Ben Rosenblum's Nebula Project: Kites and Strings

Ben Rosenblum doesn't just invite a diverse array of influences into his music. While his projects reflect his potent and deeply rooted point of view, the pianist, accordionist, composer and arranger positively thrives on a thrum of contrasting approaches. With Kites and Strings, his third album as a leader and the debut of the Ben Rosenblum Nebula Project, he's convened an exceptionally vivid cast of collaborators and provided them with a program of arrestingly beautiful pieces. Slated for release on October 16, 2020 via One Trick Dog, the album is the work of an artist who's found that his voice contains multitudes. Regularly employed by some of jazz's most revered masters, Rosenblum has already established a national profile as bandleader by logging thousands of miles on the road, playing some 100 gigs annually with his trio at clubs, theaters, schools and community centers, and relishing the opportunity to bring jazz into communities where fellow musicians rarely play.

Kites and Strings features some of the most exciting young players on the New York scene including trumpeter Wayne Tucker, guitarist Rafael Rosa, Jasper Dutz on tenor sax and bass clarinet, bassist Marty Jaffe, and drummer Ben Zweig, with vibraphonist Jake Chapman, trombonist Sam Chess and pianist Jeremy Corren expanding the sextet on several tracks. "These are all great jazz musicians who are steeped in the music's history, and they all have very different approaches to the music," he says. "My bandleader heroes often worked like that. Think of Astor Piazzolla's Tango: Zero Hour when he put together a traditional tango violinist, a rock-influenced electric guitarist, and a jazz pianist. I love seeing the way people's different styles play off of each other and combine into something beautiful and unique."

Encompassing rock and klezmer, Latin American rhythms and Bulgarian harmonies, Kites and Strings marks a major leap for Rosenblum as a composer/arranger. He gained widespread notice with his 2017 debut Instead (One Trick Dog), a confident trio session featuring drum legend Billy Hart and bass master Curtis Lundy that earned four stars from DownBeat Magazine. After holding his own with two revered improvisers he followed up in 2018 with River City (One Trick Dog), a trio with his rapidly rising contemporaries bassist Kanoa Mendenhall and drummer Ben Zweig. Kites and Strings introduces Rosenblum as a composer/arranger with a capacious palette of textures and voicings and firm command of form. The project also establishes him as the newest member of a small, extraordinary keyboard cadre made up of players equally expressive on piano and accordion, a talent-laden club that includes Gary Versace, Sam Reider, Rob Reich, and Rio de Janeiro-born Vitor Gonçalves, who's a particular source of inspiration for Rosenblum.

Lafayette Gilchrist – NOW

Pianist, composer and bandleader extraordinaire Lafayette Gilchrist returns to the trio format on his engrossing, self-released double disc, NOW, the follow-up to last year’s critically acclaimed solo piano album, Dark Matter, which many critics cited as one of 2019’s best jazz releases. 

On NOW, Gilchrist’s first trio recording since his 2007 release 3, the pianist leads his formidable group Specials Revealed, featuring bassist Herman Burney and drummer Eric Kennedy. The three musicians have developed a deep rapport from years of playing together in other people’s bands. When the trio convened to record in November 2019, Gilchrist was bursting with creative energy. 

The album begins with Gilchrist’s signature tune, “Assume the Position,” a protest song about police violence that was featured on HBO’s crime drama The Wire. Atop a combustive, deep-pocket groove, Gilchrist unleashes his signature two-handed improvisations, often marked by granite-hard rhythmic attacks, rumbling blues-laden melodies, a striking harmonic sense and off-kilter improvisations.  

NOW includes other socially and politically conscious compositions as well, such as the dramatic “Bmore Careful,” which examines crime and police brutality in Baltimore, where Gilchrist has lived since 1987. The piece features rumbling tremolos, a stuttering groove and a cinematic melody that fluctuates between menacing and wistful.   

Gilchrist notes that the 2015 death of Freddie Gray while in police custody garnered worldwide coverage. “What I would like people to understand is that when you come to Baltimore, you need to show some respect for the struggle within the town and how strong the people are on the ground here.”

 Elsewhere on NOW, Gilchrist addresses other socio-political concerns. On the dreamy, oddly hopeful “Old Shoes Come to Life,” which Gilchrist conceived after watching an episode of attorney Antonio Moore’s YouTube show Tonetalks, he explores the economic wealth gap between races in the United. States. The skulking “On Your Belly Like a Snake” was inspired by a scene from Haile Gerima’s 1993 movie Sankofa, which depicts a conversation between Shango, a rebellious field slave who’s just been beaten, and Shola, a compliant house slave. Shola advises Shango to be more agreeable with the slave owners to avoid violence. “Shango fires back ‘You’re never going to get your freedom until you learn how to crawl on your belly like a snake.’  So, the song’s in the spirit of the Maroons of the American diaspora, i.e. Brazil, Haiti, Cuba, Florida, South Carolina and New Orleans,” Gilchrist recalls.

NOW also contains several lovely tunes centered on affairs of the heart. One of those is the stunning “Newly Arrived,” with its entrancing melody and suspenseful romanticism. Gilchrist’s inspiration for the song was Sade’s 1988 classic tune “Love Is Stronger Than Pride.” On the haunting ballad “The Wonder of Being Here,” which touches on the love that remains after a short-term romance, Gilchrist unravels a melody that sounds as if it was lifted from Abbey Lincoln’s songbook. Other amorous tunes include the ballad “Say a Prayer for Our Love” and the torrential “Tomorrow Is Waiting Now (Sharon’s Song).” Gilchrist penned the latter for a friend to encourage her to never give up hope, even during the darkest hours. 

Throughout NOW, Gilchrist’s striking two-handed pianism radiates as he anchors his rugged yet sensual improvisations with stride, ragtime and jump blues in the tradition of Earl “Fatha” Hines, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Eubie Blake and Memphis Slim. “I was always attracted to the old music,” Gilchrist says. “It’s like the regional sounds that those guys got out of the piano — the East Coast, the West Coast, the Deep South and the different approaches.” 

Gilchrist also cites other influences, including Billy Preston, Aretha Franklin, Randy Weston, Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner and Bud Powell. Make no mistake though, Gilchrist is a modernist who deftly juxtaposes multiple jazz idioms with the rhythmic bounce, syncopation and grooves associated with go-go music, funk and hip-hop.  

Born in August 1967 in Washington, D.C., Gilchrist’s life as a pianist began at 17 while he was studying economics at University of Maryland, Baltimore. On his way to an English class during his freshman year, he wandered into a recital hall and began pecking out melodies and riffs on a Steinway piano. 

Gilchrist subsequently spent many hours teaching himself piano and auditing music theory classes. By the time he graduated, he had started his career as a pianist and composer. He formed his first ensemble, New Volcanoes, in 1993 and released his debut album, The Art is Life, that same year. He’s since released 13 other albums as a leader. In addition to The Wire, his music has been featured on HBO’s Treme and The Deuce. “Gilchrist's writing weaves together old-school funk rhythms with hip-hop cadences and raw street beats,” says Troy Collins in All About Jazz. “His melodic sensibility embraces the esoteric angularity of Andrew Hill and Sun Ra as much as the emotional directness of the blues.”  

In addition to his work as a leader, Gilchrist has also performed as a sideman with a host of jazz luminaries including saxophonist David Murray, singer Cassandra Wilson, trombonist Craig Harris, bassist William Parker and drummer Andrew Cyrille. 

New Music Releases: Alan Goldsher, Shawn Raiford, Hamburg Spinners

Alan Goldsher - Spiral Dance

On October 21, 2020 the New York Times revealed that pianist Keith Jarrett had suffered two strokes. He likely won't play in public again. A lifelong Jarrett fan, bassist, keyboardist, producer, and Gold Note Records founder / CEO Alan Goldsher was compelled to honor to the jazz legend with a cover of Jarrett's gem, "Spiral Dance." The tune's arrangement is a standard one -- melody / solo / melody -- but the beat takes a sharp left from Jarrett's original 1974 recording. Goldsher explained, "I layered multiple drum loops, then mixed them so they sound jacked-up and weird,". Over and under this jacked-up, weird groove -- and right beside some James Brown samples -- Goldsher pounded the hell out of his keyboard, creating a jazz / electronica soundscape that evokes Jarrett-ness, but most definitely doesn't duplicate it. "Keith recorded several albums with his oftentimes radical reworkings of jazz standards," Alan said. "That being the case, regardless of how he feels about the track, I know he'll appreciate the fact I tried something different." "The only other thing I can say about this tune," Goldsher continued, "is that I hope my fellow Keith fans enjoy it."

