BILLIE AND BLUE EYES | October 12th 12, 2018

Grammy Award Winner Catherine Russell & John Pizzarelli

A Salute to Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra

Relive the glory days of jazz with the iconic voices of Grammy Award winner Catherine Russell and John Pizzarelli as they salute Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra. This unforgettable concert features soulful interpretations of chart-topping classics like “All of Me,” “Ring A Ding Ding,” “Them There Eyes,” and “One More For My Baby.”

Catherine Russell has been hailed by The Huffington Post as “a legend hiding in plain sight,” while The Boston Globe saluted John Pizzarelli for “reinvigorating the Great American Songbook.” The Grammy-winning Russell has six decorated albums to her credit. Pizzarelli, the "genial genius of the guitar” (Toronto Star), recently performed with the Boston Pops and regularly performs at Birdland.

Meet the Artists After the Show!

“A rare entertainer of the old school!” - The Seattle Times  (on John Pizzarelli)

“Catherine Russell hits a groove from note one!” - The Wall Street Journal

Benjamin Schaefer - Hive Mind (November 30, 2018)

Making this record has been quite a ride for me. I spent over two years working on it and it is a first-timer in many ways - my first big band album, my first funding campaigns (crowd and third-party) and the first release on my brand-new record label "for the records". 

So many fellow humans poured their hearts and minds into this project that, even though my name is featured on the CD, calling it a collective effort is by no means an exaggeration

I invite you now to discover the final result of this process. Get your copy today and join the ride!

Jan Schneider, Matthias Schriefl, Bastian Stein, Matthias Bergmann (tp)

Shannon Barnett, Moritz Wesp, Robert Hedemann, Jan Schreiner (tb)

Malte Dürrschnabel, James Wylie, Holger Werner, Denis Gäbel, Stefan Karl Schmid (sax)

Frank Wingold, Benjamin Schaefer, Igor Spallati, Jonas Burgwinkel (rhythm)

1. IO 07:58

2. Long Story Short 09:54

3. So Near, So Far 13:29

4. Hive Mind 08:30

5. Egregores 08:47

Recorded & Mixed by Christian Heck; Mastered by Reuben Cohen; Produced by Harald Rehmann; a Coproduction with Deutschlandfunk; Design & Artwork by Travassos 

Mette Rasmussen | Chris Corsano - A View of the Moon (from the Sun) CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018

Mette Rasmussen’s and Chris Corsano’s partnership continues after five years of concerts, being “A View of the Moon (from the Sun)” its second album, after “All the Ghosts at Once”. All the attraction of the two musicians for the extreme keeps very much alive and it seems now not just a process but an entire program, signaled by the title of the first track, “Many People Were Scandalized – Some Still Are”. Extreme expression, extreme timbres, extreme techniques: the Danish, but living in Trondheim, saxophonist keeps here the same attitude she has with the punk-jazz band Trio Riot and her collaborations with Cocaine Piss in the hardcore field, always pushing the envelope to the highest and the lowest notes of the alto sax, and the American drummer appears with all the energy and textural wonder he showed either with the free jazz legend Joe McPhee and with Thurston Moore, mentor of the now defunct Sonic Youth. Here you’ll find bits and pieces of several musical worlds: the most intense “new thing”, the one defined by John Coltrane and Rashied Ali in “Interstellar Space”, free improvisation derived from the encounters between Evan Parker and Paul Lytton (even considering that Corsano has more links with Mitch Mitchell than with any non-idiomatic percussionists), and what you can define as acoustic versions of electronic exploratory music. The result is mind blowing, even if you no longer get scandalized.

