Classical Music

While Pauline Oliveros' output has it's high and low marks, the composer, accordionist and organizer is an undeniable force in new music. For fifty years she has pursued sonic experiments, and as the founder of the Deep Listening Institute, she has supported many other sound innovators. Sadly, it's sometimes easier to respect her from afar than to closely follow her work. Her choices in collaborators can get in the way, and they often seem to be made out social or political sympathies as much as musical ones. But there are gems within her catalogue, such as Troglodyte's Delight (1990) with her Deep Listening Band or the early tape experiments on Alien Bog and Beautiful Soop (1997). Her 1998 release the Roots of the Moment, just reissued by Hatology, is among those essentials. Essentially a solo recording, Oliveros and her accordion are found here within an electronic environment created by Peter Ward. The electronic element isn't explained in the liner notes (written by her neighbor, saxophonist Joe McPhee, with whom she's collaborated), and it's presence seems subtle on the recording. Reverb and delay may be present at times, but it might be best just to assume they're there.

Classical Music

2014 release, The Bad Plus' 10th studio recording and first collection of original material since 2012. INEVITABLE WESTERN continues the leaderless trio's committed belief in what they've dubbed avant-garde populism' the idea that serious music can be as engaging and accessible as it is forward-thinking and provocative. The album sees the group exploring the same set of aesthetic principles that fired their inception, a rigorous exploration of myriad musical forms born of Jazz but advanced using any sonic source material that forwards their own indefinable thing. The past 15 years have seen the genre-smashing band creating a distinctive and original repertoire of inventive and exciting original music, along with a series of iconoclastic covers of such divergent artists as Nirvana and Neil Young, Aphex Twin and Ornette Coleman.

Late bassist Milt Hinton is celebrated for a stage and studio career that intersected with countless legendary musicians - from Dizzy Gillespie and Cab Calloway to Barbra Streisand and Willie Nelson - for an incredible seven decades. Groove Dreams, a new recording by versatile bassist Peter Dominguez, honors Hinton's legacy with solo bass tunes from artists as varied as Duke Ellington, Stevi Wonder, Bill Evans, and Chick Corea. Performed on the 18th-century Italian bass Hinton played throughout his career, each song explores the nuances and deep colors of the instrument - qualities not always discernible in ensemble playing. A renowned bassist and educator in his own right, Dominguez met Hinton in 1981 and won the inaugural Milton J. Hinton Scholarship Competition that same year. More than three decades later, Dominguez was instrumental in forging a relationship between the Hinton estate and Oberlin Conservatory, where he is a professor of jazz studies and double bass. Oberlin's relationship with the Hinton estate has grown to include a scholarship fund; an extensive collection of papers, films, and personal artifacts amassed by the Hintons; a biennial summer Institute for Studio Bass; photographs taken by Hinton throughout his career; and four basses formerly owned by Hinton that continue to be played by Oberlin facutly, students and visiting artists. ''Words are not adequate to express the experience of playing Milt Hinton's bass,'' says Dominguez. ''We are ever mindful of its provenance and Milt's enduring spirit that thrives within it.''

The first attempt went awry. When Nat and his older brother Julian 'Cannonball' Adderley tried to start a quintet in the mid-fifties, hardly anyone was interested in the newcomers from Florida. And that, in retrospect, was good. Because the trumpeter Nat landed in this way in the bands of Jay Jay Johnson and George Shearing, and there refined, under expert guidance, his art of elegant blues-bopping ensemble playing. The alto saxophonist Cannonball in turn became Miles Davis' counterpart to tenor saxophonist John Coltrane for a good four years, a time he later described as the most artistically important of his life. When the brothers came together again in 1959, they had both matured and were ready to lead one of the most successful jazz bands of the 1960s. Unlike experimental colleagues who tested the limits of music, but more and more lost their audience, the Cannonball Adderley Quintet managed to reach a large audience with hits like "This Here", "Work Song", "Jive Samba" and above all "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy". No wonder, then, that a wave of applause greeted the Cannonball Adderley Quintet in the Liederhalle Stuttgart in 1969. Completed by bassist Victor Gaskin and drummer Roy McCurdy, they had brought with them just the right repertoire.

