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"A standard takes on a new shape when it is realized through Trio New York’s methods. Their improvised preludes promote refreshed readings studded with bright accents and pungent embellishments, reinforcing the qualities that have enabled these tunes to endure, be it the sweet sentimentality of “Memories of You” or the devil-may-care of “Just One of Those Things.” By embracing the tenets of free improvisation – experimentation, discovery, and, on a good night, elucidation – Trio New York has tra…
Big Tip! As poets from Shakespeare to Heine have recognised, “the forest” is not just about grandeur and most expansive of gestures; it is also about intimacy and there is a remarkable intimacy to Christopher Kunz’s and Florian Fischer’s music. The forest is both inhuman, wild, and, because it houses us and to a degree depends on us, profoundly humane. You’ll find these qualities here as well. Focus, breathe and listen. (Brian Morton)
"No music making can be entirely non-idiomatic. Removing the metaphor, the claim is that it is characterless, without personality. But despite his best intentions, perhaps, one can hear a range of influences in Bailey’s own work – even if jazz isn't one of them. And the present album shows that "non-idiomatic" is the wrong description for much free improvisation. The common description "abstract" is also misleading. All music is abstract in form, humane in utterance." – Andy Hamilton
"Kontakte makes contacts between acoustic instrumental sounds and electronic music, its multidimensionality and its invitation to time travel, all promised a future in which humanity might transcend the limitations of material reality. In Spiegelung and Geschichte der Gewalt the electronic sounds emerge as transformations of this reality." – Christopher Fox
“We are in the business of transformation, applying our knowledge of improvising together for twenty-five years, interwoven with our resonance with these melodies and forms. We have found our collective way with honouring what these pieces express to us, through our personal language, comments Gerry Hemingway.” He agrees that there's a concept of authenticity”. “The feeling of swing is our own, but shaped by the pieces we are playing”. Authenticity is acquired through assimilating traditions, an…
The incomparable life and extraordinary, trailblazing career of jazz titan and influential composer Charlie Parker will be honored throughout 2020 with a worldwide celebration commemorating the 100th anniversary of his birth (August 29, 1920). Lovingly dubbed Bird 100 after the nickname of the preeminent alto saxophonist who was one of the fathers of bebop and progenitors of modern jazz, the centennial will include a host of major initiatives including exciting new music releases, a tribute tour…
With the essential sidemen to express his unique voice and approach to free jazz, saxophonist Albert Ayler, double bassist Gary Peacock, and drummer Sunny Murray, recorded these sessions in 1964 for the ESP label as "Prophecy", this excellent reissue & remaster also adding the live "Albert Smiles with Sunny" (inRespect) from the same concert; essential.
"Christian Weber said in an interview for “Jazz’N’More": No matter how I move along the timeline, my attention is focused on what is to come. At the same time, I always keep in mind what happened before, without analyzing. This way, I avoid the improvisation becoming arbitrary. Both arbitrary openness and narrow restriction, neither suits me." And therein lies the whole secret of this record and ultimately the definition of great art: it is the ability of a musician to have control over space an…
"This, it seems to me, is the great strength of Sophie Lüssi’s music here on Atlantic Puffin. It is clearly skilled and doesn't deal in casual approximations. It is built on solid technique, a brilliant appropriation of classical violin methods in the interests of improvisation. But her music, which draws on folk as well as canonical forms, is one that emanates from and addresses the whole person. It's generous music, kindly and open, and in its gentle humour it engages a part of the spirit that…
"It is a message, and you will hear it sounding firmly through the various pieces that make up The Human Factor, that tells us much about how we might live together: sharing, giving way, simple giving, lifting up, helping ... above all, listening ..." - Brian Morton
"Basically, we witness an intimate dialogue between two improvisers. If there had not been a special circumstance leading to this result. Christine Abdelnour and Hans Koch could not hear each other. In fact, "FFlair" is based on two separately recorded solo improvisations, which were superimposed at the end. Mind you, without any subsequent editing." - Rudolf Amstutz
Temporary Super Offer! 'The CD’s title is borrowed from computer language: STRG + X is the key combination for “cut to the clipboard” to be temporarily stored and pasted somewhere else at a later time. Perhaps the most important quality of this carefully thought-out yet anything but cerebral music: it is aware of its means and can twist and turn and rearrange them as it pleases, in which case improvised contexts create their own forms and play with original material in a fresh, new way. This is …
What these performances then, and those in Impression Graz 1962, reveal is a great artist in a period of continued exploration and uncertainties, committed to integrating the exactness of order and the abandon of ecstasy, and reconfirming his improvisational quest as a spiritual discipline. But there were profound changes still to come. - Art Longe
The four tracks on this release have been selected from the 1962 concert tape which Hat Hut Records has licensed from ORF Stelemark, Graz, Austria. I…
Taking his quartet on a European tour in the fall of 1962, Coltrane's band with McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on double bass, and Elvin Jones on drums performed in Graz, Austria at Stefaniensaal, the concert beautifully recorded by ORF Steiermark and here released as the first of two volumes, showing both Coltrane's lyrical origins and expanding free inclinations.
Six compositions for solo piano written by English composerb Christopher Fox between 1991 and 2015, performed by Netherlands pianist John Snijders at Abbey Road Studios in London, each work uniquely approached in both writing and performance, each a concept or style that brings something unique to Fox's music while still retaining his voice and character in composition.
West Coast composer and saxophonist Noah Kaplan, associated with Anthony Coleman, David Tronzo, Peter Erskine, Rinde Eckert, Joe Morris, Mat Maneri, Joe Maneri, &c., here in his 3rd album with his Noah Kaplan Quartet, in a set of original compositions and one standard performed with Joe Morris (guitar), Giacomo Merega (electric bass) & Jason Nazary (drums, electronics).
The innovative acoustic free improvising ensemble Polwechsel, bridging contemporary music and free improvisation in ways that sound deceptively electroacoustic and comprised of Michael Moser on cello, Werner Dafeldecker on double bass, and Martin Brandlmayr & Burkhard Beins on cymbals & percussion, are joined by Klaus Lang performing on the church organ of St. Lambrecht's Abbey.
Captured live at the 2016 Jazz at the Factory Festival in Sao Paulo, this addition to New York pianist Matthew Shipp's catalog finds the masterful player presenting his own compositions like "Symbol Systems", "Gamma Ray" or "Invisible" light alongside unique takes on "Angel Eyes", "On Green Dolphin Street", "Yesterdays" and "Summertime".
Active since 2010, the German/Swiss duo of classical guitarist Christian Buck and improviser Christian Wolfarth occupies a space between music and sound art, as they perform two works each by Ed Haubensak and Tomas Korber, pieces that make use of time, microharmonies, multiphonics, unusual tuning systems, interference patterns, and other conceptual approaches to music.