Mette Rasmussen  alto saxofone | Chris Corsano  drums

All music by Mette Rasmussen and Chris Corsano

Recorded on July 4, 2015 at Cankarjev dom in Ljubljana, Slovenia | Recorded mixed and mastered by Luis Delgado

Produced by Mette Rasmussen and Chris Corsano | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Photo by Petra Cvelbar | Artwork by Paul Flaherty

Julien Desprez | Luís Lopes - Boa Tarde (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

French and Portuguese guitarists Julien Desprez and Luís Lopes manage to surpass the usual divider when electric guitars are the main tools of experimentation: either you explore the specific guitar / effect pedal sounds or use the instrument and its gadgets as electronic non-recognizable interfaces. They do both things, playing electronic music with an organic feeling. Both of them have creative jazz, alternative rock and free improvised music as common backgrounds, but what they usually do on their separate paths go beyond those categories. Desprez is a performative artist with sound as focus, but engaging the entire body on what he does, through the development of feet techniques derived from tap dance, in order to connect and disconnect his processing pedals in new ways. Lopes practices a very clinical form of noise music, preferring a methodic use of feedback lines to the sonic blasts of the computer-driven acts. Sooner or later they would have to meet, and here is the consequence of that meeting of free spirits. “Boa Tarde”, the title of the album, is the Portuguese expression for “good afternoon”, but it’s a joke: the afternoon they tell us about isn’t very pleasant. It may be contemplative, but containing a kind of existential anguish. Highly recommended.

Julien Desprez  electric guitar

Luís Lopes  electric guitar

All music by Desprez & Lopes

Recorded August 8th 2016 by Joaquim Monte at NamoucheStudios, Lisbon , Portugal | Mixed and Mastered June 2014 by Joaquim Monte at Namouche Studios, Lisbon, Portugal

Produced by Desprez & Lopes | Executive production Travassos for Trem Azul | Design and artwork by Travassos

Peter McEachern Trio: Bone-Code (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

Peter McEachern had a long-standing collaboration with Mario Pavone by the time he met Michael Sarin in the early 90’s. The three musicians recorded “Insomnia” by Thomas Chapin as part of Chapin’s Trio Plus Brass, a formidable octet. McEachern repaid Chapin’s invitation by asking him to play on his CD “Shockwave”, and their paths continued to cross along the years. Pavone invited the trombonist for six of his records, and in addition McEachern and Sarin had an intriguing duo. “Bone-Code” is the culmination of those experiences under the spell of Chapin’s idiosyncratic saxophone lines, and Pavones’s eclectic compositions, but also of unexpected turns like McEachern’s stint with minimalist composer LaMonte Young, and his study of monophonic and microtonal music. This is coupled with the blues feeling he mastered with his twelve-year collaboration with bluesman Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. All this is evident in an album dedicated to his trombone concepts and to his friend, trombonist Roswell Rudd. Ever present is McEachern’s love of field hollers, which contributed to the birth of jazz and blues and for the trombone trio format lead by the likes of Albert Mangelsdorff, Ray Anderson, and George Lewis, mixing tradition and innovation.

Peter McEachern  trombone

Mario Pavone  double bass

Michael Sarin  drums

Recorded at Stone Studio Lakeville Ct June 20 and 21, 2017 by Graham Stone | Mixed and Mastered By Graham Stone

Produced by Peter McEachern | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos

Chris Pitsiokos | Susana Santos Silva | Torbjörn Zetterberg - Child of Illusion (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

When the music we call jazz continues to reveal a number of new values with the surprising qualities of Chris Pitsiokos, Susana Santos Silva and Torbjorn Zetterberg, you have the final confirmation: this musical genre is in very good health these present days. And when musicians like the ones reunited in “Child of Illusion” distinguish themselves on the scene, you can only hope to find them in the same band. Here it is, for our common pleasure entirely. Pitsiokos, a New Yorker who is filling a new page of the book telling the history of the alto saxophone in jazz, justifies his fame as a super skilled player who is expanding the technical and lexical possibilities of his instrument, either with his own projects or in association with the greatest, from Tyshawn Sorey and Peter Evans to Lydia Lunch and Otomo Yoshihide. Silva, a Portuguese now living in Stockholm, has a warm and acid trumpet sound which quickly positioned her in the Olympus of this music, in the company of mavericks of older generations like Fred Frith, Joe Morris, Mats Gustafsson, Joelle Léandre and Mat Maneri. Zetterberg, one of the top double bassists in Sweden, turned to be an international reference, due to his work as the leader of Hot Five or in the company of like-minded musicians who are making a difference, from Jonas Kullhamar and Alberto Pinton to Mats Aleklint and Jon Falt. If you don’t know them yet, this is a magnificent opportunity for an update.