Shawn Raiford - Man With A Horn

With one listen, you’ll step deeply into the alluring saxophone world of Shawn Raiford… he is the Man With A Horn, playing it smoothly, brightly and with great conviction! This slickly produced and intensely melodic debut album fires up rich bass lines and hip-hop grooves, creating a proprietary blend of Smooth Jazz, pop, funk, soul and gospel for the Sacramento alto saxman. Raiford’s roots took form in a house of worship, where he played sax for the first time at his late grandmother’s 75-year church anniversary. While showcasing his highly spirited style and emotional range, this collection reflects many styles of musical inspirations, from the exhilarating Raiford-penned originals that the world will surely take notice of, to a select and fun handful of covers from Bruno Mars, DeBarge and Rihanna. Man WIth A Horn from a man who has arrived. ~ smoothjazz.com

Hamburg Spinners - Skorpion Im Stiefel

A tight little quartet from the Hamburg scene – a combo who really get back to basics with a strong focus on organ lines and guitar! The groove is maybe a more complicated take on the territory of Booker T & The MGs – longer tunes, with more variation in the rhythms – but still served up with the kind of simplicity and focus that made that group so great! The organ tones and notes are perfectly chosen throughout – and the drums get nice and funky, with a few great break moments too. Titles include "Haschrebellen", "Der Optimist", "Pharisaer", "Der Kiezpanther", "Maries Mexickaner", and "Bambule In Der Thadenstrasse". ~ Dusty Groove

Analog Players Society : Soundtrack To A Nonexistent Film

Analog Players Society is proud to announce “Chase,” the first single and music video from Soundtrack for a Nonexistent Film. This record is an instrumental, cinematic, set sampled from the original recording session that birthed TILTED. Since its August release, TILTED was included in Bandcamp’s “best jazz releases” and garnered strong support from Jazziz, Medium, Postgenre.org, NY Music Daily, and The Vinyl District. 

Out now, Soundtrack for a Nonexistent Film is a nod to the classic, sample-heavy production of Hip-Hop’s Golden Age.

Producers Amon Drum and Ben Rubin (aka Benny Cha Cha) went back to the lab to slice and dice the original jazz session, which featured jazz luminaries tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin (David Bowie’s last bandleader on Blackstar), pianist Orrin Evans (the Bad Plus), and bassist Dezron Douglas (Ravi Coltrane) and drummer Eric McPherson (Fred Hersch Trio). The resulting songs reflect the producers’ own takes on this moment. Amon expresses, “Soundtrack” is an emotional, sample-based expression of right fucking now.”

“Chase,” is accompanied by a stunning music video directed, shot, and edited by Jude Goergen and produced by Mona Kayhan and Amon Drum. The concept revolves around New York City and the resilience and drive of its people, even when running from the many things one can fear.  Amon explains, “…That’s NYC. We can keep running forever. It might be ridiculous, scary, and we might get tired, but don’t even try to outrun us.”

The Analog Players Society is a collective effort founded by producer and engineer, Amon, out of his first studio, “The Hook,” in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The APS collective features a rotating ensemble cast of some of the top players in New York City. Amon has been "cherry picking" these great musicians and producers for a few years now in this rich garden. APS' various projects, which are eclectic by nature, carry serious strains of the Jazz, Dub, Funk, Afrobeat, and Soul variety within it. APS’ 2012 debut album, Hurricane Season In Brooklyn impressively debuted in the top 15 of the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Chart with press accolades pouring in from NPR’s Fresh Air, Wired, and All About Jazz to name a few.

Fast forward to April 2019 when APS was reborn at The Bridge Studio, the new large-format recording studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn designed and owned by Amon and now a major player on the NYC studio scene. 

Amon expresses, “When Ben and I were in the studio, he made a crazy call and said, let’s not do this to a click. Initially, I thought he was crazy. We are trying to sample our own session, to make instrumental Hip Hop, and you don’t want to record to a click?? He said, ‘nah.’ So I said, OK! That’s what makes us great partners. That was the right call, it let the players be free.”

Ben adds, “The fact that so much music came out of this one three-hour session really blows my mind.”

Edward Simon's double-CD retrospective – 25 Years

Featuring tracks drawn from 13 albums spanning more than two decades, 25 Years features a brilliant cadre of Simon’s closest collaborators including tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, altoist David Binney, bassists Scott Colley, John Patitucci and Ben Street and drummers Brian Blade and Adam Cruz

As birthdays go, 50 is a big one. Even people generally unfazed by the passage of time pause for a moment to get their bearings at middle age’s undeniable onset. For Edward Simon, reaching the half-century milestone provided a welcome occasion to take stock of a deeply consequent career that has quietly expanded the frontiers where jazz seamlessly converges with Latin American rhythms and European classical forms and devices. Acclaimed as a pianist, composer, arranger, educator and bandleader, the Venezuelan-born, San Francisco Bay Area-based Simon has been at the forefront of the movement that has greatly expanded jazz’s already extensive ties to Latin American music. His new album 25 Years, available on Ridgeway Records, is less a career retrospective than a personally curated tour through some of his highlights as a recording artist.

Brimming with arrestingly beautiful music drawn from 13 albums spanning 1995-2018, it’s a wide-spectrum look at a well-known artist whose music should be circulating much more widely. The album reflects Simon’s recently forged role as associate artistic director of the Bay Area nonprofit Ridgeway Arts, an arts organization, label and presenter founded and run by Jeff Denson, the bassist, composer and California Jazz Conservatory’s dean of instruction.

Rather than inducing angst in Simon, reaching 50 last year inspired him to step back and examine the creative path he’s been following. “I felt like it was time to do some reflecting on my work,” Simon says. “And I realized that a lot of great music went largely unnoticed. It was released on indie labels with no publicity, or small European labels with no presence in the U.S. I wanted to get these recordings back on the radar and into listeners’ ears. I wanted to re-present it in a celebratory spirit.”

Simon didn’t set out to compile a comprehensive portrait of his career. There are no examples of his formative sideman work with Bobby Watson, Terrence Blanchard or Greg Osby, and some of the music he recorded as a leader couldn’t be included. But 25 Years vividly captures a restlessly creative artist wrestling with his influences, honing his voice, and finding an utterly personal synthesis of Pan-American styles. Simon selected all the tracks and decided on the sequencing without paying too much attention to chronology, though the first disc focuses more on what award-winning jazz journalist Ted Panken describes in his incisive liner notes as Simon’s “early-career masterworks of jazz polylingualism.”

He hears his younger self and his freewheeling bandmates as eager to plunge into uncharted territory, unburdened by self-imposed expectations. “There’s a sense of a certain kind of freedom, and at the same time there’s a rawness in those early recordings,” says Simon, a founding faculty member in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Roots, Jazz and American Music program. “We were really exploring ideas of bringing together the traditions that I love. I grew up playing Latin American music, the genres under that large umbrella. They’re traditions I continue to explore and love, particularly the rhythms but also the song forms that come with them. Those early albums capture that exploration, which is wrapped up with the classical music element that I really love and went to school for, the desire and aspiration for structural clarity in composition and arrangement and the playing itself.”

