova | Devin Drobka

Chris Weller’s Hanging Hearts formed 2013, is a dynamic musical trio dedicated to the fearless exploration of group improvisation. Their music, organic and raw, bridges the gap between jazz, rock, and experimental music. The band features it’s leader Chris Weller on tenor saxophone and compositions, Cole DeGenova on keyboards, and Devin Drobka on drums. While Chris and Cole grew up in Chicago, playing professionally in jazz and blues clubs by the age of 15, the trio was completed at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where all three members graduated. While the trio’s repertoire consists mostly of Weller’s original compositions, they are also known to deconstruct popular songs and freely improvise. Continue reading

Mofrancesco Quintetto | Maloca

MoFrancesco Quintetto The project was born at the end of the academic year 2010/11 of the degree in Jazz Music at ESML, Escola Superior de Musica de Lisboa. On the occasion of the last recital of Francesco Valente, on 28/06/11, this quintet has emerged that exhibited with original compositions. Following training began acting in Lisbon in several places where there is a weekly Jazz agenda, and began to act also outside this context (Italian Film Festival, Volvo Ocean Race, Universidade Nova with David Murray, Quinta da Regaleira Jazz etc.). In this past year the quintet have recorded his first album “Maloca”, wich it was released by Art of Life Records. The Quintet proposes a modern jazz and fusion music with Mediterranean and Iberian classic and traditional music. The aim is to join the universal language of jazz music and an array improvisative original arrangements and also expressing the essence of the music from the land of origin of the musicians, in particular different styles and sounds of the Mediterranean. Continue reading

Jeff Platz

guitarist, composer, has toured extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe. He has performed in various music festivals world wide such as New York city’s “What is Jazz” festival, the “Heidelberg … Continue reading

Lo Galluccio

Lo Galluccio is a vocal artist and poet who’s first CD, “Being Visited” was released on the Knitting Factory label in 1997. NY Dj Vin Scelsa called it “By turns, mysterious, seductive, surreal and spacy.” She first started working with the Jazz Passengers, co-writing a song with Roy Nathanson for the “In Love” CD on the Windham Hill/High Street label, co-produced by Hal Willner. In the mid 90’s she had an avant-rock band called, “Fish Pistol” with slide guitarist wizard Dave Tronzo, bassist Brad Jones, and various drummers including Ben Perowsky. The band played many downtown NYC clubs like Fez and the Mercury Lounge. She’s also sat in with the bands “Sex Mob” and collaborated with Jim Pugliese of “Soultronix”. Continue reading

Greg Lyons

Greg Lyons is a British saxophonist, composer and arranger. Currently based out of Singapore, he is becoming known to an ever-increasing network of listeners for a commitment to making original music of an eclectic nature combining elements of his whole musical evolution – which includes representations of jazz, classical, funk, rock, pop, Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, avant-garde, folk and lots more.

Continue reading

Albrecht Maurer

The violinist, fiddler and composer Albrecht Maurer studied violin at the Musikhochschule Köln and taught himself the piano, which he then later studied. In addition, he pursued the study of non-European tonal systems and computer music. He gathered his experience with new and experimental music through intensive work with many composers from the Kagel “school”, including Maria de Alvear, Carola Buckholt, and Manos Tsangaris. He has worked with various classical and jazz ensembles as pianist, synthesizer programmer, violinist, and singer. Albrecht Maurer belongs to a special part of the jazz world, named Modern Creative Jazz. Modern Creative is a contemporary form of Creative Music, which is seen as a further develovement of „free jazz“. It is non commercial. Continue reading

Five Spot | Petras Vysniauskas | Yuri Yaremchuk | Roberta Piket | Mark Tokar | Klaus Kugel | Poltva

The band’s name reveals that this is a quintet, with Lithuanian Petras Vysniauskas on soprano, Ukranians Yury Yaremchuk soprano, alto and clarinets, and Mark Tokar on bass, German Klaus Kugel on drums and Roberta Piket from the US on piano. All five musicians have solid backgrounds, both in traditional contexts as in a more free environment, as is the case here, for this live performance at the Lviv Jazz Festival in Ukraine in 2007, and it is free jazz in the spirit of the seventies, with the whole band working together on a coherent musical flow, rhytmic and forward-moving, with the musicians very concerned to build a unique sound rather than using the improvisation for personal expression. In the hands of lesser musicians this becomes a perfect recipe for either chaos or boredom, but you get the opposite here: discipline and deep listening skills, creativity and variation make this quite a captivating program.– Stef Continue reading