For the third installment of Ingrid Laubrock's duo series on Intakt (following Kasumi with Aki Takase and Blood Moon with Kris Davis) Ingrid Laubrock and Andy Milne develop their own sounds in a common sound world. Fragile is characterized by the great empathy that unites these two artists. The music, which is both stirring and soothing, confident and intuitive, is deeply expressive and inventive. "Laubrock's growth as an original writer and improviser has been marked in the last two decades, during which time she has led several bands, notably Sleepthief and Anti-House, and proved adept at creating for large ensembles and small groups that revealed her own individuality, mostly within avant-garde traditions. As for Milne he has more than fulfilled the promise he showed as a member of Steve Coleman's Metrics in the early '90s. The Laubrock- Milne duo has a balance between the drive and momentum of large ensembles and the stillness and engagement with silence and space of smaller groups. Making music that releases a form of energy, something that pulses with life, while also drawing down into intimacy, suggesting feelings of tenderness or uncertainty, is no mean feat", writes Kevin Le Gendre in the liner notes.

With Quiet Passion, pianist Yuko Fujiyama finally releases another album as a leader after a long break from publishing. For this eagerly awaited addition to her sparse discography, Yuko invites the great innovators Graham Haynes on cornet and Ikue Mori on electronics. The album is a mix of piano solos, duets and extraordinarily imaginative densely woven miniatures. Quiet Passion suggests a dual intention in both the title and the music - a cross-pollination of emotions that the three musicians impressively create. Regarding the instrumentation, Yuko says: "Good musicians listening to one another. I like totally free, because - I'm free, and anything I hear at that moment is allowed." Laurence Donohue-Greene writes in the liner notes: "It may have taken 17 years of woodshedding - in essence shedding off layers and decades of influences ranging from Cecil Taylor and Marilyn Crispell to Beethoven and Japanese composer- Takemitsu - but she has gotten to the core of a very personal style, as if discovering within herself a finely cut diamond." A defining characteristic of Quiet Passion is keeping the listener in suspense, with each piece developing a magical appeal.

Hidden Heartache is 100 minutes of piano music from the last 100 years in the context of social inequality and unequal power relations. The Swiss pianist Simone Keller is both courageous and fearless with an eye for the essentials and for the big issues of the day. The album is a self portrait and an homage, with Keller asking herself which piano music of the last 100 years deserves greater attention. � It soon becomes obvious that there are thousands of hours of unheard, unplayed works by underrepresented composers. The selection I ultimately made is very personal, and closely connected to my own pianistic activities. But it was also very important to me that Hidden Heartache should not merely gather together historical figures, but also present compositions of today that reveal varied perspectives on societal and power inequalities while at the same time paying homage to the music of Julius Eastman and Julia Amanda Perry. These new works by the Swiss composers Jessie Cox and Cristina Janett, and the Americans Julie Herndon and Jessie Marino, were created in direct collaboration with me �, writes Simone Keller.

The young jazz pianist Marie Kru�ttli hails from the French-speaking part of Switzerland and has gained an outstanding international reputation in recent years with her trio and solo work. Now she presents Transparence, her first solo piano album. After a classical education, she became more and more interested in other forms of musical expression, particularly jazz, in which she discovered a music which allows a different physicality and intuition. Kru�ttli's music follows an intuitive approach, with a broad harmonic vocabulary and rhythmic finesse. In the liner notes, Jordannah Elizabeth calls Kru�ttli "a young visionary and a premiere European jazz pianist whose touching, penetrating compositions make waves throughout the jazz community and beyond."

The quintet of Zurich tenor saxophonist Christoph Irniger presents it's fifth album on Intakt Records on the occasion of the band's 10th anniversary. Over the years, the band has created a distinct ensemble identity and has matured into one of the most exciting ensembles of young European jazz. As a well-rehearsed unit, the band on Ghost Cat fulfills all the expectations that are nowadays placed on modern and innovative jazz based on an internal band democracy. "There is both clarity and maturity in the improvisational process plus a greater awareness of what each other is doing - at both an interpersonal level and how everyone fits into the overall architecture of the performance. Each player clearly understands the material at hand and constructs their improvisation around the mood of the composition and the collective endeavour, rather than launching out on their own personal muse", writes Stuart Nicholson in the liner notes.

