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Wadada Leo Smith's latest album features "Rosa Parks: Pure Love. An Oratorio of Seven Songs," another extended composition by Smith inspired by the civil rights movement in the United States. This new major work is composed for the iconic civil rights hero Rosa Parks (1913-2005) and performed by three vocalists, a double-quartet and a drummer with electronics. The album is released in February 2019 to celebrate Rosa Parks' birthday on February 4.

IN WHAT LANGUAGE

Innkvisitio, led by the highly talented saxophonist Mikko Innanen, is an energetic quartet of players, each of whom is much sought-after on the current Finnish jazz scene. Pianist Seppo Kantonen, who performs exclusively with synthesizers in Innkvisitio, and drummer Joonas Riippa form the nucleus of Innkvisitio with saxophonist Timo Lassy joining Innanen in the front line on this recording. Their debut, Paa-Da-Pap, captures the group during an innovative and vital phase, touring across Finland, as it is extracted from hours upon hours of music recorded during that tour. The album title refers to an onomatopoetic extract of a birdsong as perceived by Innanen, an analogy quite fitting to the band's organic concept of sound.

SATURN CONJUNCT THE GRAND CANYON

ORGANIC RESONANCE

SONG FOR MY SISTER

Ode To O is the second release of the Ogjb Quartet, a cooperative group that features four longstanding leaders in modern improvised music, saxophonist Oliver Lake, cornetist Graham Haynes, bassist Joe Fonda and drummer Barry Altschul. Each group member is a composer in his own right and a master on his chosen instrument. The new release, which follows the highly acclaimed Bamako (TUM CD 050) released in 2019, again features compositions contributed by each of the group's members as well as two collective improvisations. The album is named after Barry Altschul's composition dedicated to the late Ornette Coleman.

UP POPPED THE 2 LIPS

CRISIS

2018 release. Starebaby is the upshot of drummer Dan Weiss's long-running dream to bring together some of the most accomplished players on the jazz scene to play music that combines jazz with the power of heavy metal and electronic new music. As with his two critically-acclaimed previous releases - "Fourteen," which was named one of the best releases of 2014 by The New York Times, and "Sixteen: Drummers Suite," - Starebaby is a decidedly original work that is largely without precedence, reflecting the power of conviction coming from a single, brimming wellspring. One of the most in-demand drummers in jazz, Weiss performs with such disparate artists as Rudresh Mahanthappa, Chris Potter, John Zorn and Jen Shyu, evidence of the breadth of his artistry. The music on Starebaby, which features Craig Taborn and Matt Mitchell on keyboards, piano, and electronics, Ben Monder on guitar, and Trevor Dunn on bass, ebbs and flows, surging to thundering swells of foreboding doom before tempering to quiet reflection, finding a deep space where brutal aggression meets ghostly vulnerability.

(5-CD set) The Emerald Duets is a crowning achievement among Wadada Leo Smith's many recorded duo collaborations with drummers/percussionists that have previously featured such creative giants as Ed Blackwell, Jack DeJohnette, Milford Graves (TUM BOX 003), Louis Moholo-Moholo (TUM CD 029) and G�nter Sommer, among others. The Emerald Duets features four master drummers who have each, in their own unique fashion, contributed to the way modern drumming has developed in the past six decades and how it is now perceived. Pheeroan akLaff, Andrew Cyrille and Han Bennink are each featured on one disc and Jack DeJohnette on two discs, including Smith's five-part composition "Paradise: The Gardens and Fountains" that fills the fifth disc of this boxed set in it's entirety. The sessions with akLaff, Cyrille and DeJohnette mostly feature compositions by Wadada Leo Smith, including three very different versions of Smith's powerful statement for the protection of freedom and democracy, "The Patriot Act, Unconstitutional and a Force that Destroys Democracy." The session with Bennink includes a combination of Smith's compositions and collectively created tracks.

ALLOY

Peter Br�tzmann collaborated with many artists in his career, regularly adding new compatriots into the fold, and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love became one of his staunchest allies after the percussionist joined the Chicago Tentet in 2004. They worked in various contexts, including this inexhaustible, hard-hitting duo. Most of the albums they've issued have captured live performances, but in 2015 they made this stunning studio recording. As Nilssen-Love says in the liner notes, "Peter had acquired a contra-alto clarinet and was very enthusiastic about the sound of this instrument. I had also bought several Korean gongs which I hadn't used yet." They met up for a two-day session in Antwerp that August, and from the outset it feels different from much of their work.

Maestro Dongfeng Liu is back. And this time he brought a friend, mentor, and genius collaborator in Gonzalo Rubalcaba. In his 2018 ZOHO release China Caribe, Liu explored the music of the China and the Caribbean, a remarkable opus that awakened many not only to a new sound but fresh way of thinking. There is an often-overlooked history of Chinese immigrants coming to the Americas, including Cuba, stretching back to the nineteenth century. Liu's musical initiatives are vintage and at the vanguard. China Afro Cuba is indeed music at the frontline of composition and harmony but also interchange and friendship. There is an ancient Chinese saying, "Lofty mountains and flowing water meet a kindred spirit - and colorful clouds chasing the moon meet a bosom friend." It comes from a philosophical text written some 2,000 years ago. Liu believes the symbolism of this line represents his musical friendship with Rubalcaba. Indeed, Rubalcaba is one the greatest artists of his generation. What may seem like an unusual pairing - Cuban and Chinese musicians - is anything but. They flow together as kindred spirits. "We are two pianists having an exploratory and innovative musical conversation. We've made a non-traditional interpretation of traditional music," says Liu. Jasmine is a Chinese folk song which originates from the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty (1736 - 1795). It's well-known and interpreted widely in China. In this rendition, Liu invokes two versions to play the high and low parts simultaneously with slightly differing melodies, incorporating Bach-style polyphony. Rubalcaba enters with a well-performed Cuban son which may seem jarring, as if cultures colliding. Both artists rely on their significant jazz vocabulary to navigate as they would in a live performance, eventually returning to the main melody, which ends with gentle and lingering lines. Kangding Love Song is a veritable funk with alacrity. The groove sounds as if Jaco Pastorious is part of the session.

