JOYFUL NOISE. the product of a tremendous collaboration and the confluence of a range of musical currents. In 2021, Challenge Records gave me the opportunity to conceive and produce a new CD. I had previously completed a project with the Ravelli Brass septet and ace drummer Arie den Boer. My roots are in the world of brass bands and I really wanted to let those roots shine through.

This is an album meticulously pulled together into a dense fabric of diverse musical threads. It merits repeated listening; with each fresh listen, the richness of Reijonen’s intercultural vocabulary becomes more apparent.” London Jazz News - Even in our present jazz moment, when the art form is worldwide and vital, albums that come as complete surprises are relatively rare. Three seconds Kolme Toista is a stunner." Jazz Times - " Three seconds Kolme Toista is spellbinding from beginning to end, and full of virtuoso performances." AllAboutJazz

The Deep brings a surprise. It's mostly about the tone of a number of the ballads on it, adding something romantic to his approach, with a gratifying affinity for melody that still feels safe in his own very personal interpretation. And always with that swing. Intelligent but never intellectual, with no pretentious pathos and none of that 'you just gotta listen to this!' feel. In a nutshell, pure.

Pianist Enrico Pieranunzi and arranger Michele Corcella complete offer a beautifully orchestrated collection of John Lewis’s best.

In the specific field of jazz/classical music crossover, the 1920s were crucial. They gave us one of the first, absolutely extraordinary, works of the genre: the famous “Rhapsody in Blue.” John Lewis moved in the same direction as Gershwin, but from a very different vision and experience. Indeed, Lewis was an excellent jazz pianist, but above all Lewis, besides being a great jazz player, was deeply in love with the music of Bach and from the earliest years of his career onward made the blues/Bach pair the banner of his artistic life. It is to this musical conception and to the compositional art of John Lewis that, a little more than two decades after his passing, “Blues and Bach” wishes to pay tribute. His tunes have been reworked and orchestrated for the occasion with an ensemble that, in some ways, is itself a crossover within a crossover (jazz trio plus string quintet and woodwind quintet).

REVIEWS:

If jazz is by now a respectable genre, it’s partly thanks to John Lewis. Never knowingly overwrought, this American pianist had his roots in classical music, bebop, and the Birth of the Cool. A Bach devotee, he incorporated fugue and counterpoint into his work. Here two Italians, the pianist Enrico Pieranunzi and the arranger Michele Corcella, complete the journey with a beautifully orchestrated collection of Lewis’s best.

Pieranunzi is one of Europe’s great jazz pianists, greatly influenced by Bill Evans. His luminous tone and elegant, linear phrasing is a superb foil to the warmth of Corcella’s arrangements. On Vendome, the most Bach-like piece, Pieranunzi slips easily between frisky fugue and sophisticated swing as the strings scurry alongside. On Django the violins handle the baroque counterpoint as the trio dig into a down and dirty blues. 

Some wonderful sound pictures are drawn on Skating in Central Park: a Satie-like figure falls like snow and the piano waltzes over the drummer Mauro Beggio’s powdery brushes. Woodwinds swirl and strings sparkle. By contrast, Spanish Steps and Jasmine Tree are proper workouts with lively trio improvisation slotting into complex orchestral structures. Strings often weigh down a jazz group — here they make it more exciting.

Two bittersweet ballads were surely included for sentimental reasons. The Italians handle Lewis’s Milano gently, the piano wandering easily through a shifting chamber-music cityscape. Lewis didn’t write Autumn in New York (it’s by Vernon Duke), but his band the Modern Jazz Quartet recorded it and was formed in NYC. Pieranunzi swaggers along as skyscrapers of sound stretch upwards around him. Classic classical jazz.

-- London Times (Chris Pearson)

As I write these notes sitting on my balcony in July 2022, it has been more than 9 years since the release of my debut album. The time since has been a personally tumultuous period of twists and turns – retreat, reflection, realization, reassessment, therapy, triumph, trial and error – entangled in a decade-long creative block. Then the Covid-19 pandemic happened, and the world stopped. Like so many of us caught in the new eerie calm, I retreated into inner spaces. I began revisiting sketches of ideas I had accumulated over the years, and finally, very, very slowly, new music started to come.

The GRAMMY Award Winner Metropole Orchestra, GRAMMY Award Winner John Beasley, and GRAMMY Award Nominee Maria Mendes present a new live recording. Fado music is undeniable for the Portuguese people and for all of those who seek for nostalgic love in the past and present. And so is saudade – a Portuguese word that doesn’t translate to any other language in the world.