Umbra is the new album by pianist, composer, and electronic musician Elias Stemeseder and drummer, composer, and producer Christian Lillinger. As a core duo, they are planning a long-term series of releases, each with guest musicians playing a key role. "Their works explore the principles of time and space, growing from quiet melodies into broad statements. On Umbra, Stemeseder and Lillinger continue to expand their palette, bringing together an eclectic group of collaborators - New York based musicians Brandon Seabrook, DoYeon Kim, Peter Evans, and Russell Hall - to build off of their ideas, combining the textures of strings and percussion to weave together a visceral sonic tapestry", writes Vanessa Ague in the liner notes and adds: "Each piece on the album offers it's own careful examination of sound, peering into every fleeting moment to unearth some new texture or timbre that's hiding within each instrument."

David Virelles presents an eagerly awaited debut album with this superb trio on Intakt Records. Born in Santiago de Cuba, the pianist and composer has established himself on the international jazz scene with his Afro-Cuban influenced keyboard artistry and has made a name for himself with numerous collaborations with artists such as Henry Threadgill, Andrew Cyrille, Chris Potter, Wadada Leo Smith, Tom Harrell, Milford Graves and Ravi Coltrane, among others. Eight of the nine compositions on Carta are penned by Virelles and all open doors to free interpretation and development. Oscillating between composition and improvisation, this trio brings together three of the most influential voices in contemporary US jazz. Carta was recorded at the legendary Rudy van Gelder Studio, and in lieu of liner notes, poet Malik Crumpler has contributed a poem inspired by the music on the album and by his conversations with the musicians.

David Murray is a giant of modern jazz. His saxophone fuses all the great things that black music has produced: Gospel sounds, free jazz, Afro-Caribbean, blues and soul as well as the beautiful standards of classic jazz. Murray's colorful tone, unsurpassed intonation, flair for swing, melancholy tones, and improvisational power and ingenuity make him one of the most important voices in music today. The newly formed Brave New World Trio congregates style-setting jazz greats with bassist Brad Jones and drummer Hamid Drake. Together they draw from the African-American tradition as well as from other cultures and with Seriana Promethea they present an impressive musical statement. "The result shows the intuitive level of understanding achieved. Having reached in his mid-60s a level of technical mastery where a musician 'can play every note that he hears,' Murray saw this pianoless trio as not just a way to keep the notes flowing, but a catalyst for total freedom: that rare configuration that allows him to deliver, through the saxophone, "my most free expression of myself", writes Derek Schilling in the liner notes.

The sound art of the Swiss trio Quiet Tree can be located in a musical square, in which programming, producing and musical virtuosity come together. With a keen sense for atmospheric moods, the music drifts through multi-faceted soundscapes. Euphorbia grooves, irritates and breathes the vastness and laconic tranquility of a Nordic landscape surrounded by an aura of melancholy. "Improvisation, electronic avant garde and jazzrock psychedelia create an intense fusion. Simon Spiess on tenor saxofone, Marc M�an on grand piano and synthesizer and Jonas Ruther on drums, as a collective they all share the ability to subordinate their playing to a musical storytelling. Their sound has cinematic qualities", writes Luise Wolf in the Liner Notes. Furthermore the album's digital production by Dan Nicholls carries the weight of a fourth instrument.

A supergroup is what the German music magazine Jazzthetik calls Punkt. Vrt. Plastik. Kaja Draksler, Petter Eldh and Christian Lillinger make up this trio - "Two musicians and one musician who are among the most exciting and active that the European avant-garde has to offer. " And Die Zeit writes: "They reinterpret an entire genre at once: the good old piano trio. " The trio convinces with a highly individual sound and a rarely heard clarity and precision, even where there is free improvisation and where rhythm, melody and metrics dissolve. Now, a year after their celebrated album Somit, they present an impressive live statement that takes up the material from their eponymous first album and Somit and impressively demonstrates the live realizations of studio ideas. "It is a stunning reminder that whatever else it can be, music is a fundamentally communicative enterprise. It is our great fortune that the microphones were up on this night so that Punkt. Vrt. Plastik can again tell us what they said", writes Alexander Hawkins in the liner notes.