The music ranges far and wide. He introduces the collection with “Ericka,” a winsome piece from his widely influential 1998 album La Bikina. His pianism is luminous, his touch strong and refined. His lines and the feel of the piece call to mind Keith Jarrett, a beacon for jazz players deeply engaged with classical music. By opening with a piece written by his older brother, percussionist Marlon Simon, he seems to be making a clear statement that 25 Years isn’t only about him. With tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, altoist David Binney, bassist Ben Street and drummer Adam Cruz, he’s joined by a cadre of era-defining improvisers who are still some of his closest collaborators. “Pere,” an elaborate melody from 2001’s Afinidad that writhes over a 5/4 groove, features a quartet with Binney, bassist Scott Colley and the extraordinary drum tandem of Brian Blade and Cruz on percussion and steel drum. The extended exploration of “Pathless Path” from 2013’s Trio Live In New York at Jazz Standard captures his celebrated combo with Blade and bass maestro John Patitucci giving a master class in creating form out of freedom while relentlessly building tension over more than a dozen simmering minutes. It’s music that could only flow from players bonded at the deepest level. “It’s an extended family that has played such an essential role in this music,” Simon says.

If the first disc showcases the matrix of relationships that feed and define Simon’s music, the second concentrates more on his work as an arranger and orchestrator. With the support of three grants from Chamber Music America’s Doris Duke Charitable Foundation program for jazz composers he’s increasingly investigated expanded instrumentation, like on “Uninvited Thoughts” from his critically hailed 2018 album Sorrows and Triumphs. Featuring the Afinidad quartet (Binney, Blade and Colley) plus percussionist Luis Quintero and the Imani Winds, it’s an elegantly constructed piece marked by a spritely melody and acutely balanced interplay between the two finely melded ensembles.

No group has provided more opportunities for experimentation in orchestral writing than the SFJAZZ Collective, which commissions original works for every member each season. His long tenure in the all-star band (formerly an octet and now a septet) is represented by “Venezuela Unidad” from Live at SFJAZZ Center 2017: Original Compositions & the Music of Ornette Coleman, Stevie Wonder and Thelonious Monk. An impassioned cri de coeur over the ongoing humanitarian disaster that has beset Venezuela for more than a decade, it’s a verdant tapestry of shifting meters and tempos. Commissions have played an invaluable role in his growth as a composer, “allowing me to explore the realm of what might be called symphonic jazz,” he says. “The possibilities that it offers in terms of timbre and combinations of various instruments you wouldn’t normally have available is so rich. In the SFJAZZ Collective we had for a long time the four main horn sections of a big band and a vibraphone. That offers a great opportunity as a composer.”

At this point Simon has spent far more of his life in the United States than his homeland, but Venezuela still provides the life-sustaining marrow of his music. Born July 27, 1969 in the oil port of Punta Cardón, he grew up in a household filled with music. His father hailed from Curaçao in the Dutch West Indies, and he instilled a love of music in his sons, percussionist Marlon Simon, trumpeter Michael Simon and Edward. The brothers performed music for dancing at local fiestas and events, tapping into an array of rhythms from Venezuela and beyond (they last reunited for a performance together in 2010 as Simon, Simon & Simon). “My older brother played timbales at the time, and we had our band playing parties and anniversaries,” Edward says. “In a way that strong connection with the dance floor and dancers left a great imprint on me. To this day, a groove is an important element in my music.”

Simon was serious enough about the piano that at the age of 15 he left Venezuela and moved by himself to Pennsylvania to enroll at the Philadelphia Performing Arts School, a now-defunct private academy. He continued his classical studies, but he also discovered jazz, and eventually connected with Philly masters like bassist Charles Fambrough and guitarist Kevin Eubanks, who encouraged him to move to New York. Landing in Manhattan in 1988 at the age of 19 he quickly established himself as an essential new voice. A five-year stint with the great altoist Bobby Watson followed a nine-year run with trumpeter Terence Blanchard (who had both thrived in the hard-bop academy of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers) firmly established Simon as one of his generation’s leading accompanists. All the while he was looking to combine his growing authority as a straight ahead jazz player with his love of Latin American idioms, ambitions that put him at the center of a brilliant wave of fellow South American artists who had also recently arrived in New York. That creative journey unfolds in exquisite detail on 25 Years, an anthology that documents the arc of a culture-bridging artist who’s still ascending.

Featured on 25 Years:

Edward Simon - composer/bandleader/piano; Mark Turner - tenor saxophone; David Binney and Miguel Zenón - alto sax; David Sánchez - tenor sax and percussion; Mark Dover - clarinet; John Ellis - bass clarinet; Marco Granados, Valery Coleman - flute; Monica Ellis - bassoon; Jeff Scott - French horn; Toyin Spellman-Diaz - oboe; Adam Rogers - guitar; Ben Street, Larry Grenadier, Scott Colley, John Patitucci, Avishai Cohen, Roberto Koch, Matt Penman, Joe Martin - bass; Brian Blade, Adam Cruz, Eric Harland, Obed Calvaire - drums; Pernell Saturnino, Luis Quintero, Rogerio Boccato - percussion; Luciana Souza, Genevieve Artadi, Gretchen Parlato, Lucía Pulido - vocals; Shane Endsley and Sean Jones - trumpet; Robin Eubanks, Jesse Newman, Alan Ferber – trombone; Jorge Glem - cuatro; Edmar Castaneda - harp; Leonardo Granados - maracas; Warren Wolf - vibraphone.

Seth MacFarlane releases his 6th studio album, Great Songs From Stage & Screen

Grammy-nominated vocalist, Seth MacFarlane, releases his 6th studio album, Great Songs From Stage & Screen (Republic/Verve). The collection of tender ballads and uptempo tunes is full of lush and rich orchestrations courtesy of acclaimed composer, Bruce Broughton. 

Recorded at the legendary Abbey Road studios, MacFarlane recruited a stellar group of musicians that included Chuck Berghofer (Bass), Peter Erskine (Drums), Larry Koonse (Guitar), Dan Higgins (Alto Sax) and Tom Ranier (piano). Together with members of the John Wilson Orchestra, longtime friend and collaborator, composer/producer Joel McNeely and engineer extraordinaire, Rich Breen, MacFarlane deftly weaved songs of theatrical and filmic origins into a collection that harkens back to Hollywood’s Golden Age. 

MacFarlane adds “The album is masterfully arranged by composer Bruce Broughton, whose signature vibrance and sophisticated orchestral texturing is a perfect match for this collection of show-centric swing arrangements and ballads.” The set covers compositions by revered musical writing legends that include Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Loewe and Lerner, and Henry Mancini. 

SCARLET PINES travels between the borderlines of jazz, psychedelic rock, soul and instrumental hip-hop

Scarlet Pines is the creation of Canada-born, London-based composer and multi-instrumentalist, Pete Range. Debut EP ‘A Life in Flow’is the culmination of a year-long writing effort by Range in his home studio in Deptford. In his songwriting he seeks to channel the expressive vigour of improvised jazz, but with a well-defined direction and emphasis on strong hooks, resulting in a sound that balances spontaneity and meticulousness.

The Scarlet Pines sound is a tapestry and each piece comes from a stage within his own musical journey. Modern jazz lays the harmonic framework, injecting energy and poetry with its improvised solos, but Range cast his net much wider in terms of influences. Whether it’s guitar riffs drawn from psychedelic rock, the up-front and heavy-hitting drums of hip-hop, atmospheric build-ups reminiscent of a noughties DnB roller, or horn-laden hooks and funky bass lines inspired by the soul of Stax or Motown, each element is added to the pot, simmered, and distilled into a product that is undeniably original and yet nostalgically familiar.

Joining Range on Tenor Sax is Idris Rahman who has garnered considerable attention for his work in the groups Wildflower and Ill Considered. Wildflower's first album was nominated in last years' Gilles Peterson Worldwide Awards for Jazz Album of the Year. On guitar is Joe Perkins who has a residency upstairs at Ronnie Scott’s. He has supported artists such as Terence Blanchard and plays regularly as part of breakout act Robohands’ live band. Flo Moore is on bass, a recent graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in London. She has performed with artists such as Bobby Watson and Jason Rebello and played at venues such as the Royal Albert Hall. On drums is Joel Barford, known for his performances with artists such as Ant Law and John Etheridge. He has played venues and festivals such as Ronnie Scott's, North Sea Jazz Festival and the London Jazz Festival.

