Intakt Records is thrilled to release this first collaboration with pianist Alexis Marcelo - a mesmerizing solo debut! A contagious exuberance of playing, energetic explosive improvisations, and an openness to jazz tradition and experimentation combine on this album to create an impressive musical statement. "Almost everything he plays affirms his history and culture as a first-generation American, the son of a Panamanian mother and a Dominican father. Growing up in the Bronx and in Queens during hip hop's first years - the first jazz he heard were samples - hearing salsa and merengue at home, attending Latino evangelical churches, and - yes - studying classical music at the Harlem School of the Arts shaped Marcelo's identification as an African Latino with an inclusive sensibility(...)Once artists establish a strong identity, they can draw outside the lines, smudge them, even erase them, without diluting or diminishing that identity. That is what Alexis Marcelo has done with Solo Piano", writes Bill Shoemaker in the liner notes.
Always on the lookout for new musical adventures, alto saxophonist Angelika Niescier is one of the most prominent voices on the European jazz scene. Her discography reveals close ties to the New York scene, where she has collaborated with musicians such as Tyshawn Sorey, Chris Tordini and Gerald Cleaver. More recently, she has turned her attention to the Midwest, specifically Chicago, and found a key partner in cellist Tomeka Reid, with whom she released the acclaimed album Beyond Dragons in 2023, together with Savannah Harris. With Chicago Tapes, Niescier expands this circle to include some of Chicago's most influential and exciting musicians. "Through such artistic exchanges, Niescier has built a fascinating career by continually forming new partnerships and nonchalantly adapting her own language to the needs of each new context, without ever compromising or dampening her voice. Chicago Tapes captures a new chapter in this journey, and judging by what we hear here, we can only hope that her connection to Chicago is just beginning," writes Peter Margasak in the liner notes.
Swiss pianist and composer Sylvie Courvoisier has been a defining figure on the contemporary jazz scene for 20 years and is at the epicenter of the New York music scene. She was also recently awarded the prestigious Swiss Grand Prix Musik 2025. She now follows up on the acclaimed recent releases - her solo album To be Other-Wise, and the atmospherically multi-layered duo album Angel Falls with the legendary Wadada Leo Smith - with a live album from her much-lauded trio with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen. Recorded during a European tour in February 2025, the album presents the quintessence of this outstanding trio. With each concert, with each album, the trio's working method becomes more defined. In deep musical trust with each other, the three exceptional musicians celebrate a detailed and precise music that is both ambiguous and wide open. "And that's what this album shows now. This joy, diversity, subtlety, this desire. (...) Losing oneself in the music, the delicious moment that unfolds heavenly. But so cunning, so complex, so pointed, as only true virtuosos can be," writes Ulrich Stock in the liner notes.
With their poetic and energetic music, the three storytellers from Italy, France, and Switzerland create an unobstructed view of the Mediterranean across the narrow mountain valleys. The music of these three musical personalities thrives on it's poetry, it's beautiful sound, it's depth of thought, and the interweaving of composition and improvisation. Original compositions meet Radiohead and Monteverdi variations and merge on Fables of Time into soulful music full of energy and subtle wit. A trio with three leaders, all three at home in different musical languages and technically at their peak. Together they form a unity that is rarely found. Thirteen years after the two highly acclaimed CDs What is There What is Not and Mavi, the long-awaited third release from this extraordinary trio is here. "The path offered to the listener is full of surprises and joy - you never know what's waiting around the corner: a stroll through a stately Renaissance melody, a sudden jolt of energy from free improvised passages, an evocation of village dance from an imaginary country that borders the desert, the Alps and the countryside, a flash of funky, and sometimes all these things at the same time", writes Francesco Martinelli in the liner notes.
During the current decade Cologne-based saxophonist Angelika Niescier has made her connection to New York's elite improvisational jazz community readily clear. Her trio album The Berlin Concert, was voted one of the most important releases of 2018 by Downbeat. This stunning new recording suggests that only the Atlantic Ocean separates her from the agile collaborators heard here. Once again her music is anchored by the bass playing of Chris Tordini, the saxophonist's longest-running stateside partner. The album includes the first recorded evidence of her simpatico ties with drummer Gerald Cleaver and trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson. On numerous pieces Niescier has experimented with various Cagean compositional devices to propel, complicate, and energize improvisational endeavors. She's long been stimulated by the ideas of John Cage, but this recording marks the first time she's chosen to apply them to her own work, albeit in a highly personalized fashion. Peter Margasak writes in the liner notes: "This fresh direction only suggests a blossoming of Niescier's creativity, as she complements the enlargement of her New York circle with an expansion of compositional models."
