Aruan Ortiz, who grew up in Santiago, Cuba, and has lived in the U. S. since 2002, is among the most creative pianists on jazz's landscape. As a boy he was performing Cuban popular music. His studies broadened to include jazz, first in Europe, and finally New York, where he now lives. In Don Byron, Ortiz has found an unparalleled clarinetist, whose classical training and exquisite technique anchor a career spanning an unusually broad range of music that nevertheless reflects a focused line of musical inquiry. Byron was born in The Bronx, into a musical family of Antiguan descent. Some of his work has involved highly refined repertory ensembles devoted to early jazz, gospel or klezmer music. Other works assert un-fettered new musical routes owing to no single style. "Random Dances and (A)tonalities" reveals the imaginative leaps of two free-thinking minds. In both, we feel an implied swing, gentle yet with conviction, and shared values of erudition and compassion. We sense a clearly documented moment between two masterly musicians.
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."
It was only during Ken Vandermark's residency at the Jazz club The Stone in January 2016 that Vandermark found himself in the same vicinity as Nate Wooley, Sylvie Courvoisier and Tom Rainey. A year later they went into the studio with nine compositions - three each by Courvoisier, Vandermark and Wooley. These four musicians have well-documented, distinct personalities which, in this context, results in performances full of surprises, rich contrasts and shared responsibilities. The music sounds thoughtful, but never over-wrought. They play by intuition, yet retain a vivid complexity. Their composing is transparent and uncliched; their improvising provided with a remarkable coherence and openness. And perhaps it is exactly this - a fresh collective unity that keeps their respective personalities and idiosyncrasies intact - that brings them success in this bold and collaborative performance. Art needs to pique and renew your interest, take you on inspiring and surprising journeys and sometimes even confront your own biases. Creating, not reviving as a way to evolve and to keep going forward in all directions.
This magnificent concert took place at the Berlin Jazzfest 2017, where Angelika Niescier was awarded the Albert Mangelsdorff Prize (German Jazz Prize). This concert by the Angelika Niescier NYC Trio with Chris Tordini on bass and Tyshawn Sorey on drums - who was Jazzfest Berlin's 2017 Artist in Residence, and gave several performances in Berlin - proved to be a remarkable stroke of luck for the festival, since Niescier had already worked regularly with both for ten years. Christian Broecking writes in the liner notes: "This Berlin Concert of the Angelika Niescier Trio makes it clear in a unique way how something organically complete can emerge from all this unceasing curiosity, questioning and research, from pulse, attentiveness and from an acute sense of judgment and knowledge of what is going to work. When Tordini heard the recording of this very special concert, he noticed both the collective attention and the freedom, a combination which only rarely succeeds in such intense conditions. And Tyshawn Sorey agrees: 'None of us either hung around for the others or hurried ahead of them.'"
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.
The Alabama born saxophonist/clarinetist had a short lived career as a member of the sixties avant-garde but achieved legendary status for the company he kept in his Cooper Square loft where the likes of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, and Pharaoh Sanders often congregated. This debut date is best known for the presence of players, who like Watts, were to become renowned for the rareness of their recorded output, including Sonny Sharrock, Byard Lancaster, Clifford Thornton, Karl Berger and Henry Grimes.