Kaja Draksler and Susana Santos Silva are among the most original and articulate voices of European jazz innovation. Their art fuses composition and free improvisation with structures, musical logic and advanced techniques. Both defy stylistic and historical boundaries and have found a highly personal expression in both their compositions and their improvisational playing, which is colourful, intricate and abstract. "The way they lure and steer each other to as yet uncovered territory is testimony to their never-ending search for meaning and (self-)discovery through sound. By letting their guards down, they are creating new contexts, paradoxes and challenges, based on human content and expressive breath. It is exactly this sense of renewal and growth that comes to the fore here," writes Guy Peters in the liner notes.

Dreamlike experiences. Sparks fly and a musical interaction works without arrangement or plan. An organic musical process develops out of intuition alone. The same magic happens every time. When Brandon Lopez, a New Yorker with Puerto Rican roots, joined the duo of saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and drummer Tom Rainey, this wasn't simply about adding a plus one to the Laubrock - Rainey duo. Thanks to the young bassist (born 1988), already collaborating with musicians from Dave Liebman via Zeena Parkins to John Zorn, a new dynamic has formed involving all three. In this triangular constellation a different balance is achieved and an altered play of energies. They are clearly on the same wavelength, with a similar sense and understanding of overarching form, inner structure, timing, feeling, energy, density, transparency and volume. "Right from the first note the chemistry between them was right. The interplay between the three worked so effortlessly and naturally it bordered on telepathy. The three want to keep up the momentum and capture the magic moment," writes Christoph Wagner in the liner notes.

Swiss-born pianist and composer Sylvie Courvoisier is one of the most internationally renowned jazz pianists, at home in both concert halls and jazz clubs. A formative figure on the contemporary jazz scene for 20 years, she is known for her ability to combine two different worlds - the detailed chamber music of her European roots and the experimental sounds of the jazz scene in New York, where she has been at home for all this time. She released her first and so far only solo album in 2007. And so it's high time for another testimony to the art of her solo playing, which is as playful as it is intense, and as rooted in tradition as it is searching and adventurous. "At the same time, in her solo music too, one can hear that Sylvie Courvoisier is an artist who never revolves only around herself. The immense spectrum of her pianistic expressive power and the broad width of her compositional imagination is shaped by her constant curiosity about perspectives other than her own. Thelonious Monk, Geri Allen, Olivier Messiaen and, most recently, Igor Stravinsky", writes Julia Neupert in the liner notes. She adds: "On this album, not only do we hear the multi-faceted self-portrait of one of the most remarkable pianists of our time. Sylvie Courvoisier also shares with us her conviction that playing alone does not mean being alone."

The captivating trio The Choir Invisible, comprised of Brooklyn's creative music scene notables Charlotte Greve, Vinnie Sperrazza and Chris Tordini, present a long-awaited second album. On Town of Two Faces, they continue to develop their organic language, which allows the interplay to be dense and freer without a harmony instrument, into a lively dialog. "The music seemed to appear so easily, with a lot of flexibility, wandering from something extremely tender, subtle and quiet to a collective big, intense outpouring of energy," says German-born Brooklyn-based Greve. Tordini adds: "I believe the real sweet spot of our band is a kind of quiet intensity." In addition, Fay Victor gives the trio's sound it's own character with her charismatic voice as a guest on one track. "With all three bandmembers bringing compositions to the table the emotional and structural content of their music is pleasingly broad, but one dominant aspect is a sense of measure, if not restraint" - Kevin Le Gendre

Tim Berne, pioneer of New York's legendary "downtown scene", and his long-time duo partner Matt Mitchell on piano release the album One More, Please - an impressive and refreshing example of the art of improvisation. The two virtuoso instrumentalists have worked together for more than ten years - including in Berne's acclaimed band Snakeoil - and over this time have developed a distinctive language and musical depth in a dynamic musical relationship. Six of the seven tracks on One More, Please are written by Berne, with all of them opening doors to endless interpretation and development. "With this duo, there's always a further possibility and always the courage to take it on and see it through," writes Django Bates in the liner notes, and adds: "The deconstructions, reconstructions, explorations and extrapolations of great improvisors reconfigure our brains and fine-tune our ears, as you will discover here with One More, Please."

