THE ARRIVAL

Jo�lle L�andre is a living legend. It is almost impossible to list all the international greats of free music with whom L�andre has played in her decades-long career. With Zurich Concert, the magician and rebel on the double bass presents an impressive solo statement. "It is no coincidence that she once described the bass as her bedrock, her spinal column and the place where she stores her memories. Jo�lle L�andre does not play music, she lives it... (she) spins a continuous thread of sound which never snaps. On the contrary, she keeps spinning it onwards. We hear both high energy and quiet tenderness, but the transitions are always seamless and organic. In her bass playing and with her voice. No stopping, no pause within the individual improvisations. Onwards, ever onwards. A true magician of sound," writes Nina Polaschegg in the liner notes.

Alchemia Garden: the album's wonderful title, creates an enchanting, ambiguous effect. Lucas Niggli relates the organic, biological and growing, which develops on it's own and is cultivated and maintained in the form of the garden, to the metamorphosis of material, the scientific search for something unknown which historically has been seen to generate something new. During his thirty years of playing live Lucas Niggli recorded with many musicians like Aly Kei�ta, Barry Guy, Sylvie Courvoisier, Luciano Biondini, Michel Godard, Andreas Schaerer, Nils Wogram, Elliott Sharp, Steamboat Switzerland, Erika Stucky. He has occasionally given solo concerts, for example a performance at the big John Cage Festival in Switzerland in the late 1980s at which Cage himself witnessed Niggli's performance of 27' 10.554" for a Percussionist. It is time, in the best sense, for Lucas Niggli to release a solo album. What a great way to celebrate one's own 50th birthday - with this gift to himself and the listener. New York critic Laurence Donohue-Greene writes in the liner notes: "as a drummer blessed with a percussionist's intuitive sense and virtuosic capability and range, Niggli's memorable solo performances here unquestionably add to the tradition of the great solo drummers who preceded him while keeping an eye on the horizon."

The album 'To Roy' dedicated to trumpeter Roy Campbell, who died in 2014, is the first collaboration between saxophonist Oliver Lake and double bass player William Parker - two important pioneers of contemporary jazz, two great musicians of the USA and two masters of composition and improvisation. After playing a concert in "The Stone" in New York, part of Intakt's festival in January 2012, Lake and Parker took up the label's invitation to record their first album together in Pater Karl's studio in Brooklyn. Both musicians contributed compositions of rare beauty. Shaped by their long experience, their intimacy created spaces for interaction and exciting improvisations. The instruments of these two mature players mingled to create a single unique sound.

Trance Map+ is an electro-acoustic formation in constant motion. Founded by electronic musician, turntable player and sound designer Matt Wright and saxophonist Evan Parker, the band is in a constant process of transformation, renewal and expansion, both conceptually and also due to fluctuations in personnel. Etching the Ether features star trumpeter Peter Evans and percussionist Mark Nauseef. This new musical adventure began with a trio recording by Parker, Wright and Evans, with Evan Parker asking Mark Nauseef for "intro, interludes and a coda", material which was added in post-production. "What arises in the process is a determinedly plural space, a temporal cubism, a dream time that's omnidirectional. Reverb is less an effect than a new relationship, echoing 'back' as it moves forward", writes Stuart Broomer in the liner notes.

D'AGALA

YOU ARE HERE

What cements the relationship of Swiss saxophonist Co Streiff and American trumpeter Russ Johnson, is a shared belief that being progressive doesn't automatically require abandoning melody or groove. Their experience is the best in cross-cultural exchange. Streiff and Johnson coalesce for a wonderful sound, almost Vintage Blue Note before jumping decades to sound as modern as anything else out there. Most groups are either rife with nostalgia or, conversely, exchange method for memorability. The best do both, and Streiff and Johnson have accomplished that with their first effort.

ALL DECKS

SONGS FOR KOMMENO

REFIRE

Drummer and bandleader Jim Black has been one of the most influential figures in progressive jazz since the nineties. In this new formation, Black brings together the young musicians Asger Nissen, Julius Gawlik, Felix Henkelhausen, who are among the most original and articulate voices of European jazz innovation, with the same basic instrumentation as two of the greatest bands Black has propelled and helped shape from behind the kit: Tim Berne's Bloodcount and the collective Endangered Blood. The music of this energetic quartet has a feverish intensity and from the first note the quartet's music goes straight for the jugular. Many influences and ideas come together without ever resorting to genre-hopping. "The music thrives on immediacy, and in some ways it's a visceral rejection of any kind of passivity", writes Peter Margasak in the liner notes.

Tim Berne's work is characterized by tireless artistic dedication and creativity. His newly formed trio with accordionist and multi-instrumentalist Aurora Nealand and cellist Hank Roberts takes the listener on a sonically adventurous journey on Oceans And and delights with much imagination and amazing musical diversity. The pieces are penned by Tim Berne and all open doors to infinite interpretation and development. "The breathtaking music, created by Tim Berne, Aurora Nealand, and Hank Roberts can be deservedly and on all accounts deemed: profound, probing, intriguing, distinct, intricate, raw, courageous, mysterious, and thoughtful. The group's concerted effort to achieve a cohesive blend is a refreshing relief. An honest crusade of in-depth imagination, this music is a beacon of light in an unsettling world," writes Baikida Carroll in the liner notes and adds: "It stimulates the brain, animates the imagination, and charms the heart."

