Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The LABtrio presents there second album with Outnote Records, The Howls Are Not What They Seem. After being formed in 2007, the group has evolved into one of the great European jazz talents. With eleven new tracks, this album displays the ensemble’s ability to fuse jazz, hip hop, and electronic music into an outstanding listening experience.

Classical Music

Despite an obvious rapport, singer Elisabeth Kontomanou and pianist Geri Allen were not old friends when they met in France to lay down these tracks Kontomanou is based in Stockholm, while Allen is still in the states, a centerpiece of the University of Michigan's jazz faculty. The two met for the first time for a duet tribute to Billie Holiday in March 2011, at Montreal's annual Jazz en Rafale Festival. Geri Allen has long been considered the greatest jazz pianist since the 1980s, her work focused on furthering the legacy of Herbie Hancock and Thelonious Monk while retaining the gospel fervor of the blues. This program mixes traditional with new undertaking full-scale reimagining of iconic R&B themes like the opener, Marvin Gaye's God Is Love, and Curtis Mayfield's time-honored classic People Get Ready.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Oraison is a musical meditation on memory, history and time, articulated in a jazz idiom. Rapha�l Imbert bases his reflection on his own experience as a resident of a village in Haute Provence, Oraison, which is the only village in France to have given it's streets the names of soldiers who died in combat during the Great War, or in an act of resistance during the Second World War. The name 'Oraison' is thought to have Proven�al origins and to mean 'the place where the wind blows'. Where the spirit blows! Oraison, a series of original compositions which take the form of a textless secular oratorio, is an opportunity for Rapha�l Imbert to propose a spiritual and narrative journey with a precise plan, a series of evocative portraits, a different way of remembering, a means of living and reliving through a memory enriched by creation. A deep and communicative emotion that can flower to the full in the 'classical' quartet format of sax-piano-double bass-drums, in the company of some of the most innovative improvisers on the French jazz scene.

Bram de Looze writes of this new release: "Switch The Stream is about the urge for constant change. About the brain's addiction to the new. The Chris Maene Straight Strung Grand Piano has a very specific sound that (for a modern ear) projects in a peculiar way. The bringing back and combining of a few important historical piano-building techniques in a modern instrument is something that inspires me and motivates me to experiment with. Coming out of an intense period with pianofortes, I could continue into a further stage of composition and improvisation. On the cover of the album you see geese during their seasonal long distance migration from the polar region; they feel free to stretch their legs on a newly built highway. This is an image with focus on constant movement. Such as the musical direction in the moment is perceived, processed, developed, twisted, and altered. Constantly striving to capture the intangible."

Bram de Looze writes of this new release: "Switch The Stream is about the urge for constant change. About the brain's addiction to the new. The Chris Maene Straight Strung Grand Piano has a very specific sound that (for a modern ear) projects in a peculiar way. The bringing back and combining of a few important historical piano-building techniques in a modern instrument is something that inspires me and motivates me to experiment with. Coming out of an intense period with pianofortes, I could continue into a further stage of composition and improvisation. On the cover of the album you see geese during their seasonal long distance migration from the polar region; they feel free to stretch their legs on a newly built highway. This is an image with focus on constant movement. Such as the musical direction in the moment is perceived, processed, developed, twisted, and altered. Constantly striving to capture the intangible."

Hear the images; see the music. Here in a few words is what touches me in New Wave cinema (Godard, Truffaut, Malle, and Demy). How to bring together the music of these films into a single program? This disc was conceived as an image of what I love in these films. The musical themes were only very slightly arranged and were regarded as raw material, leaving room for respectful improvisation and thematic appropriation, while retaining the greatest uniting principle: freedom. - Stéphane Kerecki

Since my first encounter with the Hathor Consort, it has been obvious to me that the sound of the viola da gamba complements the harmonic and melodic style of my compositions wonderfully well and with utter naturalness. The pieces on Aries Point therefore not only combine two musical eras, but also give the sound color of the viola da gamba a central place as a key compositional element. It's unique timbre influences the process of composition and improvisation and resonates in a completely new musical context. It's subtle intensity brings out textures which, in their turn, inspire jazz musicians to adopt new forms of melodic and sonic expression in the course of their improvisations. In jazz, the process of improvisation could also be called 'instant composing'. A central element is the variation of the themes and the interaction between the musicians. In composition too, the repeated variation of patterns - through changes in key, rhythm, note order - creates material that serves to weave the melodies and harmonies of the work. With the Aries Point project, I wish to introduce a wider public to the beauty and diversity of improvisation, that ancestral form which lies at the source of all musical expression. (Bastian Stein)

Thomas Grimmonprez writes: "The big wheel. The wheel that reminds us of our relationship to movement and time. The freewheel of letting go, of the suspended moment. The wheel that turns round in a square world. The symbolic nature of the big wheel inspires myths and sacred themes; it refers to the idea of perfection, like the circle; it refers above all to movement, evolution, what is to come. It is also a new beginning, perpetual creation. It was this idea of a cycle and a new beginning that stimulated me to compose this album; a new repertory with longstanding companions. After the album Kal�idoscope, released in October 2016, my desire to reveal my sonic identity further now leads me to continue my journey in the quartet form. This new project takes flight thanks to the talent of musicians free of all aesthetic dogmatism, who have consented to place their talent at the service of my compositions in order to cast light on these various tableaux in sound. By combining four strong personalities who share the same artistic attitude, I hope to be able to invite the listener to travel within my universe. It was our long friendship that prompted me to write this repertory."