In the case of Jump!, the third release on the Intakt label by Swiss soprano saxophonist Jurg Wickihalder, the presence of Irene Schweizer, one of the most consistently provocative and imaginative pianists to emerge from the revolutionary period of the late '60s, says a great deal about his willingness to explore new avenues of improvisation, while maintaining a creative relationship with established jazz traditions. In so doing, he's taking advantage of the best of both worlds. 'Unintentionally, spontaneously, amusingly, most Monkish - these playful interjections are only a fragment of the true nature of Wickihalder's achievement; when he takes US to surprising new places, the past coexists with the present, nothing is lost, experience is rewarded, and the music lives' (Art Lange).

NOW

SCHLIPPENBACH PLAYS MONK

SECRET KEEPER: SUPER EIGHT

EDGE OF THE LIGHT

HANS HASSLER

SPRING

Saxophonist and composer Ingrid Laubrock is at the center of today's Brooklyn avant-garde, and over the past decade has steadily expanded her reach as a composer, devising new ways to inspire, organize, and situate improvised music. Monochromes marks a new chapter in her oeuvre, as she has written and designed richly detailed fixed-media works as a starting point for improvisations. "In early 2020, just before the pandemic shut down, she began to record the sonic materials that would serve as the fixed media in the piece. Laubrock asked a handful of close collaborators to realize her scores, which mix conventional and graphic notation with text instructions. In each of the four sections of the uninterrupted work (or monochromes), seriously kinetic, shape-shifting tape pieces unfurl, giving a set of additional improvisers an often unpredictable sonic provocation". With Monochromes, Ingrid Laubrock presents an artistic statement that reflects the turbulence of an age gone off the rails.

With Kris Davis, Stephan Crump and Eric McPherson, the Borderlands Trio unites three luminaries who have grown together to form a trio full of the magic of their own distinct sound and fine grooves. Brooklyn bassist Stephan Crump initiated the band and has kept it together for seven years. The band's two previous releases were lauded by jazz critics. This band knows no rush. Developments build up cautiously, moods change slowly and intensify. The music takes it's time to explore the subtle nuances of a patient and generous musical dialog. Rewilder, this new double album, is further proof that the classical piano trio in the hands of Stephan Crump, Kris Davis and Eric McPherson holds a world of vast possibilities, revealing the adventures of improvisation and the bliss of free play.

SO LONG ERIC-HOMAGE TO ERIC DOLPHY

Saxophonist Ohad Talmor, an expressive improviser and superb stylist, is a worldly cosmopolitan with nationalities in France, Switzerland, Israel and the United States. Born in Lyon and raised in Geneva, he came to New York in 1995 to study music. Since then, he has been a "mover and shaker" in the creative Brooklyn jazz scene. This project focuses on previously unreleased compositions by Ornette Coleman. Ohad Talmor reports that as a companion, friend and heir to the artistic legacy, he found three tapes from an Ornette Coleman and Lee Konitz rehearsal recording in the apartment of Lee Konitz, who died in 2020. Talmor transcribed the compositions. The result is Back to the Land, a double album Talmor recorded with his core trio of bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Eric McPherson, as well as various high-profile guest musicians. Newly discovered compositions by a jazz great, transformed into another artist's personal story - it's hard to capture the essence of jazz any better.

ZATTER

With his extensive artistic biography, Michael Formanek is one of the most outstanding figures in American jazz, as a composer, as a bassist in ensembles, and as a soloist. The fact that the bassist has been an integral part of the creative music scene for several decades speaks for his creativity and versatility. Now Michael Formanek presents the long-awaited second album with his groundbreaking Elusion Quartet, which brings together four highly acclaimed musicians from the New York jazz scene - pianist Kris Davis, saxophonist Tony Malaby and drummer Ches Smith. "As Things Do is yet another testament to Formanek's encyclopedic conception.[...] Michael Formanek is that rare musician who, all the while retaining absolute integrity and focus, can let the music range where it will: in his own words, letting things go where they're going to go, As Things Do" writes Alexander Hawkins in the liner notes.

It is impressive how, over the last three years, the Austrian keyboard instrumentalist Elias Stemeseder and the German percussionist Christian Lillinger have developed a remarkable artistic partnership, which has already found expression in a series of different recordings. Expanding into a quartet with Peter Evans and Russell Hall, they reveal further facets of their collaboration on Umbra II. Unlike it's production-heavy predecessor Umbra, the music on Umbra II is entirely acoustic and the band's sound has a classical feel. This album, which has the strongest and most direct connection to the jazz tradition to date, was recorded at the venerable Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. "The duo are always looking ahead, whether that means bringing in new collaborators, embracing novel techniques, or adding new tools to it's instrumental arsenal. Umbra ll represents one leg of an ongoing journey. Here's hoping the destination always remains elusive", writes Peter Margasak in the liner notes.

