Gianni Lenoci – piano | Kent Carter – bass | Bill Elgart – drums All compositions by Gianni Lenoci (SIAE), except PLAYTHING by Kent Carter (SACEM / Maignelay Music BMI) … Continue reading
In the Dan Blacksberg Trio, the innovative and genre-defying trombonist brings an expansive and creative new vision to the cutting-edge jazz traditions of pioneers like Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, and Albert Ayler. Blacksberg has penned a set of music that pushes at the technical and timbral limits of his instrument, opening up into far-reaching sounds worlds while maintaining a melodic rootsiness. Backed up by the powerful rhythm of Matt Engle (Shot X Shot) on bass, and Mike Szekely (Anthony Braxton Quartet) on drums, the Trio creates a driving mixture of noise, chromatic lyricism, and everything in between… Continue reading
Rodrigo Pinheiro – piano | Hernani Faustino – double bass | Gabriel Ferrandini – drums | Mattias Ståhl – vibraphone All music by Rodrigo Pinheiro, Hernani Faustino, Gabriel Ferrandini and … Continue reading
Liudas Mockūnas – soprano, alto and tenor saxophones | William Hooker – drums All Compositions by William Hooker (MUSIC BMI) and Liudas Mockūnas (KODA). Recorded live at Vilnius Jazz Festival, … Continue reading
In 2005, Lewis Winn composed “Count Me In” after seeing a Basie band video. The fast-moving line that has him and Michael playing like a horn section pays homage to the swinging sound. There is an unusual element similar to a shout chorus where guitar and drums “solo” together, launching the remaining guitar solo. “So Near, So Far” had to be on my first CD because I tried but couldn’t get any band I’m in to play the tune. The guitar counter-melody is a joyous line against which to play the afro-cuban 12/8 rhythm, and the Joe Gilman lyrics gave new interpretations to the meaning of the title. Michael’s 2008 “Middle Side Topwise” uses the changes to a familiar standard as a vehicle for the bass and borrows a quote from the Simpsons for the title. Continue reading
I once asked Misha how many steps to his front door and he said: “eleven” —sheer fantasy. I’m here to pick him up for a concert at the Loft in Cologne. We have a cup of coffee toebroek: a personal ritual of his that he performs for his visitors. And off we go to Cologne, to meet the rest of the band at my place — dinnertime. Ryan Carniaux, from New York, professor for jazz trumpet in Essen. We’re both members of gRoBA, an orches-tra in Cologne. Gerd Dudek, a German jazz-legend, knows Misha for decades. Nils Tegen, a composer and piano player in his other life. Joscha Oetz, back from Lima — when he’s playing the bass, you feel at home. These musicians have been working together for years in numerous combinations all over the world. And we’re all fans of Misha Mengelberg.– Dirk Bell Continue reading
There I was, doing a solo concert in Paris for the first time. It was almost like a dream. It brought me back to the summer of 1959, when I was eighteen, in Paris for the first time, attending a field studies course in European church architecture. The course lasted a week, but I stayed there for another month. — Connie Crothers Continue reading
An often inspired study in post-noise atmospherics, Malus brings together three pioneering improvisers in their late thirties. Nate Wooley deploys vocalisation and extreme extended technique to turn his trumpet into a hissing steam engine and a bubbling cauldron, channelling electricity to create groggy lo-fi textures. Chris Corsano is in a reflective, exploratory mood, dragging objects across amplified skins to create queasy high-pitched drones and dull metallic rings. Double bassist Hugo Antunes steadies the ship while Wooley and Corsano scramble up the rigging, yet he’s far from conventional: hear him loom into orbit on ‘Seven Miles From The Moon’, carving monolithic obsidian slabs out of deep space silence. The trio’s sense of timing, texture and space is impeccable. In ‘4 Cornered’, a manic Wooley declaims over Corsano’s accelerating scuttle before Antunes walks the muttering trumpeter home. Wooley’s compositional nous, meanwhile, radiates in the Andalucian blues ‘Gentleman of Four Outs’. — Stewart Smith Continue reading
Jason Ajemian, bassist, has developed a high profile in the improvised music scene over the years, performing with Rob Mazurek’s Mandarin Movie, Exploding Star Orchestra, and Chicago Underground Trio; Ken Vandermark’s Crisis Ensemble; and currently with Marc Ribot’s new group Sun Ship. Ajemian’s curiosity has ranged far and wide – he’s just as comfortable in the hushed, folksy setting of Born Heller, his duo with Josephine Foster, as he is in the breath-processed arrangements of his large ensemble Who Cares How Long You Sink. Given such a variety of musical interests, a detour like “From Beyond,” Ajemian’s backward version of Black Sabbath’s “Into the Void” for chamber ensemble, begins to seem like an obvious stop on his journey from the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains to Chicago and his current home in New York City. Continue reading
Live in Lisbon consists of two tracks – “Conflict is Intimacy” and “Music is the Music Language” – and especially the first title functions as a guiding idea the musicians seemed to have for this album. Obviously, Rodrigo Amado (saxes), Peter Evans (tp), Miguel Mira (c) and Gabriel Ferrandini (dr) carry out conflicts, since they are free individuals bringing in different ideas. They are on stage to make a statement, but they respect each other, there is an open-mindedness which is necessary to create something new. In order to achieve this, the musicians have to be intimate, they have to trust each other. — Martin Schray Continue reading