LAVIN

Sylvie Courvoisier presents a new trio album at the height of her mastery and success. "Free Hoops" follows the widely celebrated trio album "D'Agala" which The New York Times counted as among the best records of the year. With every concert and every album this glorious trio's modus operandi becomes more clear - Sylvie Courvoisier, Drew Gress and Kenny Wollesen play morphing music by turns intricately detailed and ambiguously wide open. The music Courvoisier writes is rigorously organized and calls for ensemble precision, as a few thorny unisono heads demonstrate. But the music also harbors a misterioso, dreamlike quality that may surface at any time, induced by a wistful ostinato or moonlit piano arpeggio stubbornly repeated, or by a quiet episode that underscores the depth of the trio's sonic space. They also do that good stuff we prize jazz for - the happy swinging, the coming together when they make complex material sing, and the flying apart when the players explore it on their own.

Three years after their celebrated debut album Rabbit on the Run the Dave Gisler Trio presents a live album: Guest on trumpet is Jaimie branch. Over the past few years Dave Gisler has earned himself an impressive reputation in the free-thinking force field of contemporary jazz as a maverick sound architect on the electric guitar. On the one hand the Dave Gisler Trio loves the punch of a rock sensibility, but it cheerfully slips into quieter and calmer zones, where individual sounds and otherworldly textures remix the essences afresh. Anyone who has already seen Jaimie Branch live will know her unique way of tuning into the energy, the way she stands, takes up the instrument, and plays - natural and sovereign, incisive and melancholy, light and weighty. It's clear from the start that this musician's energy fires up the Dave Gisler Trio. And in turn the trio's inspiration has an effect on the trumpeter which feeds back into the group. "The music on The Zurich Concert strikes a chord, in a time shaken by emotions and extremes," writes Pirmin Bossart in the liner notes. "It's attitude unflinching, under the surface the pulse is tender and sensual."

GAMES IMPROVISATION

With Untucked in Hannover, Tom Rainey's top-notch quintet Obbligato presents a third album of a collection of jazz standards - with Jacob Sacks on piano replacing regular pianist Kris Davis for this live recording. Wonderful jazz tunes like Stella by Starlight or I Fall in Love Too Easily are interpreted in an open dialogue with stunning joy of playing and improvisation. And though standards are the modus operandi of Obbligato, their approach is intended to be less conventional, less reverential and certainly less solo-centric than many other bands that tackles with Standards. Obbligato sometimes plays with the essences of famous jazz standards in an implied way, sometimes in a teasing and mysterious way, but always in a tantalizing way. "Close your eyes, imagine sitting in the front row of your favorite jazz club, sit back and enjoy Obbligato playing pieces from the Great American Songbook in a way you've never heard them before: and by one of the most inventive and inspiring live bands of the last decade," writes Laurence Donohue-Greene in the liner notes.

A Mountain Doesn't Know It's Tall. The title reflects the mood of this duo record of Fred Frith and Ikue Mori - playful, poetic, mysterious and open. The guitarist and the sound-artist have been working together for forty years. Live excerpts from their work are documented on Fred Frith's 3 album box set Live at the Stone (Intakt CD 320). In January 2015, Frith and Mori met in Germany to record the music for a radio play for Werner Penzel, the filmmaker and longtime friend of Fred Frith, for his film Zen for Nothing. After finishing their work, they used the free studio day to record their first duo album together. Influenced by the film music and inspired by the long friendship 15 pieces were created that are both wonderful sound sculptures and fascinating dialogues. Fred Frith writes: "Air moving through ears and hair and lungs and pores, through songs, and scrapes, and scraps of this, that and the other." And Ikue Mori writes: "... it was about playing with the every-day noises that arise when cooking, playing ping-pong, and especially when laughing. There is a lot of joy in working with these recordings, interacting with them and making music."

TO WHOM MAY CONCERN

MOIRE MUSIC TRIO

Broken Shadows brings together four luminaries of the American jazz scene: Tim Berne, Chris Speed, Reid Anderson and Dave King. Broken Shadows has very strong connections, in twos. Saxophonists Tim Berne and Chris Speed have been playing together since 1992; Bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King - two thirds of the legendary band The Bad Plus - have been playing together for over 35 years. Named after an Ornette Coleman composition, this all-star project honors the legacy of the music of their idols and mentors Ornette Coleman, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Julius Hemphill. "Most all of the songs have melodies; infectious and singable. Songs you would want to put in your pocket and take them home. In a time of songs treated as vehicles for improvisation, with this band, the vehicle is the song", writes Branford Marsalis in the liner notes, celebrating the emotional power and impact of Broken Shadows: "Harmonic data does not create emotion; the ability to change color in ones sound does. This is something that Broken Shadows understand, be it explicit or implicit. The twelve tracks range from lamentation, or insouciant swagger, to utter joy, and all the colors in between."

Chris Speed, a driving force of modern jazz for decades, presents Light Line, an impressive solo statement on the clarinet. The repertoire of this musical legacy includes his own pieces and short improvisations, as well as compositions by inspiring luminaries such as John Coltrane, Julius Hemphill, Eric Dolphy and Paul Motion. In addition, there are compositions by friends and long-time musical companions such as Andrew D'Angelo, Sk�li Sverrisson and Hilmar Jensson. There is "an implicit guiding light through the whole project: the commitment to reduction, to finding the power in taking things away, the power in trusting that there is still a lot there once you do take the surface layers away, and above all an undying commitment to melody in some elemental sense as the primary element in music", writes Anthony Burr in the liner notes.

WORLD OF STRS

KONSUMDELIKATESSWARE

TIME STORIES

MONKS CASINO

HEXENTRIO