"Fado and saudade are forever bound. They both express the melancholic longing for the past and the hopes it becomes present once again. They also express the belief in destiny as a fortunate and fatalistic power that you cannot escape from. This music is about how I feel Fado and how I love it, free of definitions, free of limitations. This is no Fado album. This is no traditional Jazz music. This is an adventure that is real and can be felt by everyone. As love is." --Maria Mendes

Editor's Choice at Jazziz October 2022

REVIEWS

With her critically acclaimed 2019 album Close To Me, Mendes spotlighted her ability to bring disparate influences together with her vibrant fusion of symphonic jazz and Portuguese Fado, the folk music of her homeland. Now, Mendes brings her singular vision to the concert stage in collaboration with master keyboardist-arranger John Beasley and Metropole Orkest on her new live album, Saudade, Colour Of Love...the album expands the emotional intensity of its predecessor’s hybrid sound with the backing of a full orchestra. The lush symphonic sound sparks when it meets the interplay of Mendes’ brilliant quartet and the singer’s fervent vocals.

--DownBeat

Drawing songs from her Grammy-nominated album Close to You and adding new material, Mendes and producer, co-arranger and conductor John Beasley get the balance just right: Sinatra-esque orchestral introductions, rippling jazz piano, the melancholy drama of fado, her own forays into scat and improvisation. Check out the epic “Verdes Anos,” which starts with soft strings, moves into a fiery piano solo, and ends with the Orkest doing battle with Mendes’ high-pitched cries and squeals. “E Se Não For Fado” fits squarely in the ballad tradition, keeping the improvisation to a minimum to make the most of its lovely melody.

Mendes soars as both singer and scatter on her own “Dança Do Amor,” while “Quando Eu Era Pequenina” takes a traditional Portuguese tune and sends it into orbit. Beloved Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal contributes a brand-new piece to the program, and “Hermeto’s Fado For Maria” ends up as a highlight of the record. Mendes closes the album with “Meu Pobre Capitão,” a new co-composition with Beasley whose creamy melody and Latin shuffle send the audience out smiling. Pulling from two different traditions on Saudade, Mendes manages to make a new one of her own.

--The Big Takeover

There are few things as exciting and as challenging as singing with a full orchestra.  Maria Mendes has a voice, toned by technique and colored with emotion, that soars like another instrument atop the awesome arrangements of the Metropole Orkest conducted by John Beasley.

[Mendes] offers us Portuguese Folk songs, colorfully arranged and plush with orchestration. The mastery of John Beasley as arranger and conductor shines like gold. This project is Maria Mendes’ dream-come-true album, recorded, May of 2022 in Amsterdam.  Her voice is as natural and multi-layered as the orchestra and her exquisite range soars above the instruments like a powerful bird in flight. Maria’s range is astounding and the way she weaves jazzy scat sounds into the production is both unique and ear-catching. John Beasley builds the production around her vocals beautifully, attentive to the details of her delivery, while all the time, enriching this amazing orchestra with his sensitive, dynamic arrangements.

Here is an artistic and unusual project, infused with jazz, rich with classical overtones and culturally prominent.

--Musical Memoirs

 

The continuing growth of Maik Krahl as a melodic improviser, bandleader, and composer is distinctly evident in this new release. In-Between Flow, Krahl’s third outing as leader, is a portrait of a young artist who has gone through many years of dedicated hard work, study, experimentation, and refinement in order to achieve this level of instrumental and artistic prowess. Krahl belongs to a new generation of improvisers who have acquired a breadth of technical and theoretical facility, while not losing the spontaneity and rawness of this music we call jazz. As a bandleader, for this date he is joined on a few tracks by the visionary guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, whose brilliant playing adds a cherry on top of this already delicious line up.

Eran Har Even is an Edison nominated Israeli guitarist, composer and a faculty member of the Conservatory of Amsterdam. On his new album 'WorldCitizen' Eran presents a contemporary vision of jazz music which is crossing sonic borders and fusing cultures. 'World Citizen' is a result of many years of being far away from home. Seeing the world as one big source of inspiration resulted in a path of self-discovery. He has become a world citizen with views far from patriotism and nationalism; learning to be open to different opinions and cultural heritage and treasure the uniqueness of every person he encounters. This multicultural way of experiencing life makes Eran's playing and composing unique. Different musical styles are fused into one own sound, making this an album for like-minded globetrotters. Together with Israeli bassist Haggai Cohen-Milo (Omer Klein Trio), Spanish pianist Xavi Torres Vicente (Thelonius Monk Competition) and Latvian drummer Ivars Arutyunyans (Seamus Blake, Greg Osby) he forms a unique international quartet.

Founded in 2015, Second Wind Quintet is an instrumental group of talented Finnish musicians led by guitarist and composer Tommi Tampio. The group based in Helsinki, lined up with double bass (Juuso Rinta), drums (Ilkka Oksanen), piano (Aapo Wikst�n), saxophone (Kasper Haikonen) and guitar (Tommi Tampio), combines elements from modern jazz, folk and cinematic music without worrying about crossing genres. The group members' different musical backgrounds provide interesting conditions for colorful improvisation and interaction. Tampio's compositions are largely influenced by the music of Brian Blade Fellowship and Pat Metheny, amongst others.