Nuna is a book of compositions for solo piano by Cuban-American pianist and composer David Virelles. Who has collaborated with musicians as distinct as Henry Threadgill, Mark Turner, Paul Motian, Andrew Cyrille, Bill Frisell, Chris Potter, Tomasz Stanko, Steve Coleman, Wadada Leo Smith, Tom Harrell, Hermeto Pascoal, Milford Graves, and Ravi Coltrane. His 2012 release Continuum was named the best jazz release of that year by The New York Times and Igbo Alakorin: The Singers Grove was voted top Latin Jazz album in the 2017 NPR Jazz Critics Poll. The compositions on Nuna are inspired by the various tributaries of African-diasporic music: jazz, Cuban music, African keyboard traditions, and European piano practices, all filtered through a modernist harmonic lens. Virelles's goal is to explore the full dynamic range of the piano, both technically and sonically with particular emphasis on connecting the sound of folkloric keyboard instruments such as thumb pianos, harps and drums with the concert grand piano, which he achieves purely through touch and pedaling. The album is also a tribute to three of Virelles's most prominent piano mentors who have passed away in recent years: Muhal Richard Abrams, Stanley Cowell, and Barry Harris. As with all of Virelles's projects, Nuna bridges the ancient with the modern, enveloping the listener in a meditative aura of mystery.

Xaybu: The Unseen is the sophomore release from S�l�b�yone, the international avant-rap collective led by saxophonist and composer Steve Lehman, who has been hailed by The New York Times for his "sure-footed futurism" in the realms of modern jazz and contemporary classical music. Comprised of MCs HPrizm and Gaston Bandimic, saxophonists Lehman and Maciek Lasserre, and drummer Damion Reid, their eponymous 2016 debut was hailed as a game-changing synthesis of underground hip-hop, modern jazz and live electronic music that was described by Pitchfork as "legitimately new" and a "revelation." On Xaybu, S�l�b�yone - which means "intersection" in Wolof - continues to build on it's groundbreaking work with shifting rhythms and state-of-the art sound design, now with a newfound sense of effortless fluidity. The word "xaybu" in Wolof refers to the concept in Islamic mysticism of al-Ghaib - that which is unknowable and unseeable. HPrizm (a.k.a. High Priest, legend of New York's underground hip-hop

GOL

PolyTropoi / Of Many Turns is the highly-anticipated new release from influential saxophonist / composer Steve Coleman. Comprised of two live sets recorded during a tour in France, it features his band Five Elements, with long-running partners Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet and Sean Rickman on drums, with new addition Rich Brown on bass. Popmatters said of his 2021 release Live at the Village Vanguard, Volume II (Mdw Ntr) "The tides of his creativity continue to swell, change, surge... It is, actually, a refraction of culture and tradition that includes James Brown and Public Enemy, Jimi Hendrix and Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Kanye West. It's art infused with all that information, and it challenges us simultaneously." Recorded in concert in Paris and Voiron, the performances are raw, relying on spontaneous conversions of rhythmic and tonal shapes that weave musical figures into continuous movements. A highly visual composer and improvisor, Coleman has recently drawn inspiration from following the logical chains of amino acids, inventively imbuing them with musical information. Acting on their collective, mysterious whim, the band takes the audience through exhilarating pivots and swerves based on some secret, enigmatic internal logic. It is collective improvisation of the highest order.

Thisness is guitarist Miles Okazaki's third album for Pi Recordings with his band Trickster. It is a sequel to The Sky Below, which was described by Allmusic as "an umbrella of labyrinthine lyricism, full of mischief and delight as a harmonic foundation," and by Point of Departure as "overflowing with energy, and elegant despite it's complexity." The critical success of that album and WORK, an ambitious recording of the complete compositions of Thelonious Monk for solo guitar, helped land Okazaki atop the Rising Star Jazz Guitarist category in the Downbeat Critics Poll. For the new album, Okazaki has created a platform to improvise that emphasizes non-linear flow between musical ideas. Rather than a fixed book of compositions, the music is comprised of various themes connected by hubs that Okazaki describes as akin to traffic circles. Through hidden musical cues, the leader signals when the music is approaching the transition point and which exit path to take. Trickster features the rhythm section of bassist Anthony Tidd, and drummer Sean Rickman, who provide an elastic foundation, hurtling and tugging on the ever-present groove. Keyboardist Matt Mitchell and Okazaki together are a marvel of cohesion: Their constant weaving of contrapuntal, labyrinthine lines astound with their nimble precision. Despite all the obvious complexity, the playing feels effortlessly in service of the music rather than pointlessly dazzling. The wonder lies in their journey, with beautiful new vistas opening with each turn in the road.