Pierre Favre's 1970's solo works are important mile-�stones in the history of European jazz. Any discography of innovative recordings should include them, and their reissue is long overdue. Their significance is not simply as reference material of historical interest, but with their effervescent creativity, they remain impressive and relevant listening even today.

DUO PALINDROME 2002 2

Piano-Drums Duos are the preferred playing arrangement of pianist Ir�ne Schweizer. Her mastery of duets with important drummers of contemporary jazz are documented on numerous Intakt CDs. Han Bennink, Pierre Favre, Louis Moholo, Gu�nter Baby Sommer, Andrew Cyrille and Joey Baron among them. The Chicago drummer Hamid Drake, born in 1955, and Ir�ne Schweizer, born in 1941, have performed together on numerous occasions both in Europe and Chicago. Together they have appeared on the Intakt CD "Ir�ne Schweizer-Fred Anderson-Hamid Drake". At the 40th anniversary festival "Kontrontationen in Nickelsdorf" (Austria), Schweizer and Drake were the highlight of the event. A celebration of the moment and a declaration of love to South African songs along with their thrilling energy and rhythmic lightness produced a firework of improvisation. A parade of successful interplay. The CD Celebration is released on the occasion of Ir�ne Schweizer's 80th birthday (2. Juni), accompanied by a catalogue of the pianist's works on Intakt Records.

GOWANUS CANAL

ARCANUM

One marker of bassist Michael Formanek's creativity and versatility is the range of distinguished musicians of several generations he's worked with. While still a teenager in the 1970s he toured with drummer Tony Williams and saxophonist Joe Henderson. Starting in the '80s he played long stints with Stan Getz, Fred Hersch and Freddie Hubbard. Formanek is also a composer and leader of various bands. One of his principal recording and international touring vehicles has been his acclaimed quartet with Tim Berne, Craig Taborn and Gerald Cleaver. His occasional groups include the 18-piece all-star Ensemble Kolossus, roping in many New York improvisers he works with. Currently his primary focus is the Michael Formanek Elusion Quartet with Tony Malaby, Kris Davis, and Ches Smith. In putting together the Elusion Quartet, interpreting his music with these specific musicians, Michael Formanek says he sought "a more direct connection to emotions: mine, theirs and the listener's." Hank Shteamer writes in the liner notes: "As one zeroes in on the details of Time Like This, it's clear that this sort of emotional immediacy permeates the album. You hear it in Kris Davis' flowing, balletic solo on "A Fine Mess"; in Tony Malaby's ululating tenor cries on "The Soul Goodbye"; in Ches Smith's raucous grooves on "That Was Then"; or the leader's poised, sinewy lines on "Culture of None." Elusive? Certainly. But as this album proves, under the right conditions, with the right personnel, it's still out there."

Human Feel have been together 30 years now, with no personnel changes in almost as long. Chris Speed, Andrew D'Angelo, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Jim Black had been developing individual and collective vocabularies in this very outfit, which went on to epitomize the '90s downtown scene. Through it all Human Feel has carried on, and whenever they reconvene they have new musical stories to tell, and old ways of relating, of honing musical structures that depend on precision in the details yet leave much to be determined in performance. Now Human Feel present 'Gold' 12 years after their last album. The fusion of various musical idioms and the subtle play of calculation and spontaneity provide a highly individual musical language. Jim Black says, "We were joking recently we only make an album every 10 years now... The past four years we've been getting together more often to work on new material, and to record when schedules allow. We had an amazing European tour in November 2017. The band just gets better. We believe more than ever that the four of us making music together is a necessity, and we intend to keep doing it wherever and whenever we can."

Ingrid Laubrock's credentials as an ambitious, skillful composer of intricate yet visceral works for small ensembles is well established - not least on the evidence of her excellent, much-admired Intakt recordings. Whether writing for conventionally constituted assemblages like her quintet Anti-House, or for a more unusual complement, like the mix of tuba, koto, electronics, and more that she convened two years ago for Serpentines, Laubrock has demonstrated a formidable capacity for writing music of intricacy, integrity, and broad appeal. The critic Steve Smith writes in the liner notes: "The present recording, recorded in a studio by an ensemble of first-call freelancers led by two ideally sympathetic conductors, Eric Wubbels and Taylor Ho Bynum, provides eloquent evidence of what Laubrock has achieved. Both of her orchestral pieces - Vogelfrei, with it's variegated textures, animated rhythms, swooping vocals, and inexorable momentum; and Contemporary Chaos Practices, where four instantly distinguishable soloists (Mary Halvorson, Davis, Wooley, and Laubrock herself) retain their individuality while negotiating a brilliantly rendered aural landscape - serve notice of an estimable composer who has something to say, and knows exactly how to say it."

