Jazz /
You Is You
What does it sound like to be a working artist? Here, flutist Joe Melnicove, joined by his mentor, saxophonist George Garzone, drummer Billy Hart and bassist Ben Street, tries to convey it. ‘You is You’ is inspired by a spirit of radical self-acceptance and self-knowledge, from a single melody he composed at home in Rosh Pinna, Israel. Recorded in New York, the songs have clear allusions to the experience of being musicians. Tracks like “Monday Night” and “No Applause” invoke the experience of a…
Ancient Africa
Ancient Africa represents Nat Birchall’s official follow-up to last year’s universally acclaimed Mysticism of Sound. Nat once again plays all the instruments here, tenor and soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, bass, drums and percussion. But this time around the Korg synth is replaced by piano as Nat wanted to utilise a more “classic” Jazz sound to express his musical visions. He has also arranged the songs for multiple horns, with melodies and harmonies played by up to five different instruments …
Piano Interpretations
2023 Stock. Kukuruz Quartet started 2014 their involvement with Julius Eastman and his musical works. In 2017, their performance at documenta 14 in the Megaro Mousikis concert hall in Athens earned a standing ovation. They performed works by Julius Eastman: 'Evil Nigger', 'Gay Guerrilla', 'Buddha' and 'Fugue No. 7'. The recording of these compositions followed in November 2017 on four Steinway D pianos in the main hall of the historic Radiostudio Zürich. Composer, trombonist and scholar George E…
Music Delivery/Percussion
Andrew Cyrille’s longtime companion Oliver Lake praises the master of African-American rhythms in his poem The Real Cyrille – “making the real magic … the real rhythms … the real sounds … expanding his African/Haitian roots … surfing the drums for masterful lyrical snippets … a master of color … painting coloring riffing always stretchin’ searchin’lookin’ for that next sound color sound!” Lake’s words astutely describe the artistry of Andrew Cyrille and the music that he makes on this record. Un…
Two For Two
Aki Takase and Han Bennink love the art of dialogue. Bennink is paired for life in a duo with the pianist Misha Mengelberg. Intakt Record also offers a duo recording of Han Bennink with the Zurich pianist Irène Schweizer. After having released five duo CDs at Intakt Records with Silke Eberhard, Lauren Newton, Rudi Mahall, Alexander von Schlippenbach and Louis Sclavis, Aki Takase is now presenting a breathtaking and very entertaining recording with Han Bennink.
Every tone reveals enjoyment and de…
Kasumi
Jazz as the art of dialogue: two of the great musicians of today's jazz from different continents and generations make music sparkle. Born in Osaka in 1948, Aki Takase moved to Berlin where her musical partners included Han Bennink, Evan Parker, Rudi Mahall, David Murray, Louis Sclavis and Fred Frith as well as her husband and pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach. Ingrid Laubrock, born in 1970 in Stadlohn in North Rhine-Westphalia, moved to London at the age of 19 where she studied with the saxop…
Hokusai - Piano Solo
Aki Takase, the Berlin-based pianist, is one of the great personalities of modern jazz. Moments of freedom, form and humour characterize this stylistically versatile avant-gardist, the stubborn virtuoso who toys with jazz traditions. In the year of her 70th birthday, Aki Takase was honoured with The Berlin Jazz Prize. Recorded over two days at the Sendesaal Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, the album includes some pieces captured live during the award ceremony, and some recorded in a studio setting i…
Crepuscule In Nickelsdorf
A dream-like aura surrounds these recordings by Evan Parker and Mathew Wright - Trance Map+ from the Jazz Festival Nickelsdorf: Crepuscule in Nickelsdorf. “Filtered through the silicon of the hard drive, birds and insects often sound electronically generated and some of the synthesized sounds, designed in software, sound like birds and insects with wings of their own,” writes American journalist Bill Shoemaker. The real seems virtual; the virtual seems real – it is the ambiguity essential to the…
Preparation
Featuring Mike Taylor (piano), Dave Tomlin (soprano saxophone), Tony Reeves (double bass) and Jon Hiseman (drums), this is the first ever release of a newly discovered tape of this legendary British jazz quartet’s final rehearsal before going into the studio to make their fabled Pendulum album in October 1965. Recorded in Taylor’s grandparents’ London living room by Reeves, it’s has striking presence and immediacy, and will fascinate all admirers of this most enigmatic of composers and musicians…
What We Talk