Chris Speed's superb trio with bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Dave King continues to write it's band history with Despite Obstacles, their third album on Intakt Records. Releasing ten years after their debut album, Despite Obstacles is a testament to the band's continued vitality. Speed, a recent member of the newly arranged The Bad Plus where he is reunited with Dave King in another working band, explains the constitutive impetus for this trio: "The initial idea for this trio was to play more swing-based music, to stay in a jazz-trio world." and Kevin Whitehead adds in the liner notes: "Some saxophonists use trios to stretch way out. Chris Speed has other ideas. 'I gravitate to getting to the point - featuring the song. I love to explore and open things up but there needs to be a directness as well.' "

In August 2023, guitarist Elliott Sharp met with fellow guitarists Sally Gates and Tashi Dorji in his Manhattan recording studio. Ere Guitar celebrates the great art of the guitar, played by musicians who seek new paths and create the current sound of the day. "The line-up of the album Ere Guitar initially ties in with it's predecessor Err Guitar with Mary Halvorson and Marc Ribot (Intakt CD 281). Here, too, we meet a trio chosen by Elliott Sharp, whose focus is on spontaneous improvisation. Although the compositional element was greater on Err Guitar and reduced to a minimum on Ere Guitar, these two albums are in no way complementary. Together they recount the search for the unexpected, the unheard, for a formal and tonal complexity that develops from the encounter of three creative musicians", writes Harry Lachner in the liner notes.

With Release, the highly acclaimed Lisbeth Quartett presents a greatly anticipated album on Intakt Records. After twelve years and five albums, Charlotte Greve, who has just been awarded the German Jazz Prize for "Artist of the Year", has relied on her intuitive sensibilities to create the new music for Release. The result is an album marked by sensitive interplay - a collection of stunningly subtle and melodically pronounced songs that are both gentle and powerfully fluid. Even if the musicians are across the world in Berlin or New York City, all traveling and working on their respective projects, they seem to meld and blend with ease because of their history together and their knowledge of each other's instrumental styles. "They have all cultivated the ability to play their instruments gently and cleanly aligning with the style of even sounds and tone they have refined throughout their journeys together. Twelve years is a long time and the span of thousands of moments that they have shared having brought them to where they are today, working as a unit, creating new music in this post-modern era and continuing their legacy as a leading band in the international jazz landscape", writes Jordannah Elizabeth in the liner notes.

Every new album by saxophonist, flutist, and composer Anna Webber feels like a revelation, and a huge step forward in a discography of the highest quality. Anna Webber's simpletrio2000 which comes a decade after the release of the group's debut Simple, expresses their deep curiosity and tireless creativity. At the intersection of avant-garde jazz and new classical music, Webber's work has been hailed as "visionary and captivating". With her previous albums, she has regularly ranked at the top of the relevant charts. The Simple Trio is her longest-running band. Since it's formation in 2013, few bands in improvised music have displayed such an effervescent energy and adventurous spirit. The group, which also includes drummer John Hollenbeck and pianist Matt Mitchell - both accomplished composers and bandleaders - makes music that is anything but 'simple'. But the complexity of the music, which cannot be ignored, is accompanied by a stormy cheerfulness, and Peter Margasak raves about the "addictive energy and interplay occurring within the trio at all times."

Two years after the acclaimed live album Zurich Concert, which featured trumpeter Jamie Branch, the Dave Gisler trio adds another guest for a studio album - the giant of modern jazz - David Murray. Just as the trio immediately hit it off with Branch, Murray is furiously integrated into the band's punchy music, with the presence of both the trumpeter and tenor saxophonist opening up the group's sound. The resulting body of sound, propelled by punkish energy and the driving force of rock, the free-form aesthetics of the sixties and the cadences of modern jazz, navigates into open musical realms. "But there's no doubt that as Branch's final note resounds, Gisler and his collaborators will soldier on driven by a need to make music together," writes Peter Margasak in the liner notes.

Intakt Records is delighted to release their first collaboration with New York saxophonist and visionary instrumentalist, composer and activist Caroline Davis. Portals, Volume 2: Returning is a dedication to Caroline Davis' grandmother, Joan "Lady" Anson Weber, a British poet (1927-2010) who is a direct inspiration for Davis's artistic life. The pieces on "Portals, Volume 2" were written by Davis for her current quintet, which consists of some of the leading voices in American jazz - Marquis Hill, Julian Shore, Chris Tordini and Allan Mednard. They are joined by several guests, including flutist Nicole Mitchell, as well as vocal instrumentalists Jen Shyu, Nappy Nina, Julia Easterlin and Alexa Barchini to honor Lady's poetry with their voices (using spoken word and song). "Portals Volume 2: Returning, is an extremely special record. It is incredibly personal, but the spirit of the music is so generous and so vulnerable that the specificities of it's subject become invitations for the listener to experience the perspectival shifts of grief as an ecstatic pathway towards greater empathy", writes Wendy Eisenberg in the liner notes.