With the Sound Of Serendipity Tentet, Lucas Niggli, who hasbeen at the forefront of Swiss-European jazz for many years, brings together some of the most exciting musicians from the local jazz and improvisation scene. Stirring music is created in a highly original playing instruction via 40 composed playing cards, implemented by this ten-member ensemble of strong personalities and the factor of chance. And so, Play! Is a vehicle to negotiate a spectrum of composed and improvised behaviour in the form of a card game played over three rounds. "On the one hand, we hear a composition which sounds like an expansion of Lucas Niggli's musical character: mercurial, highly detailed, uncannily responsive to others, unafraid of groove. And yet on the other, I suspect that the listener familiar with the individual performers on the recording will smile to themselves at how vibrantly those performers' own individual characteristics are set into relief by Niggli's game".

Flutist, saxophonist and composer Anna Webber is a central figure in the New York jazz scene and is considered one of the most innovative musicians of the younger generation with a surprising range of activity. Her work has been hailed as "visionary and compelling" in the intersection of avant-garde jazz and new classical music, and her previous albums have ranked at the top of various jazz album best lists (including the NPR Jazz Critics Poll and the New York Times). In 2020 she was voted the best "Rising Star" flutist in the Downbeat Critic's Poll and in the 2023 poll she's listed in 5 seperate categories. In 2021, she was named a Berlin Prize Fellow and each of her records features musicians at the forefront of the intersecting worlds of improvised music and contemporary classical composition. With Adam O'Farrill, Mariel Roberts, Elias Stemeseder and Lesley Mok, Anna Webber's new band Shimmer Wince brings together the most innovative voices on the American jazz scene.

MILLER'S TALE

ROULETTE OF THE CRADLE

Ulrich Gumpert and Gunter 'Baby' Sommer's second duo-release on Intakt Records spans a wide arch of blues, boogie-woogie, hard bop, arrangements of German folk songs and free jazz. Sommer's drum fills clearly show why he got his nickname from Louis Armstrong's drummer Baby Dodd's; while a piece like 'Preubbische Elegie' demonstrates what a great composer Gumpert is. Oscar Peterson, Red Garland, Hampton Hawes and Roland Hanna are all on the recording.

CUB(AN)ISM

GOING SOUTH

SCHLIPPENBACH / PARKER / LOVENS: WARSAW CONCERT

British pianist and composer Alexander Hawkins is a creative epicenter of the London jazz scene and is regarded as one of the most innovative musicians with a surprising radius of action. His trio with Neil Charles and Stephen Davis was formed in 2012 and masterfully celebrates the connection of freedom and structure, composition and improvisation. Carnival Celestial is a fantastic work of musical presence and impressively proves what is possible with piano, bass and drums - one of the more convention-laden formats in jazz practice. "Hawkins, Charles, and Davis clearly have moved the piano trio forward and stretched it's conceptual horizons with Carnival Celestial, and in doing so, they have contributed to it's ongoing vitality," writes Bill Shoemaker in the liner notes.

OUTSIDE THIS AREA

Born in 1990, pianist Elias Stemeseder has become a creative force of contemporary jazz in recent years. Based primarily in New York since 2015, the Austrian-born pianist has made a name for himself in a wide variety of advanced improvisational contexts. Up to now, Stemeseder has been content to work as a sideman, though all those familiar with his work in the Jim Black Trio will know that he is a musician of remark - able skill, flair and imagination. His diverse playing ranges from songoriented to contemporary classical pieces to electronic music. His spirit of discovery leads him into different musical realms and thanks to his great empathy for the respective musical idiom, his piano playing always captivates with authenticity. Deeply rooted in the tradition of jazz and equipped with a fearless passion of experimentation, he distinguishes himself on this solo album as a profound pianist with a sovereign will to create. He is an inventive improviser whose playing sparkles with complexity and conceptual verve. On Piano Solo, Stemeseder skillfully plays with structures and moods and presents an album that is laden with surprises and bursting with ideas.

Under the band title 'Where's Africa', Omri Ziegele has long played with Ir�ne Schweizer. Now he presents That Hat, his second album in the trio formation with keyboardist Yves Theiler and drummer Dario Sisera. The three are interested in an Africa seen through the eyepiece of Central European musicians who know everything from jazz to rock. "There are certain jazz recordings that have great appeal even for people who don't consider themselves jazz aficionados: Memphis Underground by Herbie Mann, African Marketplace by Abdullah Ibrahim, Swiss Movement by Les McCann and Eddie Harris, Carla Bley's Dinner Music. That Hat, the new album by Omri Ziegele's trio Where's Africa, may well find a place in this tradition", writes Manfred Papst in the liner notes.