All compositions by Scott Fields. Artists: Scott Fields, guitar; Stephan Rath, theorbo. "On this recording Scott Fields plays a 1999 Robert Ruck guitar and Stephan Rath plays a 1988 Hendrik Hasenfuss 14-string theorbo, after an instrument of Tieffenbrucker/Edlinger. Our duo was formed for the 2007 Cologne Music Triennial (MusikTriennale Köln) series 'Solos for duos, improvisation from yesterday and today' (Solo für Zwei, Improvisation gestern und heute). Festival yentas matched six early music s…
Afiadacampos
"Our emphasis on composition, and specifically composition for the relatively narrow dynamic range and timbral pallet of paired steel-string, acoustic guitars, directs us away from dependence on muscle memory and set phrases. These structures focus us on interactions that grow out of our immediate reactions to how each of us is, in the moment, interpreting the material." -- Scott Fields. "With Afiadacampos, I feel that Scott and I have deepened our ability to improvise together and to orchestrat…
Donaueschinger Musiktage 2007 - War Zones
Featured works: "Ripples From The Bang" (2007) composed by Elliott Sharp. "Paranoia" (2007) composed by Bernhard Lang. Performed by: LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, text & vocals; mixmastertodd, electronics & vocals; Philip Jeck, turntables; Hans Koch, reeds; Bernhard Lang, keyboard/electronics; Elliott Sharp, 8-string guitarbass/electronics; Fredy Studer, drums/percussion. Bernhard Lang on "Paranoia": "'Paranoia' is a sequence of eight semi-improvised blocks that were extracted from the sketches to Ac…
Who Am I? • No More
"The title Composer in Dialogue stands for a biennial cooperation between the ICI Ensemble and a contemporary figure, the aim of which is to create a kind of 'work in progress' through composition itself but also by involving improvisational forms. Performances of pieces thus created remain the intention. The present recording documents an ICI concert with the composer Olga Neuwirth. Olga Neuwirth began her musical career on the trumpet, before she embraced composition as her favoured means of e…
Wildflower
*2023 repress* "The trio takes you on an intense, meditative and spiritual musical journey that embodies the spirit of freedom. Based around hypnotic grooves laid down by Brichard’s unswervingly solid bass lines, drummer Skinner plays around artfully with the beats, grooving hard in constantly shifting, unexpected turns of rhythmic play. Rahman’s contributions range from subtle conversational interplay to loudly expressed angry passion to the most delicate of whispers, conveying a depth of emoti…
Harvesters
This new album was recorded in March of this year, as The Rempis Percussion Quartet made their debut in France after 15 years of touring almost everywhere else across Europe. At the generous invitation of programmer Antoine de la Ronciere at Le Petit Faucheux in Tours, the band was the test pilot for a collaborative project amongst five venerable venues for improvised music in France. In a tightly packed week-long schedule, the band performed in Tours, Poitiers, Brest, Nantes, and Lyon, while a…
ecoegoe
ecoegoe is an ensemble led by bassist, composer, and producer Mark Ibsgaard Gregersen. During early developments, he had experiences where acoustically made sounds would resemble digital samples, echoes, and compression. Or was it just an idea? Their sound is loud and intense while also containing the fragility and closeness of an interplaying acoustic ensemble. The septet consisting of saxophones, percussion, double bass and synthesizer explore sonic, rhythmic and structural inspirations from e…
One Foot In The Air
Critical Mass is the second album from the unique duo of Chicago reedist Mars Williams and percussionist Vasco Trilla, following his album SPIRACLE which received excellent reviews in the international press. In his second album the duo use their technical skills to pivot reflective and meditative playing around exuberant free jazz spirit, maintaining a sense of journey and sonic introspection through unusual and extended techniques; a beautifully balanced music experience.
Critical Mass
Critical Mass is the second album from the unique duo of Chicago reedist Mars Williams and percussionist Vasco Trilla, following his album SPIRACLE which received excellent reviews in the international press. In his second album the duo use their technical skills to pivot reflective and meditative playing around exuberant free jazz spirit, maintaining a sense of journey and sonic introspection through unusual and extended techniques; a beautifully balanced music experience.
Dances With Questions
The working trio of New York trumpeter & saxophonist Joe McPhee, London double bassist John Edwards, and German drummer Klaus Kugel, actively touring through Europe since 2017, are heard live at Alchemia in Krakow, Poland in 2018, for four monumental examples of free improvisation in superlative playing with intense rhythmic interaction and deeply expressive soloing.