Parsed into four discrete pieces, the Taktlos performance is a fluid exercise in revolving roles from the jump. Ducret trades in jagged punctuations, mercurial arpeggios and swollen drone bursts on Stoppage, the first and longest. Blaser reacts as balm, his lubricious lines drawing a direct invisible lineage back suave and soothing bop purveyers. A reversal and it’s Blaser with low brass growls as Brunn colors the corners and edges keeping a rhythmic presence which bolsters and ornaments without drawing attention away from the colloquy of his colleagues. A drum solo filled with fluid, frothing beats works as both palate cleanser and reset into an ambling blues. Later, a froggy brass ostinato serves a similar purpose signaling first clean picking from Ducret and then feral, sharp-fanged blasts of distortion.

Classical Music

Dark, edgy and superb electric guitar work from Joe Morris in a trio with Stave Lantner on electric keyboard and Jerome Deupree on drums, the final part of what Morris calls "Big Loud Electric Guitar Trilogy" that started with "Sweatshop" and "Racket Club", following the Hendrix legacy.

Classical Music

Concerts with Maria Schneider are something special. They are stylistically not only out of the ordinary, they also manage to bring large orchestras to perform artistically at high voltage, with an energy and at a creative level which is otherwise known only in much smaller ensembles. It is not the music alone that drives the participants, but rather the serene seriousness of a band leader who demands a maximum of intensity from her compositions and passes this premise on to their interpretation. It is impossible to conceive of compositions for jazz orchestras more stringently. The instrumentalists know this too, and therefore feel called upon not only to reproduce the charts accurately but to work out all the contained hints, implications, and visions of sound down to the deepest levels. This original recording was made in May 2000 when Schneider appeared alongside the SWR Big Band. And for the SWR Big Band, those days in May 2000 are some of the highlights of their orchestral history.

Classical Music

The Eighties success story Guitarissimo - Peter Horton and Sigi Schwab - has upgraded itself to XL, unveiling two new jewels in the crown of sound that is Guitarissimo: Tommi Muller, bass and Andreas Keller, drums & percussion. Peter Horton and Sigi Schwab were associated for many years, and soon joined forces to create the Duo Guitarissimo. The two became musical legends and an inspiration worldwide to guitarists and lovers of the guitar.

Classical Music

Vivian Buczek was born in Sweden with Polish roots. She has today developed into one of Sweden’s most outstanding and engaging jazzsingers with a remarkable feeling for the jazz idiom. She writes: "Ella Fitzgerald has always been my greatest inspiration and the main reason that I have become a jazz singer. It all began when my dad gave me the live album "Ella in Berlin” from 1960 and it immediately blew me away! I had never heard such honest and joyful singing before. The way Ella was using her voice in so many different ways was astonishing to me. She could sing anything, slow heart-breaking ballads, moaning blues, and up-tempo songs with her impressive scat singing to top it all. This is my second album in collaboration with one of the greatest Swedish musicians and arrangers Martin Sjöstedt. Martin has a fantastic ability to get inside any tune and come up with the most imaginative arrangements a singer can wish for. It’s always a thrill and an amazing musical journey every time I perform on stage with him and his trio. I have chosen some of my favorite Ella songs that I have listened to and sung since I was a teenager, many of them from the Ella Fitzgerald Songbooks and live albums. This album is with my sincerest gratitude to Ella Fitzgerald for having given me inspiration for the one thing I enjoy most in life: Singing!”

On this new release, Swedish artist Meta Roos joins up with Trio X to present a varied program of folk and jazz tunes by various composers. Meta Roos was born and raised in Boda Kyrkby in but lives since 2002 in B�lsta in Uppsala county. She made her debut as a sixteen-year-old when she started singing with various dance bands in Dalarna; She achieved the greatest success with the Nippe Sylw�ns Band. Since 1984 she has been a full time artist. During the 1980s, she sang in the dance band Rose Band, which became popular throughout Europe. Roos played New Year's Rev in Borl�nge and came a few years later to Peter Flack in �rebro where she participated in four reviews.

Outi Tarkiainen writes of her new release with the Norrbotten Big Band: "During my year as composer in residence with the Norrbotten Big Band in 2017, I wrote eight compositions that strongly capture my voice as a composer while at the same time focusing from many angles - maybe some of them surprising - on this immensely adaptable jazz orchestra. I decided to call the set Unpainted Portraits, my aim being to paint musical portraits of people and prospects past, present and future. Literature, and especially poetry, has always been a source of inspiration for me in my work, and many of my new portraits are dedicated to writers I admire: the early 20th-century English modernist Virginia Woolf, the Finnish visionary playwright Minna Canth, and the contemporary S�mi poetess Rauni Magga Lukkari now living in Troms�, Norway. One of the pieces pays tribute and is dedicated to the Suffragettes campaigning for votes for women in early 20th-century England. Others make a respectful nod in the direction of the jazz tradition, and the listener may here detect echoes of some of my favorite jazz composers, such as Gil Evans, Charles Mingus and Maria Schneider."