Sonar Kollektiv : Key Elements - Remixed

Berlin based DJ and producer Marian Tone came up with the name «Key Elements» long before forming the trio that now puts forward a promising album on Sonar Kollektiv. After the release of two EPs («EP One» and «Beats vs. Bad Karma» both on Dooinit Music) the expertly and sought-after DJ with a background in Hiphop, Soul and Jazz consequently ventured to record his debut album. Marian’s idea was to produce music that sounds organically abandoning the use of samples completely but only focusing on own compositions. But things didn’t turn out as planned at all.

Some years ago Marians’ brother Markus, introduced him to the drummer Waldi who already in the 90’s cut a dash locally with his two-man-drummer-live project «Analogue Freestyle». That’s how Marius and Waldi arranged for an initial mutual session. During which Waldi laid drums over the beats that were destined for Marian’s upcoming album «Key Elements». Both were mutually impressed by the outcome to the extend that they decided to record some tracks and to form a band. Suddenly the solo project «Key Elements» had turned into a group. In early 2019 the group was completed by including the befriended keyboard player Jim Dunloop. The highly gifted piano virtuoso is working as a producer for quite some time now and for instance has released his debut album «Opus 76BPM» on BBE. On «Key Elements» you can hear him on bass though. He contributed some of his own compositions as well. In the following months the eight songs in total were recorded in different studios in Berlin (f.e. the Butterama Music Recording Studio or the SB Drums-Studio run by Sascha Bachmann). They already had the chance to set the house on fire with their up-to-now unreleased material at several locations, f.e. at the Badehaus next to J. Lamotta & Blue Lab Beats, at Klunkerkranich in Neukölln, at the XJAZZ Festival, at the Fete De La Hip Hop and at the Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide FM Party in the Kreuzberg Club Gretchen as a part of the Steve Reid Foundation.

«Key Elements» have created exactly what Sonar Kollektiv was waiting for: No-holds-barred modern sounding Jazz far away from Broken Beat nostalgia or Beatmaking nerdism. Of course you can hear Marian Tone’s love for hiphop in all of the eight tracks, but similar to the young and dynamic UK jazz secene this love is transported into a new free form. Laid-back and positive melodies invite to listen carefully to the music which surprises again and again: Different time signatures, infuriating arrangements and tempo changes give the album some sense of complexity without being complicated. Even though Marian Tone is the key element of «Key Elements» you notice quickly that here three musicians interchange on equal terms and have the time of their life!

THE FINAL SOLO RECORDING FROM LEGENDARY JAZZ PIANIST DAVE BRUBECK

Verve Records releases Lullabies, a collection of original compositions and familiar songs from the iconic American jazz musician, Dave Brubeck. The last recorded solo album from the peerless musician, this previously unreleased set showcases his well-known improvisational style on memorable children’s songs, treasured standards and originals. 

Dave recorded this serene collection of music as a gift to his grandchildren and as his last studio recording.  His ingenuity and integrity, all hallmarks of great Brubeck recordings, are abundantly apparent on the album.  The set contains covers and originals that will appeal to existing jazz and Dave Brubeck fans, as it exhibits his innovative style over delicate, inviting compositions that will also be enjoyed by the entire family. 

Fans of Brubeck and of his other recordings will be delighted to discover five original tracks (“Going to Sleep,” “Lullaby For Iola” “Koto Song,” “Softly, William, Softly,” and “Briar Bush”) to experience, through Lullabies, as well as a new dimension of his unrivaled talent.  Created for the whole family to experience, fans will greatly enjoy the album with their children and grandchildren. Beginning with the recently released songs and accompanying lovingly animated videos to “Brahms Lullaby” and ‘Over The Rainbow”, Lullabies is destined to be a family favorite for generations to come.

Born on December 6, 1920, Dave Brubeck’s centennial is rapidly approaching and Lullabies is a central recording that celebrates his multi-faceted creativity. Designated a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress, Brubeck was one of the most active and popular musicians in both the jazz and classical worlds. His large and varied repertoire of recordings continue to be popular among existing fans and each new generation.  His worldwide audience on Spotify and other Internet downloading and streaming services is consistently in the millions. Brubeck won many notable awards including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996 and “Take Five” is one of the most identifiable jazz songs of all time, with over 112M+ streams on Spotify.

New Music Releases: Chien Chien Lu, Afro Soul Prophecy, Invisible Session

Chien Chien Lu - Path

Imagine a record that starts with a fantastic reading of a Roy Ayers' tune, then just gets better as things go on – and that's very much what you'll get here, in this sweet set from vibist Chien Chien Lu! The record's got Chien Chien ringing out on these bold, well-placed notes – recording in Brooklyn, and hitting a sound that's up there with the best of the contemporary NY scene, but with some nice echoes of the past in the way she uses the vibes – full, rich, and very soulful. The rest of the group features work from Jeremy Pelt on trumpet, and Shdrick Mitchell on piano and organ – and in addition to a killer remake of "We Live In Brooklyn", the set features tunes that include "The Imaginary Enemy", "Blossom In A Stormy Night", "Blue In Green", "Invitation", "Tears & Love", and "Mo Better Blues".  ~ Dusty Groove

Afro Soul Prophecy - Heat In The City

A bright new groove on the Schema Records label – but one that features work from some of the company's real heavyweights in recent years – as the album was conceived and produced by Lucio Cantone (aka Invisible Session), and features tunes written by the funky Alex Puddu – all in a style that's heavy on the 70s funk influences that grace the music of both artists! The lineup's nice and jazzy, too – and features lots of tenor work from Timo Lassy, next to vibes, trumpet, guitar, and warm lines on both Hammond organ and Wurlitzer piano – all with a feel that's part funk, part soundtrack – yet served up in the best Schema way, which means that things go far past just being a retro rehash of the past! Titles include "Fire In Acapulco", "Heat In The City", "Everybody's Going Uptown", "Red Light District", and "The Crowd Pleaser". CD features the bonus tracks "Summer Of 75" and "The Game Of Love".  ~ Dusty Groove

Invisible Session - Echoes Of Africa

There's plenty of Afro Funk influence in this album from Invisible Session – a long-running act who've given us a number of excellent records on the Schema label – but there's also plenty of the group's own spirit too, thanks in part to trombone and keyboards from the mighty Gianluca Petrella, who keeps plenty of the core jazzy elements intact! Leader Luciano Cantone wrote and produced the album – and brings in his own keyboards and vibes next to the rhythm programs that direct the proceedings – which also feature acoustic drums and percussion, more horn work, and vocals on two tracks – although most of the record is instrumental. In a way, the group's going for a hybrid of styles that's similar to the Latin-based albums that Gerardo Frisina has done on the Schema label – a similarly strong mix of inspirations and new expressions, on titles that include "People All Around The World Can Make It", "Hearing The Call", "Pull The Handbrake", "Journey To The East", "Mother Forgive Us", and "Ideas Can Make The World". ~ Dusty Groove

Jane Ira Bloom & Mark Helias: Some Kind of Tomorrow

Soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom and bassist Mark Helias come together to create duets discovered in the moment in a way that is rarely heard today with Some Kind of Tomorrow. The long time bandmates, separated by space and time find a way to play in real time with one another and the results are magical. Two master improvisers and composers bring listeners up-close and personal to the first spark of their imaginations at work, recording eleven duet improvisations over the spring, summer, and fall of 2020. The music is raw, authentic, intimate, alive, and unapologetic in its passion. Their sound is deep wood and polished brass recorded with a depth that is hard to describe. They played the music, recorded it, mastered it firsthand and are now making it available to listeners for the first time as a digital download on Bandcamp. Don’t miss these fearless jazz explorers as they face the future. 