Born in 1964, saxophonist and composer Pekka Pylkkänen has been recognized as one of the stronger jazz artists and saxophonists in Europe. Hehas performed around the globe and has been very successful not only in Europe, but also in Asia and South America, for example. He has collaborated with numerous prestigious artists in many countries, and continues to work as a soloist/leader, recording artist and educator all over the world. On Nu Bottega: “The general idea is about the Italian lifestyle and the beauty that one can find there – not easy to describe in a few words, but like finding the most beautiful things behind a slightly trashed or 'b-flat' areas/places/details. ‘Nu Bottega’ just means ‘new restaurant’ – but having this vibe of a shared kitchen, cooking with friends, sharing the bread and so on. Cooking (mostly Italian nowadays) is one of my passions, and sharing that with my friends is one of my greatest joys.”

This album is a unique musical marriage between double bass player Gianmarco Scaglia, who has released 20 projects in the past, and drummer Paul Wertico, who gained worldwide recognition as a member of the Pat Metheny Group from 1983 to 2001. "I think that music, in most cases, "speaks" much better than the words. This album reflects exactly my personality and my approach to life and to music itself. I am grateful to the musicians, to Paul, Simone and Mirko who shared this vision with me. A special mention to Stefano Amerio (Artesuono) for his precious professionalism." (Gianmarco Scaglia)

Juraj Stanik writes: "The title of this release, Inside out, is an homage to the Dutch jazz pianist Rob Madna. I also would like to show gratitude to a generation of Dutch musicians of his time who were truly exceptional. With one of them, flugelhorn player Ack van Rooyen, I just completed an Indonesian tour (Jakarta & Bandung). Indonesia was the country Rob Madna originated from. While travelling, meeting new people and being subject to new impressions, Rob was often on my mind. He was not just a piano player and arranger. In fact, he was quite an influential musical character. Thad Jones asked him to write for and play in his famous Thad Jones, Mel Lewis orchestra. This indicates the level of his mastery. Bass player Frans van der Hoeven played in Rob Madna's band for years. When I got back to the Netherlands, Frans and I decided to record at least one of Rob's original compositions. Jazz musicians learn from listening to others. I have definitely learned a lot from listening to Rob's music. I always enjoy writing for and performing with my piano trio. When I write music for a jazz ensemble, I don't want to dictate too much. Instead of putting a lot of information in, I prefer to give space. Hopefully this inspires the improviser to come up with original, personal ideas. I love it when skilled musicians turn a composition inside out! When I was young, I performed classical music as a cellist. Most probably it influenced the way I write and play music. There are always melodies or 'earworms' lingering in my mind. Sometimes, I write a complete tune based on such melodies. At other times I endlessly experiment with form, shape and ideas. My aim is to give each tune a specific atmosphere..."

The paths of Eric Ineke and Tineke Postma crossed several times the recent years. The time was there for an album together. The Charlie Parker centennial was the right moment to make it happen, the man who helped to define the bebop. According to Eric Ineke would never have been an Eric Ineke JazzXpress if it wasn't for Charlie "Bird" Parker. On What Kinda Bird is This? the listener gets known and lesser known material by Charlie Parker, complimented two pieces based on work by Charlie Parker, from the hand of Marius Beets.

Reinhardt Winkler writes: "I've known most of the songs of my new album for a long time. As a child, I got my first jazz records and all the songs were on it. I fell in love with this music, the sound, the instruments, the vibe, I just liked everything. Over the years I've always stayed tuned to these particular songs and some of them have become my absolute favorites. So I decided to record these songs with musicians I appreciate so much." Reinhardt Winkler is a jazz drummer, composer and music educator. Since 1993, he has taught at the music school in Kirchschlag i.d. Buckligen Welt. He has also led many workshops in Austria, as well as other countries. Since 2013, he has taught drumming at the Wimmer Gymnasium in Obersch�tzen in cooperation with the Kunstuniversit�t Graz. As a performing jazz drummer, he has toured for many years throughout Europe, the USA, and Asia, and worked with cutting edge artists such as Wolfgang Puschnig, STS, Terry Myers, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, to name just a few.

This new release features famous standards played by a remarkable ensemble lead by drummer Reinhardt Winkler. The recording features Harry Allen on tenor saxophone, John di Martino on piano, Boris Kozlov on bass. “I’ve selected each song on the album because it speaks to my heart in a very personal way. Making music takes my mind to a special place, filling me with an awareness of being a link in a chain; a chain of ideas and musical approaches that I’m treating with great care while trying to keep them going.” (Reinhardt Winkler)