Chris Pitsiokos  alto saxophone

Susana Santos Silva  trumpet

Torbjörn Zetterberg  double bass

All music by Torbjörn Zetterberg, Susana Santos Silva and Chris Pitsiokos

Recorded at The House Of The Lord December 22nd, 2017 by Torbjörn Zetterberg | Mixed by Torbjörn Zetterberg in Mörbylund | Mastered by Luís Delgado

Produced by Torbjörn Zetterberg, Susana Santos Silva and Chris Pitsiokos | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos

Knalpot - Dierendag (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

«No computer was used during the making of this music.» The warning is interily justifiabe – the concepts applied by Raphael Vanoli, Gerri Jäger and Sandor Caron have traces of several musical practices having as common factor the use of laptops. The roots are on electro-pop, mathcore and dubstep, but is something else what this band from Amsterdam – but with a French/German and an Austrian playing – has to offer. There’s traces of Gang of Four, Fennesz, Battles, Supersilent, Sigur Rós, Squarepusher and much more, but the sound world they inhabit is very much their own. A world of unpredictable collages of procedures and styles, played with a guitar, a drumset, some synthesizers, processors and effect pedals, and a mixtable used creatively: sometimes it sounds like drone music with a song format, and in many moments you have the kind of groove produced on the fringes of techno and house, but with a drive coming directly from jazzland – after all, both Vanoli and Jäger have jazz backgrounds. Polyrhythms with crazy metrics live together with harmonic constructions showing the refinement of contemporary classical music, but the lightness of it all, the good vibes, the colorful, joyous, character are distinctive of pop music. What a surprise!

Raphael Vanoli guitar, synth, electronics

Gerri Jäger drums, synths, electronics

Sandor Caron sounddesign

All tracks composed by Gerri Jäger and Raphael Vanoli (Buma/Stemra)

Recorded live at Studio De Zwarte Molen Amsterdam in august 2017 | Recording set-up by Carlos Dalla-Fiore and Bas Melis | Recorded and produced by Sandor Caron

Executive production by Travassos for Trem Azul | Cover photo by Frank Durnell Conard | Band photo by Danulis | Design by Travassos

Albatre - The Fall of the Damned (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

Albatre are back for some more «display of urgent bass and sax noise, frantic but meticulous drumming and abrupt moodshifts», but this self-description doesn’t say it all. Something changed in this Rotterdambased band formed by two Portuguese, Gonçalo Almeida and Hugo Costa, and a German, Philipp Ernsting, since the release of “A Descent Into Maesltrom”. They’re still crossing post-Ornette Coleman free jazz with metal and punk, but now the music is more essential and minimalist, with everything reduced to the bone. And yet, the doom factor is enhanced as never before. The riffs are slowly (sometimes very, very slowly) repeated until you get hypnotized, a bit like Otomo Yoshihide’s band Ground Zero used to do, and when something different happens – colorful harmonic cloud formations and harsh noise fusing in strange ways – it’s like discovering a new planet. There’s aspects of jazzrock and of psychedelic and progressive rock going on, but what’s really important is the final impact on your stomach: the music strikes you there directly. With “The Fall of the Damned”, the jazzcore format goes to new territories.

Hugo Costa  alto sax & effects

Gonçalo Almeida  bass, keyboards & electronics

Philipp Ernsting  drums & electronics

Recorded and mixed by Albatre at Soundport, Rotterdam | Master by Bernardo Fesch at Gizmeister Studios, Lisbon

Produced by Albatre | Executive production Travassos for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos | Paintings by Rubens