Statements from Jane Ira Boom & Mark Helias:

"Here are the improvised duets that bassist Mark Helias and I created in the spring, summer, and fall of 2020 on the internet. The thought of a world without a live, spontaneous musical connection was too hard to imagine and so we came to these sessions over the internet with an emotional thirst that’s hard to describe. The music is discovered in the moment in a way that I’ve never recorded before. The sound is filled with everything that we felt and couldn’t say in words. There is a vibration between us that’s uncanny given the circumstances and a deep need to play what was real to us just then. It’s as real as it gets for two musicians who needed to create music together to try to find some way to mend the world."- Jane Ira Bloom

"In unprecedented times artists resort to unprecedented strategies to fulfill the need to create and relate. Being locked down has reframed my appreciation of the act of musical interaction and reaffirmed the decision that I made decades ago to explore music as a life’s work. The first time that Jane and I improvised together through Wi-Fi sometime in April or May 2020 was a very high experience on so many levels. We were sorting out the possibilities of making music remotely and assessing the technology and our relation to it. Once we made peace with the situation and the medium, listening, feeling, hearing and responding was the same as it ever was. Without a live audience we decided to complete the circle by documenting our efforts through recordings that we are now sharing with the public. This process has been enlivening in ways that I had not anticipated."- Mark Helias

Emmet Cohen | "Future Stride"

The sound of stride piano vividly evokes scenes from the past: the roaring nightclubs of 1920s Harlem, the raucous birth pangs of jazz’s nascent years, the gymnastic burlesques of risk-taking silent movie madcaps. But in the music of pianist/composer Emmet Cohen, the past is always present, if not venturing with sly turns into an open-eared future as we enter into a new iteration of the roaring 20s.

On his latest album, Cohen revisits one of the music’s earliest forms without a trace of quaintness or throwback pastiche by meticulously covering the genre’s lexicon spanning the past century and melding its context with “modern” music. With Future Stride, available now via Mack Avenue Records, he instead finds the immediacy in a stylistic approach that can speak volumes to modern listeners open to recognizing its thrilling vitality.

The new album comes following Cohen's win at the 2019 American Pianists Awards. He received a cash prize and two years of career advancement and support valued at over $100,000, making this one of the most coveted prizes in the music world and the largest for American jazz pianists. Cohen's recording contract with Mack Avenue Music Group was a part of the prize from the American Pianists Association as well. Cohen joins illustrious past winners including Sullivan Fortner, Aaron Diehl, Dan Tepfer, Aaron Parks and Adam Birnbaum, among esteemed others.

Though he’s made a point of connecting with masters from the past throughout his still-young career, Cohen pointedly invites a group of his peers to realize this project, including his longtime rhythm section partners, bassist Russell Hall and drummer Kyle Poole, along with two of modern jazz’s most progressive voices, trumpeter Marquis Hill and saxophonist Melissa Aldana.

“I find that all great art can be considered modern,” Cohen explains. “Whenever you listen to Stravinsky or watch Stanley Kubrick, when you read Shakespeare or look at Picasso, it remains the most modern, genius art that you can find. It allows people in every time period to feel and experience the same emotions relevant to the period that they live in. For me, stride piano belongs in that category; the music of Art Tatum and Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines and Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith has implications that can affect people today in a very deep manner.”

Where Future Stride began with a piece revived from nearly a century ago, it ends with a tune that explicitly points to the future, with a supple R&B influence that colors much of Cohen’s original music but has become one bold path for modern jazz to explore. The fact that a listener would be hard-pressed to point to one or the other of those poles as more “old-fashioned” or more “forward-looking” makes Cohen’s point more eloquently than words ever could: if emotion is conveyed from musician to listener, that emotion lives in the eternal now and the sound is always past, present and future.

Dopolarians New Album 'The Bond' (ft. William Parker, Brian Blade, Marc Franklin + more / Jazz)

Once upon a time, three musicians, who came of age together during the last century's thriving free jazz scene in Memphis, joined forces in far off Little Rock. And they were gifted, and it was good. Alto saxophonist Chad Fowler and pianist Christopher Parker were experimenters going back to the 1990s, hovering in the orbit of the famed University of Memphis jazz department, two Arkansas jammers sharing a house in the Bluff City. They did one-off sessions with the likes of Frank Lowe or George Cartwright, or in combos with local luminaries. Ultimately Fowler introduced Parker to a Memphis singer named Kelley Hurt. The years rolled on. 

Cut ahead a quarter century, and the three were living in Arkansas again, with Parker and Hurt now married, and all of them still committed to finding something fresh in jazz. When the couple was commissioned to write music in honor of the Little Rock Nine, the students who marched into Central High School in defiance of local segregationists in 1957, they recruited Fowler and another comrade from their Memphis years, trumpeter Marc Franklin, now an arranger and side man extraordinaire for the likes of Grammy-nominee Don Bryant. Parker and Hurt's creation would become the No Tears Suite, premiered in 2017 with much acclaim on the grounds of Central High itself; and it was for that project that the beat stepped in. And the beat came in the form of Brian Blade. 

Adding the magic of rhythm to the mix, the group coalesced into something great, something resembling Dopolarians. Blade left his native Shreveport at 18 to learn from the many jazz masters of New Orleans, then applied that experience to found the Fellowship Band. Along the way, he drummed for even more legends, from Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock to Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. Beyond his drumming, he distinguished himself as a composer and songwriter in his own right. 

While Blade's participation in No Tears Suite galvanized the group, and led to a stellar album of the same name, they weren't yet the Dopolarians. That group identity came about when other players were added to the combo, as Blade went on to his many other commitments.  

The experience of bringing Parker and Hurt's composition to life left the core trio hungry for more creation. Working with Blade led them to set their sights high, and by the spring of 2018 they'd recruited two stellar players, well versed in the intricacies of free jazz. Bassist William Parker, who first came to prominence in his native New York with Cecil Taylor, was a perfect addition to set their course for free horizons, having developed a deeply philosophical approach to music over the course of two books, even as he pursued his playing beyond conventional jazz bass, developing a refined bowing technique and impressive skills on the West African kora.  And with drummer Alvin Fielder, Jr., the newly formed group found a kind of shaman, a mentor to help set the tone for all that would follow. Having left his native Meridian, Mississippi to study phamacology, he nurtured his drumming with a passion, finally ending up in Chicago, where he played with Sun Ra, ca. 1960. From there, he became a charter member of the paradigm-shifting Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). This pillar of experimental jazz thus brought a wealth of experience to the group from Little Rock, and, as they prepared for their first recording session in New Orleans, adding the fabled saxophonist Kidd Jordan to the mix, they became Dopolarians. 

Their debut album, aptly titled Garden Party, was redolent of all the intimacy, beauty and wildness of a soiree in a Crescent City courtyard. And yet, to the players' great sorrow, it served as Fielder's swan song. He passed away in January, 2019, but his fellow Dopolarians, inspired by his memory, lived on.

Which brings us to The Bond, the group's latest offering to the gods of free expression and lyrical beauty, once again under the Mahakala Music imprint. With Fielder, their most inspiring force, having moved on, it was only fitting that they return to the beat that unlocked their potential in the first place: Brian Blade. And in this free context, Blade reveals his creative depths as never before, applying his acuity in the fleeting moments of creation, composer indeed. 

Also returning to the Dopolarians' fold is trumpeter Marc Franklin, filling Jordan's slot with brassier tones. In November of 2020, on the very day that the world breathed a collective sigh of relief over the defeat of a racist presidential incumbent, the group convened once again in Marigny Recording Studio, the very site of their initial sessions with Fielder. And what transpired was truly phenomenal, an achievement of musical telepathy and empathy equal to any in the free jazz tradition. In three extended pieces, “The Bond,” “The Emergence,” and “The Release,” the collective hive-mind of Brian Blade, Chad Fowler, Marc Franklin, Kelley Hurt, Christopher Parker, and William Parker conjures up a dream, an ineffable narrative, springing from the unconscious, and flying free in directions both gripping and glorious. 

David Walters Announces New Album 'Nocturne' ft. Ballaké Sissoko, Vincent Segal, Roger Raspail

“Never forget our past, our history” so goes the refrain at the end of “Mama” one of the songs from David Walters’s bold and affecting release from earlier this year on the Parisian label, Heavenly Sweetness, “Soleil Kreyol.”

