Classical Music

For his new album, Maik Krahl has put together a variety of moods and grooves. Technical extravaganza pairs with musical instinct and cunning. His partners Constantin Krahmer (p/rhod), Oliver Lutz (db), and Leif Berger (dr) offer relentless support and make for an exciting listening experience. Seamus Blake adds his own particular vibe and eloquence to some of the tunes. Maik's immaculate trumpet playing thrives on influences of the great heroes of the instrument, today's and yesterday's. His compositions switch from intricate to thoughtful revealing an intellectual musical mind. My compliments for a strong jazz album. Olivier Peters (WDR Big Band)

Classical Music

Classical Music

Drummer Joos Lijbaart on Trinity: "After two years of playing and traveling together, we all felt the urge to capture our music on a live album. For me, playing live concerts with the trio resembles a growing tree. The music evolves naturally from silent and hidden to string and fertile, from heavenly to earthy, from life to death to life. Our concerts are still fully improvised and become ever more an immersive experience for the audience and ourselves- an experience which takes us out of our own comfort zone to a hidden world of tenderness, anger, security, abandonment, joy, grief, peace and all the other emotions every human being will experience during his or her life."

Classical Music

A skilled drummer with a strong command of polyrhythms and complex meters, Olivier Le Goas is also an accomplished composer with a gift for pleasing harmonies and memorable melodies. The veteran French bandleader showcased his abundant gifts on 2016's acclaimed Reciprocity, which was hailed in a 4-1/2 star Downbeat review as "an appealing sound that has one foot in chamber-like formalism while also exploring heightened realms of improvisation." Le Goas' follow-up, his sixth as a leader, stakes out similarly agreeable and dynamic musical territory: the kind that was favorably compared to the Pat Metheny Unity Group on his last outing. Returning from Reciprocity is rising star American guitarist Nir Felder, whose warm tone and fluid lines are a key component here alongside John Escreet's cascading piano work, Larry Grenadier's resounding bass lines and Le Goas' irrepressible presence behind the kit. Together they navigate the twisting terrain of the drummer-bandleader's fully-realized compositions with sensitivity and aplomb, with a couple of knowing winks to Metheny along the way. Indeed, the album title itself contains a nod to the guitar great's 1982 Grammy Award winning album, OffRamp, while the brightly flowing and cleverly-titled composition "Light Size Dreams" is a sly reference to the title track of Metheny's groundbreaking1976 debut on ECM Records, Bright Size Life. Le Goas readily acknowledges the Metheny influence on those two appealing pieces. "Yes, the album title is directly inspired by that wonderful Pat Metheny album, Off Ramp, and 'Light Size Dreams' definitely has echoes of 'Bright Size Life.' But the fourth movement and coda from 'Light Size Dreams' were also inspired by 'And Then I Know' from the Pat Metheny Group album, We Live Here."

Classical Music

The relentless Bluebeard now has a soundtrack thanks to Dutch saxophone pride Yuri Honing. Yuri Honing dedicated his new album to the gruesome heritage of Bluebeard, title character of the 17thcentury French fairytale. The duke with the seven wives symbolizes other historic European figures. For example, Pablo Picasso, who conquered women and loved them, but also destroyed them; all these phases inspired his art. A sonnet by the first female Pullitzer Prize winner, Edna Millay, a variation on the fairytale, forms the basis of the album Bluebeard. With his Acoustic Quartet, Yuri Honing has been celebrating international success for many years. As with his previous album Goldbrun, the release of Bluebeard will be followed by an exhibition at Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle, a 'Gesamtkunstwerk' of paintings, sculptures and music in collaboration with painter Mariecke van derLinden. Honing's awards include three Edisons and the Boy Edgar Prijs 2012, and he has worked with countless greats such as Pat Metheny, CharlieHaden, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Paul Bley and Craig Taborn.