SO VIEL SCHON HIN & 15 HERBSTLIEDER

The instrumentalists of The Mayfield have together created the music to the large scale performance Everything that happened and would happen by Heiner Goebbels - a music theatre piece on Europe as a historical and contemporary 'construction site'. The band is named after the Mayfield Depot, a vast disused railway station in Manchester, in which they rehearsed and created the work. It inspired the aesthetics of the music. The instrumentation is dedicated to a coexistence of acoustic and electronic sources, ranging from percussion, as the earliest and universal source of musical expression, to birdcalls, saxophones and prepared grand piano and to Ondes Martenot, one of the first electronic instruments. An invented electric guitar added with digital sensors bridges the gap between these different sonic universes. The Mayfield music results in soundscapes between controlled noise and 'musique concr�te instrumentale'. At La Muse en Circuit - the Parisian recording studio designed specifically for electro-acoustic music that Luc Ferrari established in 1982 - the musicians recorded 95 improvised pieces. Willi Bopp, who has worked closely with Goebbels for 35 years, subsequently created a collage of those selections, which were further winnowed and sequenced into the seamless 16-track selection featured on this remarkable album. "The collective's brand of free improvisation is stunning, a liquid form of electro-acoustic music of uncommon physicality, depth, and dynamics that sounds like little else in the realm of contemporary experimental music", writes Peter Margasak in the liner notes.

OCTOPUS

Aki Takase, the Berlin-based pianist, is one of the great personalities of modern jazz. Moments of freedom, form and humour characterize this stylistically versatile avant-gardist, the stubborn virtuoso who toys with jazz traditions. In the year of her 70th birthday, Aki Takase was honoured with The Berlin Jazz Prize. Recorded over two days at the Sendesaal Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, the album includes some pieces captured live during the award ceremony, and some recorded in a studio setting in the same historic room. The piece Bach Factory features Alexander von Schlippenbach as a guest and the Japanese author Yoko Tawada appears on Hokahoka Hokosai. Aki Takase is inspired by the Japanese painter Katsushika Hokusai. For Aki Takase, Hokusai was a hugely passionate and brilliant artist with an experimental mind who lived only with and for his paintings. "Hokusai showed so many directions in painting, which is why I wanted to convey various colours in improvisation. Music is like a colour. For me, red and light-blue are gentle colours. These were the colours that I felt. That's my internal landscape. I feel a strong connection to Hokusai. "

BIRDIES OF LULU

DEDICATIONS

Since 2017, the two virtuoso improvisers and unmistakable stylists Ingrid Laubrock and Tom Rainey have been celebrating music as a duo. A classic duo that releases energy, pulsating vividly while simultaneously withdrawing into intimacy. A celebration of successful interplay, burning for the moment. Brink is a fascinating example of jazz as the art of dialogue. In a profound and telepathic way, Laubrock and Rainey understand each other and speak to each other through the music. "We listeners will often find ourselves breathing as Ingrid and Tom breathe, as they cherish space along with vivid instrumental ideas", writes Nels Cline in the liner notes and adds: "The duo of Ingrid Laubrock and Tom Rainey has been it's own beautiful story as this golden couple has coalesced to create music that, while evincing the natural breaths of humble human existence, also possesses magic." - Ingrid Laubrock: Soprano and Tenor Saxophones & Tom Rainey: Drums

Everybody who is slightly interested in modern jazz knows the name of Mark Helias. The American double bass player has worked with everyone from Ed Blackwell, Don Cherry and Carlos Ward to Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrams and Cecil Taylor. With Tom Rainey (dr) and Tony Malady (ts), Helias founded the trio OPEN LOOSE in 1996 to play his compositions which allow open form improvisation. As the three musicians get familiar with the pieces they recompose them on the bandstand. "The most interesting developments come when we start altering the compositions in a creative way, maintaining the spirit of the piece but taking it somewhere else, into an unimagined place," says Helias. "Every time we come together it's different, it's new and wonderful."

VIER HALBE

LIVE IN ZURICH

Aru�n Ortiz, acclaimed as a piano cubist, excellent jazz improviser and wayward stylist who strays far from Cuban music while remaining so deeply rooted in Cuba's musical tradition, presents an impressive trio album with two congenial collaborators Brad Jones and John Betsch. Cuban influences from toques, rumba and Afro-Haitian music blend with European art music and modern jazz. "Serran�as is a special album for a double anniversary: the 20th anniversary of the recording debut as a leader in the United States and the 50th birthday milestone of Aru�n Ortiz, a pianist-composer from Santiago de Cuba who has become an undisputed protagonist of the New York avant-garde jazz scene thanks to the original processes of abstract Cuban creative crossfertilization that he composes with unusual Afro-Cuban/Haitian accents," writes Gian Franco Grilli in the liner notes.