On “Soleil Kreyol” David Walters achieved the apparent impossible - evoking such disparate worlds as New York’s ‘70s club culture and his own familial Afro-Caribbean roots, singing much of the album in Martinican Creole, against a shimmering, percussive soundtrack.

“Mama” returns on his latest, "Nocturne" in a stripped down version alongside a trio of master musicians: the renowned Malian kora musician Ballaké Sissoko, whose previous credits include Taj Mahal and  Toumani Diabaté; Sissoko's previous musical collaborator, French cellist/bassist Vincent Segal who also appeared on Walters's “Soleil Kreyol” and veteran percussionist, Roger Raspail, originally from Guadeloupe, who through his four decades has performed genres as diverse Congolese funk, Gnawa music from the Sahel and jazz.* 

What’s striking about Walters’s "Nocturne"  is that despite the players' diversity and the album's array of musical influences - album standout “Freedom” fluidly moves between Walters’s delicate falsetto to a rapped verse in a setting buffered by a pensive cello, interlocking percussion and kora - it remains fully cohesive throughout.

Opener “Papa Kossa" is an album highlight. Immediately ushering us into the album’s distinctive mood, which is in part innovative folk - think Mano Negra, albeit with a Martinican Creole base, rather than Spanish - and something uniquely its own: whispered melodies, in French, English and Martinican Creole, set against a bed of encircling rhythms and harmonies.

The Marseille-based composer/guitarist/vocalist David Walters has long created music that transcends fixed borders. Whether as a DJ/producer remixing the Buenos Aires/ Paris Gotan Project; as a founding member of Zimpala - an electro hip-hop collective - or during his travels to Africa, where he studied alongside Ali Farka Touré, Walters’s approach has always been refreshingly eclectic, albeit stamped with the imprint of his West Indies origins. Walters is Paris born, his mother is from Martinique, his father comes from Saint Kitts and Nevis.

Dating back to his first releases  - some of which appeared on Gotan Project's ¡Ya Basta! record label - David Walters has affirmed and reinvented his Afro-Caribbean musical ancestry, transforming this rich heritage into the foundations of his distinctive musical voice - reinterpreting, for example to “Mesi Bon Dyé” by the seminal Haitian composer Frantz Casseus for the label in the early 2000s.* While more than a decade later, Walters visited New Orleans for the "Nola is Calling" project that united musicians from the US, Benin and France.

In a cultural moment where the era's best music is characterized by multicultural, polyglot origins and focus on Black identity and culture, “Nocturne” provides a welcome French - or Martinican Creole - perspective. Because of the music's innovative, fully immersive nature  “Nocturne” will appeal to a wide range of listeners curious to engage with music that while deeply personal resonates widely. 

“Nocturne” is a profoundly moving and intimate listen: a new kind of folk music, with a French/Afro-Caribbean accent, that is modern and ancient at the same time. 

Vocalist Roseanna Vitro's Reissue of 1984 debut w/Kenny Barron Trio, "LISTEN HERE"

Vocalist ROSEANNA VITRO  – performer, recording artist, educator and journalist – reissues LISTEN HERE, the debut album that launched her career. Featuring veteran pianist Kenny Barron, the project ushered into the spotlight a formidable new artist with chops and sensitivity in equal measure – a galvanizing spirit who, having already proven she could move live audiences, now certified her power on vinyl. Though this is a first recording, Vitro shows herself a mature jazz singer. 

Vitro decided to re-release LISTEN HERE because the time was right. She and her husband Paul Wickliffe, an accomplished sound engineer with a storied career, recently became grandparents. Their perspective has changed. “It was time to take stock of my life and look back at my career,” she says.  “Some of my earlier records were never transferred to a digital format, so they are no longer available. And many reviewers and DJ’s who have known me over the years have moved on. I think these early recordings stand the test of time, and I want to introduce them to a new generation.” 

Esteemed jazz journalist Neil Tesser said in USA Today, “Roseanna can sing rings around half the vocalists you can name. Her warm, confident clarity of tone is immediately noticeable, but most startling is her boldness of phrasing.”  He might have added, “her unerring talent for finding the truth - through song, through the communal experience of sharing it.” The evidence can be heard easily. 

 

New Music Releases: Melody Gardot, Dario Margeli, Kaleidoscope

Melody Gardot - Sunset In The Blue

‘Sunset in the Blue’ is an exquisite collection of originals and covers, all centered around love and collaboration. It is an orchestral celebration of Melody Gardot’s jazz roots. She is reunited with the multi-Grammy award winning production team of her platinum-selling album ‘My One and Only Thrill’: Producer Larry Klein(Joni Mitchell, Herbie Hancock), arranger and composer Vince Mendoza (Björk, Robbie Williams, Elvis Costello) and the legendary engineer Al Schmitt (Frank Sinatra, Joao Gilberto, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney). An underlying theme of determination to create and evolve her craft has always been present in Melody Gardot’s work but never more so than during the production of ‘Sunset in the Blue’, despite all obstacles she has assembled a stunning new body of collaborations in this most challenging of times. 

Dario Margeli - Pure Spirit

The recording has real drums played by Big Ev. The jazz guitar players that have played on this recording include Hugh Williams from Florida and Philip Ockelford from Great Britain. It has a real bass guitar that gives the recording warmth and motion. The song has self-help and motivational lyrics that remind the listener that beyond form and thoughts they are pure spirit. That spirit is the watcher of the emotions, thoughts and pain. The lyrics says: "my pain is separate from me / I watch the pain lose power over me". Musical influences include many of the current contemporary electric jazz guitarists, such as Chris Standring, Chuck Loeb and Nick Colionne. Dario Margeli is based in Southern Europe. He is a US Citizen and spent many years living in California. After taking music theory lessons as a teenager, he started writing his own melodies. Since the release of his first recording in 2011, Dario has combined his day job with his musical productions which include the Smooth Jazz songs "I'm Not My Brain" and 2019's "Suffering is Optional", which received significant airplay and streams.

Kaleidoscope – New Spirits Known & Unknown

A glittering constellation of groundbreaking jazz from the contemporary UK scene – a world of jazz that's changed dramatically over the past decade or so, with huge new advances in sound and styles in a range of different directions! The changes going on are a bit like some of those that have taken place in our city too – musicians who embrace jazz ideals at the core, but who are also open to so many musical modes that have developed in recent decades – so that the core performance is often blended with production elements, editing, and other touches – all in a way that has the music strongly reborn for a whole new generation! If you're worried about tricks or gimmicks that might get in the way of the music, don't be – because the depth of soul and sense of spirit on these tracks is wonderful – as you might know if you've been digging releases from some of these artists in our racks of late. And as usual, Soul Jazz have done a superb job – both with song selection and overall presentation – making the whole thing a complete delight! Titles include "Candace Of Meroe" by Theon Cross, "Pokus One" by Pokus, "Walrus" by Emma-Jean Thackray, "90 Degrees" by Yazmin Lacey, "Communication Control" by Hector Plimmer, "Long Way Home (live at the Crypt)" by Ill Considered, "Ancient World" by Nat Birchall, "Moonlight Woman" by Ruby Rushton, "Thunder Perfect" by Cromagnon Band, "Tanner's Tango" by Joe Armon Jones & Maxwell Owin, "Odyssey" by Levitation Orchestra, "Mosaic" by The Expansions, "When The World Was One" by Matthew Halsall, "Dimmsdale" by Ebi Soda, "Red Planet" by Chip Wickham, "Kito's Theme" by Ishmael Ensemble, "Yellow Ochre (part 1)" by Vels Trio, and "Mirrors" by Seed Ensemble.  ~ Dusty Groove

Elina Duni, Rob Luft, Fred Thomas, Matthieu Michel : Lost Ships

Lost Ships is the first collaborative album from Elina Duni and Rob Luft. Their programme of songs of love and exile has been gathering momentum since 2017, when the Albanian-Swiss singer and the British guitarist began their collaboration at a series of workshops in Lausanne. And what started as a kind of enhanced version of Duni's solo Partir project, with Luft expanding the atmospheric sound-world of the songs with electronics and effects, has developed into a partnership where musical parameters are established by both artists, with guitar often effectively a second voice. Along the way the duo has been augmented by distinguished guests. On Lost Ships British multi-instrumentalist Fred Thomas – heard here on piano and percussion - and Swiss flugelhornist Matthieu Michel make significant contributions to the overarching concept. 