Nikol Bóková is known as a classical pianist with a repertoire stretching from the Baroque period to contemporary music. Her first album of her own music inspired by jazz, classical music, minimalism and, in some respect, popular music, has been recorded in the traditional jazz-piano-trio line-up and the pianist's musical partners in this project have been talented exponents of the young jazz generation: Martin Kocián on the double bass and Michal Wierzgon on the drums. Nikol Bóková's compositions are perfectly polished miniatures, simple in form but echoing the harmonic and melodic complexity of classical piano literature. Indeed, Bóková's play, defined to a great extent by her experience with classical-music interpretation, her brilliant technique and dynamic keystroke, is unique in the world of the jazz piano. In her compositions, Nikol Bóková effortlessly travels between genres, clearly fascinated by the possibilities they have to offer.

Two years after the release of her latest album - the widely critically acclaimed Imprints - Karin Hammar now releases her new album Circles. Like last time, Hammar works with her group Karin Hammar Fab 4 to help her shape 8 new compositions and an interpretation of Nina Simone's "Four Women" into her own musical landscape. The new compositions draw inspiration from such diverse encounters and places: Brazil, Morrocco, her daughter Ella, fellow musician Hildegunn Öiseth, to name a few. The title track was written in a small compartment backstage at Malmö Arena in Sweden prior to a show with Swedish pop star Orup. The Karin Hammar Fab 4 line up includes some of Sweden's finest jazz players: Niklas Fernqvist on bass, Fredrik Rundqvist on drums and new member, guitarist, Andreas Hourdakis who brings a new form, shape, and level to the group's sound. Karin Hammar is widely seen as one of Sweden's foremost trombone players, with four studio albums as a solo artist and numerous collaborations under her belt since debuting in the nineties. She's been given numerous awards in Sweden, including a prize from the Alice Babs foundation.

Ellen Andersson Quartet’s debut album “I’ll Be Seeing You” is a disc that will not go anywhere unnoticed. The Quartet is a group of relatively common jazz composition: vocals, guitar, bass, and drums, and makes standard songs in their own arrangements. The song material the great story-rate and emotional range, where playfulness meets big seriousness makes this an album listeners will adore. Ellen Andersson Quartet aims to find a middle ground where tradition can face the present, but also wants to do this without losing their integrity and personality. The group also wants to challenge the way in which many jazz vocalists relate to and participate in the music. The ensemble attaches great importance to each of the four musicians being on equal terms.

 

"All hail Ellen Andersson, the best sort of blasphemous resurrection. The audacious Swedish jazz singer with the voice of tissue paper enrobing a jewel is probably the best representation of new jazz coming out of Europe and a more than fitting successor to Billie Holiday." - AXS

Classical Music

Spider's Egg is a sextet put together by Brasilian guitar player Pedro Martins specifically for the 50th edition of the SWR NewJazz Meeting. For five days the six young, internationally renowned musicians, who come from very different geographical places and stylistic directions, exchanged ideas. They experimented in the SWR studios and developed a concert program that they then presented in three concerts in Germany and recorded for the present release. Pedro Martins,​ Brazilian musical prodigy, and winner of The 2015 Montreux Guitar Competition is well known for his collaborations with Kurt Rosenwinkel, Yaron Herman, David Binney, Jacob Collier, and Genevieve Artadi (Knower), as well as Brazilian jazz greats ​Hamilton de Holanda, ​Gabriel Grossi, and Léo Gandelman.

Classical Music

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

This new b�records album sees the unclassifiable Jocelyn Mienniel (composer) and Fiona Monbet (musical director) collaborate on a resolutely hybrid reinterpretation of Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, created during a residency at the Royaumont Foundation. Based on an original text by Olivier Cadiot, the creation combines a chamber orchestra, a jazz ensemble, traditional Chinese instruments, electronic music, a children's choir, and vocals, drawing on improvisation and literary cut-up techniques. This transfiguration reveals Das Lied von der Erde as a resolutely modern work, whose humanism unfolds with renewed intensity.