Swiss saxophonist Omri Ziegele presents with the Tomorrow Trio an adventurous line-up featuring the legendary Dutch drummer Han Bennink and accomplished Swiss double bassist Christian Weber. A collaboration that offers a perfect platform for Ziegele's robust, powerful sound and his dynamic phrasing, while at the same time showing interest in poetry and the spoken word. "If the Tomorrow Trio has a defining feature it is the potently communicative dialogue of the three individuals. It can be felt in the tight entwining of certain motifs by sax and drums; the snapchat rhythmic exchange of horn and drums; the well-judged release of cumulative tension by the whole band," writes Kevin Le Gendre in the liner notes.
For me, free improvisation is nothing more than composing - spontaneous composing from the moment, says bassist Stephan Crump. In this trio, three ideal-typical partners come together who bring along thinking in compositional structures. Saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock is active as a composer in her countless projects, always swinging playfully between composition and improvisation and moving light-footedly between harmonic and rhythmically bound jazz and free improvisation. The pianist Cory Smythe (decorated with a Grammy for the recording "In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores" 2015) originally comes from new serious music and, is a lust-walking border crosser between new music and jazz improvisation. With Stephan Crump, who, in addition to his engagement in the Vijay Iyer Trio, is also often on the road in chamber music formations, the three of them provided a festival highlight with their filigree art of improvisation: enjoy these sonic subtleties, most of which are drawn from tranquillity, and expansive arcs of tension in which, according to Crump, "every note becomes a planet".
After the acclaimed albums Gowanus Canal (2012) and Octopus (2015), Christoph Irniger and his trio with bassist Raffaele Bossard and drummer Ziv Ravitz present Open City: extended by the American alto saxophonist Loren Stillman and guest Nils Wogram on trombone. Familiar with the jazz tradition, the extended trio makes an up-to-date musical statement. With playful wit and melodic inventiveness, the ensemble, which is oriented towards song structures, combines arrangement and improvisation to form a harmonious and seductive musical statement. "They are not only eminent technicians, they are also adept at interplay, like sleepwalkers. With Loren Stillman and Nils Wogram Christoph Irniger's trio creates music which unites intelligence and passion, timeless yet up to date," writes Manfred Papst in the liner notes.
The Choir Invisible, presents a highly anticipated debut album on Intakt Records. With Charlotte Greve, Vinnie Sperrazza and Chris Tordini, this trio, oscillating between improvisation and composition, brings together three significant voices from Brooklyn's creative music scene. "The Choir Invisible not only does everyone have equal rights, they also have equal responsibilities, as accompanists and soloists. All three are both melody and sound. The trio began playing without discussing anything at first. Over time all three then brought compositions along, which allowed them to strike varying paths and led to some highly distinctive tracks. No endless, boundless improvisations; instead a symbiosis of spontaneous currents and the urge for structure. The Choir Invisible might nicely describe the potential of a band which, with three instruments, manages to envisage enormous diversity, and much that is not spoken or played can be imagined or heard in our inner ear. In the far dimensions of the trio shines the polyphony of a choir. Euphoric yet rooted in daily life," writes Bert Noglik in the liner notes.
31-year-old pianist Yves Theiler is one of the most significant voices in international contemporary jazz in Europe. Deeply rooted in the tradition of jazz and equipped with a daring desire to experiment, he distinguishes himself as a composer as well as a free improviser with a sovereign creative will. At the center of his musical work is the Yves Theiler Trio, which reveres urgent ensemble music in which improvisational furor and compositional rigor, calculation and freedom intertwine. "Yves Theiler is part of this long lineage of musicians able to move between comfort zone and danger area. We, his third album as the leader of a trio featuring drummer Lukas Mantel and double bassist Luca Sisera, is a collection of adventurously mapped pieces that are as liable to attract the listener through the jaunty, lively character of the themes as they are the cohesion of the group and strong solo statements by each member," writes Kevin Le Gendre in the liner notes.
Saxophonist and composer James Brandon Lewis possesses an inspiring energy. His deep curiosity and the thrill he gets from discovery are crucial facets of his personality, and qualities that guide his art. Over the last half-decade he's emerged as one of the most exciting figures in jazz and improvised music, a voracious listener who rejects stylistic hierarchies and one that has feverishly explored new ideas and embraced fresh motivations with every new project. Inspired by molecular biology James Brandon develops a special system for a surprising and beautiful music with his Quartet with drummer Chad Taylor, pianist Aruan Ortiz, and bassist Brad Jones. He has taken the idea of a "Molecular Systematic Music" to heart in the formulation of the compositions featured on the stunning debut album by this quartet.