Jacob Sacks - Fishes (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

It makes so much sense for a Portuguese record label to release a new opus of the New York pianist and composer Jacob Sacks, considering his many connections with the jazz scene of this country and musicians like João Lencastre, Sara Serpa, André Matos, Gonçalo Marques and Demian Cabaud. Sacks is widely recognized as one of the most creative musicians in his hometown, and “Fishes” presents him in the company of other notable protagonists of the New York jazz scene, all of them members of the Clean Feed family: Ellery Eskelin, Tony Malaby, Michael Formanek and Dan Weiss. Here is a meeting of giants led by someone who has already covered the entire range of that music we call jazz, by the side of the greatest: Clark Terry, Joe Maneri, Charles Gayle, Paul Motian, Lee Konitz and too many more to mention, going from mainstream to the most audacious exploratory music. Inside this recording you’ll find all the identifying characteristics of Sacks’ personal style and more: harmonic subtleties, structural simplicity, deep and mysterious meanings, a refined sense of form, poetic beauty, rhythmic drive and lots of soul. You start to be overwhelmed by the way the little pieces of the clock function, until you let yourself go with the balance produced by the sculptures of time coming track by track.

Jacob Sacks  piano

Ellery Eskelin  tenor saxophone

Tony Malaby  tenor & soprano saxophones

Michael Formanek  bass

Dan Weiss  drums

All compositions by Jacob Sacks; Jacob Sacks Compositions BMI

Recorded April 13th, 2017 at Systems Two Studios, Brooklyn, NY, by Mike Marciano | Mixing and mastered by Mike Marciano | Mixing and mastering produced by Chet Doxas

Produced by Jacob Sacks | Executive Producer by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos

Heaven - Iapoe (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

The drum and sax duo, Heaven, is the collaborative project of Danish saxophonist Henrik Pultz Melbye and Norwegian drummer Ole Mofjell. Heaven’s fast, highly energetic performances, combine influence from old and new-school free jazz, as the foundation for their innovative sound. Inspired by European improvisation, 60’s New York-loft-avant-garde and Ethiopian jazz, Heaven fearlessly ventures between rhythmic and melodic realms, to stretches of noise and non-idiomatic sounds.

Committed to discovery, Pultz Melbye and Mofjell reimagine the possibilities of the iconic drum/sax pairing, while acknowledging the legends of the past.

On September 21st the duo will release their debut album “IAPOE” on Clean Feed Records.

Norwegian drummer, Ole Mofjell is known for his fast paced, dynamic playing and has performed with an international roster of musicians including Laura Toxværd, Thurston Moore and Tobias Delius. He is a sought after drummer playing in all kinds of different settings including the successful singer Natalie Sandtorv’s band.

Danish saxophonist Henrik Pultz Melbye has toured Europe extensively, with his avant- garde-rock band SVIN, and with his experimental solo projects. Henrik’s approach to his instruments is one of constant exploration, unfolding an agile, curious, and unique sonic language. His record releases reflect a diverse approach to composition and performance, and an insatiable desire to articulate his voice across genres.

Henrik Pultz Melbye  tenor sax

Ole Mofjell  drums

All music by Henrik Pultz Melbye and Ole Mofjell

Recorded in Vanløse, September 2017 | Record engineer and mix: Bjørn Gjessing | Master: Teis Frandsen

Prodution: Henrik Pultz Melbye and Ole Mofjell | Executive Prodution: Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Artwork: Mathias Kjeldsen / Travassos

Fredrik Nordström - Needs (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

In his new album, saxophonist and composer Fredrik Nordström deals with a format that reminds of a double quartet of the same type as Ornette Coleman recorded in the early 1960’s. For someone always interested in exploring different possibilities of group interaction, the decision isn’t really a surprise in itself: what surprises us are the results. Instead of acting as a double quartet, Nordström and his fellow Swedish musicians sometimes acts as an octet or as a trio, a quintet, or, you name it! The (double) rhythm section shows off some groovy and hard swinging parts as one unit, but the freedom to contribute individually in this collective of great improvisers is fundamental.

Nordström’s writing and conduction of the improvisational developments are, as always, subtle and meticulous, like hidden geometrical forms in an (apparently) abstract canvas. And if the double quartet matrix is generally connoted with the free jazz subgenre, in “Needs” something else is in equation, coming from the bop and hard bop traditions (Nordström’s tenor style owes something to Dexter Gordon) adding adventurous compositions with dazzling improvisations and giving expression to what the leader of this one day session calls «progressive jazz with unquestionable influence of contemporary classical and rock music». A must.