50 years OM! The band wrote history from 1972 to 1982 combining the energy of rock music with the power of free improvisation. With enormous vitality they bring together the experiences of a young generation electrified by Jimi Hendrix, fascinated by John Coltrane and inspired by free jazz. OM brought rock music into spontaneous musical processes with uncertain endings. After a long break from touring, the band returned in 2008 with a brilliant concert at the Willisau Jazz Festival. After another break, they presented the 2020 album "It's About Time". Now OM reinvents itself again and presents a brilliant musical statement for their 50th anniversary. "There are moments all over their records when I find myself in an incredible polyrhythmic thicket or deep cosmic space, and I pause, thinking, "Wait, how did we get here?" That's OM to me. With decades of growth and exploration, together and separately, OM are making their best music right now," writes Jason Bivins in the liner notes.

Limited Edition - Hand Numbered. 3760396023355 DGGF355.1 44656171 30.75 40.98 .87 DIGGERS FACTORY VINYL LP POP JAZZ 11/15/2024 https://mediacdn.aent-m.com/prod-img/500/29/4374529-3280964.jpg 10 2 N KRUTTLI ,MARIE SCORIA Following the solo piano album Transparence, released on Intakt Records in 2023, Marie Kr�ttli, a jazz pianist from western Switzerland who is celebrated as a young visionary and a premiere European jazz pianist whose touching, penetrating compositions make waves throughout the jazz community and beyond", now presents the trio album Scoria together with bassist Lukas Traxel and drummer Gautier Garrigue. Together they draw on a broad vocabulary ranging from classical to jazz and contemporary music, in which the studio is an instrument and post-production an ally of performance. Fresh, bold and inspiring, the trio explores every possible aspect of playing together, sometimes with chamber music transparency, sometimes dense and impetuous, and always with captivating intensity. "And in creating the feel of a live loop Kr�ttli's trio is fulfilling a mission to make music that skillfully straddles many borders on the way to destinations unknown. Scoria is an album created with it's own sense of time, to be heard many times over", writes Kevin Le Gendre in the liner notes.

Fred Frith describes the Swiss pianist Katharina Weber as a "piano icon". The classically trained pianist and composer moves in the large world of today's music, where borders no longer exist and new music and jazz improvisation merge. In M�rta's Garden is her second solo album. The musical framework is formed by two piano pieces by Gy�rgy Kurt�g dedicated to M�rta Kurt�g and at the centre is his composition "... eine Wanderung mit Robert Walser... ". The exchange with the Kurt�gs, which has now lasted three decades, has left intensive traces in Katharina Weber's work - as a performer, as an improviser and as a composer. Like Kurt�g, Weber creates her own sound cosmos. Inspired by intimate listening in meditative contemplation, not shying away from tonality, but emphasising colour, tonal tensions and overtones - at the same time an invitation and space for deeper listening, pondering, spinning forth," writes Nina Polaschegg in the liner notes.

The first album Moon Trail by Buechi - Hellm�ller - Jerjen was celebrated by Swiss National Radio as the surprise of the year 2022. Now the trio is releasing a long-awaited second album, Pink Mountain Sagas, featuring guests Kristina Brunner on the Schwyzer�rgeli and Andreas Gabriel on the violin. They are both key elements of a young, experimental and lively Swiss folk music. Pink Mountain Sagas bears witness to the fact that Sarah Buechi has traveled far and wide, spending over seven years on the road in Bangalore, Dublin, London, Copenhagen, Accra, Paris and New York. She has heard the world. At the same time, Pink Mountain Sagas is also a homecoming to the alpine Glarus region. An immersion in the world of legends, with their dramas and demons - that is the material this album draws on. "Initially, some things only come through as hints. But on repeated listenings, the musical structure becomes clearer, just like the sky opening up when you are travelling high up in the mountains. The expressive music literally carries the attentive mind into the rugged, alpine Glarnerland", writes Johannes R�hl in the liner notes.