MONOPIECE & JAAP BLONK
The improvising trio Monopiece lists its instrumentation as guitar, percussion, and electronics, but electronics describes far more than one third of its texture, since both guitar and percussion are...
View ArticlePHILOSOPHY
The piano jazz trio format was, of course, an invention of pianists, establishing a triangular hierarchy with the piano on top and the double bass / drums positioned on the bottom. When the leader of...
View ArticleCAT IN A BAG
You already know three members of this Portuguese band – alto saxophonist Bruno Figueira, guitarist João Clemente and drummer Duarte Fonseca – from Slow is Possible. The other is bassist João Lucas,...
View ArticleAGE OF CHAOS
You can call it instant composition, free improvised music or creative jazz, but for the Slovenian tenor saxophonist Cene Resnik what really matters is what comes naturally. The communion with nature,...
View ArticleLAST MINUTE THEORY
The quintet format is a favorite for pianist Simon Nabatov. After “Master and Margarita”, “Roundup” and “Readings” with American and European musicians, here’s a new one with top New York players Tony...
View ArticlePULL
Will Greene, Simon Hanes and Aaron Edgcomb didn’t know each other before they were invited by John Zorn to found a new band and play his score books “Bagatelles” and “Apparitions”. In common they had...
View ArticleTHE POINT IN QUESTION
The “point in question” of the title of this album is always difficult to put into words. Miles Perkin, a Canadian double bassist and composer who is conquering the world bit by bit, prefers to do it...
View ArticleTHE POINT IN QUESTION (LP with Download Code)
The “point in question” of the title of this album is always difficult to put into words. Miles Perkin, a Canadian double bassist and composer who is conquering the world bit by bit, prefers to do it...
View ArticleSONG(S) OF HOPE (Pre Order)
Portuguese drummer and composer João Lencastre began his Communion project in 2005, after his first visit to New York in 2002 set the scene for developing relationships with New York musicians. There...
View ArticleVOLÚPIAS (LP)
The Portuguese (but born in California 1986, from a Mozambican natural and a Brazilian of Italian heritage) drummer Gabriel Ferrandini is usually found in freely improvised music contexts (those, for...
View ArticleHANGKERUM
The best music is always the one created by singular musicians, as we learned from the history of jazz. Tom Arthurs, Isambard Khroustaliov (the alias of Sam Britton) and Julian Sartorius are three of...
View ArticleAPRÈS UN RÊVE
In “Après un Rêve” the upright piano isn’t the alternative resource when some particular venue (here the FGO Barbara, in Paris) doesn’t have a grand piano and can’t afford the rental of one: it has...
View ArticleVERTICAL SHORES
Pianist and composer Zack Clarke is a worker of forms, expanding the ones he chooses far beyond their conventions. Of course, when manipulating form, Clarke manages all of the inherent idiomatic...
View ArticleCANADA DAY QUARTET LIVE
Harris Eisenstadt’s Canada Day project was originally a quintet, but the band has undergone several transmutations through the years – an octet (the original quintet plus the horns of Jason Mears, Ray...
View ArticleTHEY JUST SIT ABOUT
The Italian sound explorer Francesco Gregoretti has more than an idiosyncratic idea of how to approach a drumkit using all its capacities, usually by over-amplifying it and sculpting the resulting...
View ArticleTESTAMENT (pre-order)
Avram Fefer’s new Clean Feed release, Testament, is the kind of project that excites and entices even on paper. First there’s Fefer, the saxophonist and composer who has been an important contributor...
View ArticleYANKEE ZULU
Two of the musicians (saxophonist Karl-Hjalmar Nyberg and guitarist Karl Bjora) ensembled in this trio come from the Megalodon Collective, a septet that was already described as «sounding like the...
View ArticleBRAIN DRAIN
Peter Van Huffel’s journey through the combination of jazz and rock, alien to the fusion tradition of the seventies and the collage of the nineties, proceeds with yet another opus from the Gorilla...
View ArticleBRAIN DRAIN (LP Gatefold, 180g)
Peter Van Huffel’s journey through the combination of jazz and rock, alien to the fusion tradition of the seventies and the collage of the nineties, proceeds with yet another opus from the Gorilla...
View ArticleLIVE IN MOSCOW
Everything in a Nau Quartet (the brothers José and João Lencastre plus 2/3 of Red Trio – Rodrigo Pinheiro and Hernâni Faustino) concert is improvised, benefiting from a stage situation. Here we find...
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