MALAMUTE

The Cuban-American pianist and composer Aru�n Ortiz has finally arrived on the international jazz scene, following a few earlier releases. His excellent new album "Hidden Voices" recorded as a trio with bass player Eric Revis and drummer Gerald Cleaver is the proof. Ortiz, who grew up in Santiago de Cuba, has been called the latest Cuban prodigy to arrive in the US. His carefully structured music is an exciting mix of contemporary classical sounds, afro-Cuban rhythms and powerful jazz improvisation. All these elements are fused to make a very individual sound. "I was thinking about this album as a circle with no beginning and no end," says Aru�n Ortiz. After working with seven original works as well as tunes by Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk, the 42-year-old has turned to a traditional song "Uno, Dos y Tres, Que Paso M�s Chevere," that "everybody in Cuba knows from festivities and carnivals."

Aly Ke�ta is one of the grand masters of the balafon, the West African xylophone. The Ivorian musician fits the balafon in interaction with artists such as Joe Zawinul, Omar Sosa and Jan Garbarek. Together with the Swiss clarinetist Jan Galega Br�nnimann and Swiss drummer Lucas Niggli Ke�ta mixes the traditional African repertoire with Western jazz, Improvisation and African rhythms. This "Brotherhood of vibes and grooves" takes the audience on an adventurous ride. The first element that underlies "Kalo-Yele" ("moonlight" in Bambara) is a human and affective dimension, whose origin lies many miles from Switzerland and several decades before the three musicians entered the studio. Niggli and Jan Galega Br�nnimann were actually born in Cameroon and they have been friends since they were... one year old! So, they spent their youth to the sounds and rhythms of West African music. Thierry Qu�num writes in the liner notes: "If you ever wanted to try and classify the repertoire and interaction of these three musicians, I'd just have to wish you good luck! For each of them can handle the melody as well as the rhythm, or sail close to the jazz coasts as easily as near the banks of so called "world music".

PLATINUM ON TAP

STRINGS

CONTRADICTION OF HAPPINESS

CAN WALK ON SAND

CROSSING THE WATERS

A dream-like aura surrounds these recordings by Evan Parker and Mathew Wrigh. "Filtered through the silicon of the hard drive, birds and insects often sound electronically generated and some of the synthesized sounds, designed in software, sound like birds and insects with wings of their own," writes American journalist Bill Shoemaker. The real seems virtual; the virtual seems real - it is the ambiguity essential to the power of dreams. Evan Parker and Matt Wright met in 2008 and out of their first studio sessions developed Trance Map - a project, that mixes field recordings, samples from cassettes, turntable scratching and the live processing of Evan Parkers's relentlessly evolving saxophone lines. Since that time Trance Map has developed to include live events across Europe. Evan Parker recommends playing Trance Map late at night at a low volume and letting the music point the way to and through sleep - beautiful dreams, that's what he wishes the listener. That may be possible with Crepuscule in Nickelsdorf, although the enthusiastic applause at the end of the performance confirms the audience remained wide awake throughout. A better send-off for the listener of this recording may well be to say Bon Voyage.

BIG WHEEL LIVE

La Planete Quartet is one of Aki Takase's newest ensembles, arising from her partnership with the French clarinetist Louis Sclavis. Right from the start Aki Takase envisaged realizing Flying Soul with an instrumental palette comprised of strings. 'On Flying Soul Aki Takase manages to shape the proportions in her music... with impressive ingenuity, without restraining the sounds... ' - Julia Neupert, from the Liner notes.

It is a journey that the pianist invites the listener to embark on, writes Alain Drouot, jazz journalist from Chicago. Revealing a panorama of uncharted territories, the opener "Yume" suggests that it will be well worth the trip. Swiss pianist Stefan Aeby's first solo piano recording is the product of three and a half years of incubation and shows an understanding of what can be accomplished when taking advantage of a studio setting. Whether composed or improvised, the pieces all have a common denominator. All sounds come from the acoustic piano, but they can be distorted or modified through preparation, inserting all kinds of materials inside the instrument, and/or some processing via various electronic devices. This brings out one of Aeby's main traits: his attention to detail. If making a distinctive statement and being forward-looking are at the forefront of Aeby's concerns, he does not forget the tradition as witnessed by his thoughtful re-harmonization of Erroll Garner's "Misty" that he complements with unobtrusive electronic flourishes.

Since arriving in New York in the early 1990s, he has become one of the most vital improvising musicians on the scene through work that has always ranged widely, moving from a jazz base out through various forms of folk, classical and rock music. Over the last six years, Chris Speed has been sorting through the varied strands of his circuitous, decades-long career, using his versatile trio with bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Dave King to transform numerous curiosity-led excursions past the porous boundaries of jazz into a meticulously focused sound that ties it all together with his foundational immersion in the tradition. In his various bands and collectives, he's explored plenty of rigorous hybrids situating his buoyant, increasingly aerated sound on tunes deftly adapting ideas from Eastern European folk, electronic dance music, and rock, but with this trio he's embraced the inspirations that set him on that twisting path without letting go of the knowledge he's gleaned along the way. The group has reached a new apotheosis of those ideas on Respect for Your Toughness. As with the trio's previous two albums, there's a standard sprinkled within indelible originals. Speed seems to have found a powerful sweet spot with his trio, achieving that preternatural ease where technique, study, and consciousness fall away and the spirit takes over.

WRONG IS RIGHT

TO FLY TO STEAL