"This is an album about contemporary issues facing us all," Duni and Luft explain in an introductory liner note.  Alluded to in song texts and in choice of sources, the migration crisis - a theme explored on Partir - is again a central issue. Lost Ships is "also an album about places we've been and loved," including "places that no longer exist or continue to exist only as a fragment of our imagination."

Material is drawn from many idioms and locations: "There are songs that touch upon past influences, with the sound of Albania and Mediterranean folklore ever-present.  We wanted to explore other musical roots, too: timeless jazz ballads, French chanson, American folk song…"  The broad range of music addressed runs from traditional pieces to original compositions, via songs made famous by Frank Sinatra and Charles Aznavour. "Alongside the gravity that is found in many of the pieces, there is a lightness that pervades throughout, and we believe that this light can and will outshine these troubled times…"  Duni sings in four languages this time – Albanian, English, French, Italian -  a modest total by her own standards (she sang in nine languages on Partir),  and seems to make all of them her own. "Duni's voice is remarkable," the UK's Jazz Journal has observed, "for while it is crystal clear in its multilingual enunciation it is also intimate and expressive in tone."

Born in Tirana, Albania, in 1981, Elina Duni made her first steps on the stage as a singer aged five, singing for National Radio and Television. In 1992, she settled in Geneva, where she started studying classical piano and subsequently discovered jazz. Jazz studies at the Hochschule der Künste in Bern led to the formation of her quartet with Colin Vallon, Patrice Moret and Norbert Pfammatter, a group that lasted for more than 10 years.  The band's interweaving of Balkan folk songs and improvising on albums including the ECM releases Matanë Malit (Beyond the Mountain) and Dallëndyshe (The Swallow), was widely praised for its subtly and adroitness.

The range and reach of Duni's music, in terms of idioms broached, was enlarged with Partir, and continues to grow. Rob Luft, also drawing upon a wide range of influences, addresses its challenges creatively. Luft, who makes his ECM debut here, was born in South London in 1993. He began playing with Britain's National Youth Jazz Orchestra at 15, before going on to study at the  Royal Academy of Music. On graduating in 2016 he received the academy's Kenny Wheeler Jazz Prize; the judges, including Evan Parker and Nick Smart, drew attention to Luft's capacities as improviser, arranger and writer. Subsequently, he has recorded as a leader for the Edition label and worked with musicians including Django Bates, Martin Speake, Kit Downes, Iain Ballamy, Tommy Smith, and many others. Luft is the co-author, with Duni, of several pieces on Lost Ships, including the title track, as well as "Numb", "Brighton", "Flying Kites", "Lux" and "Empty Streets."

Fred Thomas, born 1985 in London, is also making his ECM debut here. Increasingly in-demand as an arranger and producer as well as a player of many instruments, Thomas's broad experience runs from classical music to jazz, transcultural projects and music for theatre. As well as leading his own diverse projects, he has collaborated with Brian Eno, Martin Speake/Ethan Iverson, Jordi Savall, Jarvis Cocker, Kadialy Kouyate and many more and worked as musical director with the National Theatre and Shakespeare's Globe. 

Matthieu Michel, born 1963 in Freiburg im Üechtland, Switzerland, first recorded for ECM in 2013, as a member of Susanne Abbuehl's ensemble on The Gift.  He is currently a member of Michel Benita's quartet and can be heard on the group's new album, Looking At Sounds. Matthieu Michel's considerable discography includes recordings with the Vienna Art Orchestra, Richard Galliano, Christian and Wolfgang Muthspiel and many others.

Lost Ships was recorded at Studios la Buissonne in the South of France in February 2020.

CD booklet includes all song texts and an introductory note by Elina Duni and Rob Luft.

The Comet Is Coming Releases Exclusive Singles "Imminent" and "Super Zodiac - Noss DJ Remix"

"The London-based trio The Comet Is Coming-made up of the saxophonist King Shabaka, the percussionist Betamax, and the keyboardist Danalogue-thrusts empyrean jazz into an apocalyptic future, where raucous psych rock and danceable electro-grooves ride lush tenor lines to outer space."  -THE NEW YORKER

The Comet is Coming follows up the band's globally successful 2019 projects Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery and The Afterlife with two new pulsating singles and a music video. "Imminent," featuring Joshua Idehen was previously released only in physical format as an exclusive RSD Black Friday 12" vinyl, with a DJ Noss remix of the standout track "Super Zodiac" on Side B. Last week, Impulse! Records digitally released the pair of roaring singles and can be streamed here. Released today is the fast-paced, gritty lyric video for "Imminent" directed by the trio's frequent collaborator Jordan Copeland (Tentacle Films Production). 

Copeland set out to produce and direct the "Imminent" video as a cosmic collage of performances with Joshua Idehen's profound lyrics layered in. Unable to travel due to Covid restrictions, Jordan Copeland was remarkably able to remotely direct Joshua Idehen's incendiary performance in Sweden from his studio in East London. The result is a vibrant, gritty, lyric video that perfectly matches the blistering intensity of the track. 

"Joshua ignites a firestorm of rage and contemplation, hope and despair, clearing a space for truth to reveal itself in the midst of the party," raves the trio. In 2016, The Comet is Coming had asked Joshua Idehen to join the group in a commission project for an East London festival, and performed the beat to him. Reminiscing, Joshua Idehen claims he "didn't really think about it, I just started rhyming along, and when the second part came in, I was so worked up I started performing my poem "Black Says." He had written the chorus ages ago (and released it in 2014 with LV on Islands) after witnessing an incident surrounded by police lines. Regarding the victim, he recalls "a lady saying "his time is imminent," and my dumb brain didn't let me forget it."  

Pino Palladino, Blake Mills: 'Just Wrong' from Notes With Attachments

Notes With Attachments, the new album from renowned bassist Pino Palladino and celebrated multi-instrumentalist and producer Blake Mills, is set for release March 12 via New Deal / Impulse!. Initially conceived as a solo record for Palladino, Notes With Attachments quickly evolved into a fully collaborative work centered around the two artists' love for experimentation.

"With a song like this, built in layers, at various points along the road you look around and go: what is this? Where is the composition? Sometimes you end up drawing the blueprints of the house after it's fully been built," says Mills about "Just Wrong." That process touches every song on the record, which typically began with Palladino's own melodic and rhythmic language and developed outward with references shared by the two musicians from West African and Cuban music, funk, jazz, and English folk. 

"It all evolved from me playing Blake a few ideas, getting a reaction from [him] and seeing if he'd be interested in working on [them]," Palladino explains. "As the project evolved in the first few weeks and months-even though the music was mostly coming from my original ideas, some of which I'd had for quite a while-[because of] Blake's response to the ideas, it dawned on both of us that it would be a collaborative record."

Recorded in stages over two and a half years, Notes With Attachments brings together a preeminent group of musicians from the worlds of jazz, R&B, pop, and beyond: the drummer Chris Dave (D'Angelo, Anderson .Paak); the innovative saxophonists Sam Gendel, Marcus Strickland, and Jacques Schwartz-Bart; the keyboardist Larry Goldings (James Taylor, John Scofield); and others. It is both a producers' album and a players' album, exploring bits of musical vocabulary common to the two musicians, then defamiliarizing them.

Two-time Grammy Awards Producer of the Year nominee Blake Mills has released four solo albums and produced and recorded with artists such as Alabama Shakes, Fiona Apple, Bob Dylan, John Legend, Perfume Genius, Jim James, Moses Sumney, Laura Marling, Phoebe Bridgers, Cass McCombs, The Killers, Sara Bareilles, Weyes Blood and Randy Newman. His most recent album Mutable Set, released last year, was praised by Pitchfork as "a hushed collection that floats through the subconscious like a tender dream" and earned their Best New Music title.