This album follows “A New Episode In Life Pt. I,” which was released previously this year. The album was recorded spontaneously after Part I only took one day to record instead of the planned two. Included in this release are free-form improvisation pieces from jazz masters as well as some jazz standards. Jasper Somsen writes: “In May 2016, Challenge Records’ general director Anne de Jonge and I discussed a new international trio album recording, featuring Andre Ceccarelli, one of my favorite drummers… Searching for a pianist, Jean-Michel Pilc’s wonderful music, solo piano and piano trio performances struck me as lightning. Although it actually took me some time to decide, from the very first moment I was already convinced I wanted him to join us…They instantly agreed to recrd the album. It was pretty exciting, since the trio never performed together…”

'What would happen to our mind if we create something out of thin air?'' That question popped up more and more frequently in the mind of drummer Joost Lijbaart. Being a jazz musician he is used to improvisation within the structure of tune and melody, but he watned to let go of those boundaries and improvise spontaneously. Lijbaart: ''I performed with Bram and Sanne before on some occasions. After a couple of sessions and concerts together the idea of a fully improvised album became a logical next step because we had so much in common. The blend of Sanne's voice in combination with guitar and drums feels very natural. The lyrics, her whispering, talking and singing are so nigh the human body that it creates a prime vulnerability which makes the music open and accessible. Bram Stadhouders is one of the most creative musicians I know. His presence, both as a soloist or an accompanist plus his profusion of sounds renders all three of us the sensation that we are able to fly.

On this album the young Italian jazz singer Chiara Pancaldi shows once again talent to sing jazz standards in a flawless and convicing way. Her pure voice was noticed by Kirk Lightsey and Darryl Hall and they formed a pure acoustic trio to record this album. This recording is a true live session, where they all took chances and improvised a lot. Each song, whether it is the famous standard “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” or the obscure Strayhorn tune “Love Came,” has its own atmosphere. Two special guests enrich the session, both in a ballad: Jeremy Pelt, who plays on “What is There to Say,” the track that gives the record its title, and Laurent Maur, who played in “A Timeless Place,” (The Peacocks).

Disoriental is a musical exploration and expression of the complexity of identity. As an expatriate artist who has been living as a minority in different places for most of his lifetime, Okabe attempts to critically approach the versatility and universality of jazz, a genre that absorbs all kinds of external elements to form its shape anew. Since its birth in the USA with black music at its heart, jazz has been incorporated into music education all over the world. This institutionalization has certainly helped spread musical knowledge and techniques, making many people familiar with jazz and contributing to the development of jazz performances and productions. On the other hand, since a sort of structure and control are an inevitable part of institutionalization, the more systematic the curriculum, the more our thinking process necessarily suffers from standardization. As a result, artists start to de-emphasize musical creativity and only become excited at opportunities to show off their virtuosity in performance, not the expression of their own unique, personal identity. One of the clearest characteristics of Disoriental is the use of suspended chords. Conventionally, suspension is either major or minor in Western counterpoint. However, in most folk music traditions around the world, five sounds can be found, and their universality actually has a very deep relationship with the versatility of jazz. Starting from this premise, Okabe pursues the possibility of a pentatonic “scale” unique to Japanese traditional music in an attempt to reproduce the five notes in a way that does not correspond to the conventional heptatonic scale in the well temperament system. Through this process of seeking musical originality, Asian identity is mixed with jazz and Western music to produce a unique, unfamiliar, Disoriental music.

Classical Music

This new release is the “boy jazz genius” Dominic J. Marshall’s debut album with Challenge Records. After studying classical piano for ten years, Dominic was awarded the Alan Hawkshaw scholarship to study jazz at Leeds College of Music. By summer 2010 his graduation recital had won him the LCM Piano Prize. His previous album Spirit Speech has been praised by many critics, and was nominated for an Edison Jazz International Award in 2014. On this release, Marshall uses two different rhythm sections and involves elements from electronic and hip-hop music, distinguishing his unique sound from other jazz pianists.