All in their twenties, these four young men are currently at the top tip of the Swiss jazz scene. District Five has taken time off after their debut album, the antithesis of short-term project culture. Now, with Decoy, they do justice to the album's title, throwing us a seductive bait. The aim behind the album is to transcend conventional jazz and offer a statement; it was to sound different from the experience of District Five live, using the possibilities of studio recording to mine the wealth of electronic-based sounds the quartet hears around them. Whether flowing calmly along or sweeping weightlessly through the expanses of ambient soundscapes, whether the concentrated energy of free improvisation shatters the song structure or eruptive clusters of sound and hard-edged grooves emphasise the physical aspects of the music, in the club-friendly anthem 'Maths', the multi-layered sound art of District Five is compellingly direct and builds up a hypnotic momentum.

ANTI-HOUSE STRONG PLACE

ASTEROIDEA

G�nter Baby Sommer is at the height of his musical career. After 'Song for Kommeno' and his Solo masterpiece 'Dedications' he presents at his 75th birthday a duo recording with German trumpet player Till Br�nner. The listeners will notice quite quickly how relaxed Till Br�nner and Baby Sommer correspond throughout the chosen musical material. We experience the meeting of two musicians who have found a common language despite their personal distinctness; who do not need to prove anything to anybody. That is why their very first ever recording is fed by a basic calmness. Had Baby's Party not been chosen to become this album's title, the last piece - the Duke's 'In a Sentimental Mood' - would have made an equally well fitting title. Not in the sense of a yearning retrospection but - according to the two musicians' natural disposition - in the sense of an invincible preview of what is ahead of them.

LAVAMAN

WIE DIE ZEIT HINTER MIR HER

CARELESS LOVE

Christoph Irniger, a prodigious stylist with a warm sound, presents the third album with his band Pilgrim on Intakt Records. With "Crosswinds" the saxophonist who relishes adventure and surprise delivers a cultivated studio album. Multi-layered, subtle and melodically entangled, the eight pieces radiate a wondrous, atmospheric tranquility. A highly nuanced music with a magical sound. Peter Margasak writes in the liner notes: "Crosswinds - this new, gorgeously considered, but luxuriantly open new recording by tenor saxophonist Christoph Irniger's Pilgrim - is palpably more relaxed on the surface than the quintet's previous albums, yet beneath that veneer of calm is intensely focused and rigorous interplay as well as a level of risk-taking. Irniger and his bandmates have developed a richly contemporary sound that melds ideas from some of the most harmonically advanced thinkers in the US with a distinctly European flavor heard most explicitly".

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ODE

WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE DO

Ulrich Gumpert is known for his interesting a fun jazz compositions. Gumpert, a German jazz musician, shows his strength on the piano along with the other fabulous musicians in his quartet: Jurg Wickihalder on saxophone, Jan Roder on bass, and Michael Griener on drums. On this new album, the Ulrich Gumpert Quartet plays many of Gumpert's compositions as well as works by Wickihalder, Griener, and Roder. Berg Noglik says of the quartet, They make progress in bringing the swing back to free jazz.

EVERYTHING MOVES

Drawing on the span of jazz history from stride to free improvisation, along with inspiration from hip-hop, funk, and Washington D.C.'s unique go-go sound, Gilchrist's music thrives on making surprising connections between styles and influences, boldly veering from pile-driver funk to piquant stride, vigorous swing to hip-hop swagger, contemplative abstraction to deep-bottom grooves. Gilchrist has toured extensively with David Murray, and his compositions have graced the soundtracks of David Simon's acclaimed series The Wire, The Deuce & Treme. Lafayette leads the genre-defying ensembles the New Volcanoes and the Sonic Trip Masters All Stars, and along with bassist Michael Formanek & drummer Eric Kennedy, is a member of the adventurous collective trio Inside Out. In 2017, Gilchrist was named a Local Legend by Baltimore Magazine, while Baltimore City Paper named Lafayette Gilchrist and the New Volcanoes as "Best Band." In 2018 he was chosen as a Baker Artist Award winner. Gilchrist has performed with Cassandra Wilson, Macy Gray, Oliver Lake, Andrew Cyrille, Orrin Evans, Paul Dunmall, Hamid Drake, William Parker, and many more. His previous album Dark Matter (2019), Gilchrist's second solo recording, muses on the elusive and mysterious matter that ties the universe together and landed on numerous critics' best of 2019 lists. The double album NOW features Herman Burney (bass) and Eric Kennedy (drums). "New Orleans barrelhouse piano, the Impressionism of Ravel, and Duke Ellington's jaggy solo-piano sound form the bedrock of Lafayette Gilchrist's style at the keyboard. But if there's one big influence on the way he thinks about rhythm, it's the deeply swinging 'pocket' of a classic go-go beat." - Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times "Lafayette Gilchrist has dug deep into [jazz piano] history... he's tapping into jazz's spiritual, historical and cultural roots. He's an old soul at ease in the modern world." -Kevin Whitehead, NPR's Fresh Air

NYC FIVE

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BLUE SHROUD