Pino Palladino is a Grammy Award winning songwriter, producer and bassist who helped create the rhythm-section sound of D'Angelo's Voodoo and Black Messiah, and over a four-decade career has worked with artists including Keith Richards, Erykah Badu, Eric Clapton, Nine Inch Nails, Questlove, John Mayer, Paul Simon, Jeff Beck, Herbie Hancock and Adele. 

Dino Saluzzi: Albores

Recorded in Buenos Aires last year, Albores [Dawn] is among Dino Saluzzi's most intimate albums, featuring the great Argentine bandoneonist alone with the instrument that has been his constant companion since childhood.

ECM has documented Saluzzi's work in many different creative contexts over the years, but it was as a solo performer that he made his first major statement for the label, with Kultrum (recorded 1982) and then Andina (1988). His bandoneon soliloquies hold a special fascination. To hear Dino playing solo is to hear him thinking aloud, in music that traces aspects of a long life and reflects upon friendships and on spiritual matters, drawing inspiration from the arts and from everyday reality. Like one of his permanent references, Jorge Luis Borges, Saluzzi combines memories, meditations, and imaginative flights in the creation of his own world. "Albores is the outcome of more than six decades of understanding music as the product of reason and discernment," writes Luján Baudino in the liner notes, "the act of capturing feelings in the depth of the soul."

Often characterised as a "storytelling" musician, Saluzzi's tales are multi-layered and allusive.

The album opens with "Adiós Maestro Kancheli", a tribute to the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli, who died in 2019. Saluzzi played some of Kancheli's melodies on the album Themes from the Songbook, recorded in 2010. In his prayerful homage on Albores, Saluzzi alludes to Andean music, a long way from the Caucasus Mountains, perhaps recognising a common bond with another composer whose natural habitat was not the conservatory. 

For his part, Saluzzi often refers, in his music, to the small villages of his childhood and to the working-class neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires in its golden age. He's a poet of both the streets and the countryside. "Intimo" paints a picture of "spring reflected in the lights of a yesteryear Buenos Aires." In "Don Caye - Variaciones sobre obra de Cayetano Saluzzi" he recalls the sounds of his father's music, the sounds that launched Dino on his long journey. As Dino has said: "We didn't get any information through the radio or through albums, and there wasn't any knowledge of academic music or symphonic music or formal concerts when I was very young. But still my father was able to transmit a musical education to me."

In "La Cruz del Sur" Saluzzi draws upon what Lújan Baudino calls "the ancestral sound": "The tune expresses the sorrow characteristic from the history of Latin America. It permeates Saluzzi's sound so that he remains mindful of his origins."

Dino Saluzzi was born in 1935 in the Northwest Argentine province of Salta. After first learning music in the context of the family, he went on to study in Buenos Aires, then returned to the Salta region, consciously embracing its sounds in the new music he was writing then. From the outset, however, he steered clear of rigid stylistic demarcation, and collaborated with musicians across the genres – these including Gato Barbieri, who sought Dino's help for the rediscovery of his own cultural roots on Chapter One: Latin America. 

Since the early 1980s Dino has appeared in many contexts on ECM, from solo and duo to ensembles and orchestral music. Several recordings feature his family band: these include Mojotoro (1991), Juan Condori (2005) and El Valle de la Infancia (2013). Dino's son, guitarist José Maria, also joins his father in trios completed by Marc Johnson (Cite de la musique, 1997) and Palle Danielsson (Responsorium, 2001). Other meetings with jazz musicians are Once Upon A Time Far Away in the South, with Charlie Haden, Palle Mikkelborg and Pierre Favre (1985), Volver with Enrico Rava (1986), and a duo recording with Jon Christensen (Senderos, 2002). Dino's pieces for string quartet and bandoneon were recorded with the Rosamunde Quartet (Kultrum, 1998), and there were further collaborations with cellist Anja Lechner, as on Ojos Negros (2006). Dino, Anja Lechner and Dino's saxophonist brother Felix Saluzzi were the soloists with the Metropole Orchestra on El Encuentro, where Dino's music was conducted by Jules Buckley (2009). Subsequently, Dino and Felix Saluzzi and Anja Lechner formed a new trio, documented on Navidad de Los Andes (2010). Dino's compositions for solo piano were recorded by Horacio Lavendera on Imágenes (2013). 

The highly evocative quality of Dino Saluzzi's music has been noted by directors and his work been integrated into important films including Jean-Luc Godard's Nouvelle Vague and Histoire(s) du Cinéma, Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother, and most recently Fernando Meirelles' The Two Popes. 

Albores was recorded at Saluzzi Music Studios between February and October 2019; the album was produced by Manfred Eicher.

CD booklet includes liner notes by Luján Baudino in Spanish and English, and photographs by Juan Hitters, Lisa Franz and Gérard de Haro.

Saxophonist Andrew Van Tassel Announces the Release of Shape-Shifter

Saxophonist, composer, and educator Andrew Van Tassel draws inspiration from a broad palette of genres: bebop/hard bop, fusion, indie rock, classical music, and more. His upcoming release on Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records (BJUR 072), Shape-Shifter (his sophomore release), reflects this multifaceted approach that ultimately produces music distinctly his own, while unveiling compelling explorations with electronics in a contemporary jazz ensemble context. The pursuit of diverse interests is the cornerstone of Van Tassel’s approach to life and music, and he elaborates on this open-minded existence: “The natural world we live in constantly evolves, growing from and fading into different shapes throughout the seasons. Flowers bloom, then whither and find their way back to soil; winds blow their remnants to unknown places, where they might find a landing place to ultimately enrich soil and offer the chance for growth in a new form. Thank goodness our world doesn’t remain stagnant. It evolves. It shifts shape. Here’s to hoping we can learn to open our hearts and minds to better understand how to open ourselves up for change. Thanks for listening. We hope it takes you somewhere.” 

The band Van Tassel assembled for Shape-Shifter features budding stars on the NYC jazz scene whom have collaborated with some of the most decorated stars on the scene, including Michael Mayo – voice, Lucas Hahn – piano, Wurlitzer, Alex Goodman – guitar, Rick Rosato – bass, Kush Abadey – drums and Alex Van Gils – live electronics and processing. His previous album, It’s Where You Are (Tone Rogue Records), received international praise from jazz critics and was recognized as a top 10 release by multiple publications. An original composition from the record garnered attention as a recipient of the 2017 ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award. 

Andrew has performed as a leader at several of New York’s most esteemed venues, including The Jazz Gallery, ShapeShifter Lab, the Cornelia Street Café, the Bar Next Door, Rockwood Music Hall, and more. As a sideman he has performed with an array of bands across genres, including the Grammy-nominated Terraza Big Band. 

He studied at some of the most prestigious music schools in the world, including the Manhattan School of Music and New England Conservatory. While earning his Master’s Degree on scholarship at NEC, he honed his skills under the tutelage of jazz luminaries Jerry Bergonzi, Donny McCaslin, John McNeil, and MacArthur Fellows Jason Moran and Miguel Zenon. Andrew now gives back to the musical community, donating his time as Associate Artistic Director of Musical Mentors Collaborative, Inc. He has also served as a guest artist and clinician at distinguished schools across the country. 

As a performer and composer, he has received accolades by the likes of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), the Loyola Jazz Festival, the University of North Carolina, and more. 

Andrew leads a double life as a musician and a member of the Investor Relations team at the D. E. Shaw group, a global investment management and technology development firm. Experience in finance has allowed Andrew to view music through a new lens. His daily work has led to a deeper understanding of the impact of a single phrase or detail in the context of a whole work. As a result, Andrew has a renewed sense of how phrasing and details impact the stories that come across in his compositions and playing. His work in finance has also made him a better listener; he is now more cognizant of others' needs and how to better understand them. This has translated to the bandstand, enabling Andrew to home in on the needs of his bandmates during moments of spontaneous collaboration, leading to more interplay in his music.