LEFT channel:

Fredrik Nordström  tenor & baritone saxophones

Mats Äleklint  trombone

Filip Augustson  double bass

Christopher Cantillo  drums

RIGHT channel:

Fredrik Ljungkvist  clarinet & tenor saxophone

Niklas Barnö  trumpet

Torbjörn Zetterberg  double bass

Fredrik Rundqvist  drums

All compositions by Fredrik Nordström

Recorded March 23, 2018 at BAS, Bandhagen Sweden by Mats Äleklint | Mixing and mastering at Bluenord Studio, Högdalen Sweden by Fredrik Nordström

Produced by Fredrik Nordström | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos | Photos of Fredrik by Mats Äleklint | (of basses) by Fredrik Nordström

Master Oogway - The Concert Koān (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

Prepared for a new surprise coming from the Norwegian front? Master Oogway is a band with a Miles Davis feeling (and particularly the one of his Sixties records), a saxophone style rooted in the heritage of Ornette Coleman and the great free jazz original soloists, applied by tenorist Lauritz Lyster Skeidsvoll, and that kind of energy and distorted sound you only find in rock, coming very specially from the hands of guitarist Håvard Nordberg Funderud. All this glued by a rhythm section (bassist Karl Erik Horndalsveen and drummer Martin Mellem) acting like a riff engine and a concept inspired in the mythology of the movie “Kung Fu Panda” – the character Oogway, an elderly tortoise, is the creator of kung fu and the keeper of the Dragon Warrior legend, who he finally meets before ascending to the Spirit Realm. Listen to “The Concert Koān” and feel free to find out any metaphors concerning the spiritual nature of jazz. The music grooves constantly, but not in a linear way: it’s full of sudden stops and changes of metrics and directions, combining composition and improvisation in such a way you can’t differentiate the written and the spontaneously created. Either the subject is a travel to Mars or the kind of gum you prefer, the songs make you stand up and jump. As Master Oogway used to say, «you must let go of the illusion of control».

Lauritz Lyster Skeidsvoll  saxophone

Håvard Nordberg Funderud  guitar

Karl Erik E. Horndalsveen  double bass

Martin Mellem  drums

All music by Håvard Nordberg Funderud, except Master Oogway Theme Song by Karl Erik E. Horndalsveen (TONO) | Arrangements by Master Oogway

Recorded in Ocean Sound Recordings, December 2017 | Mixed by Henning Svoren at Ocean Sound Recordings, December 2017 | Mastered by Henning Svoren at Ocean Sound Recordings

Produced by Master Oogway | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Photography by Jan Tore Eriksen | Design by Travassos

Música de Selvagem - Volume Único (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

Music of Savages. The name of this project comes from a xenophobic saying of a French musician to Arthur Decloedt, when this São Paulo double bassist was living for some time in Paris. The music in question in that sad episode was, you guessed… Brazilian music. Returned to his country, Decloedt and saxophonist Filipe Nader decided both to turn that negative remark to a positive one, formulating a “savage” (read: spontaneous and free) kind of Brazilian jazz, to differentiate it from bossa nova and fusion, the styles generally perceived in Brazil as “jazz”. They invited another saxophonist (Oscar Ferreira), a trumpeter (Amilcar Rodrigues) and a drummer (Guilherme Marques) to play mainly improvised music. Because the refered bigot was also mentioning the work done by the singer-songwriters, the next decision was to make versions of songs written by the new generation of Brazilian Popular Music and treat them the way Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra used to with the revolutionary hymns of the world. Here is the result, with the composers themselves singing on top, namelly Sessa (“Música”), Tim Bernardes (“Morto”), Luiza Lian (“Dois Blocos”) and Pedro Pastoriz (“Assovio”). If you enjoyed what David Sylvian did with the likes of Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Christian Fennesz and Marc Ribot you’re gonna love this, and even more if you’re a fan of Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque, being also an enthusiast of creative jazz and exploratory music.

Arthur Decloedt  double bass

Filipe Nader  alto and baritone saxophones

Guilherme Marques  drums

Amilcar Rodrigues  trumpet and euphonium

Cuca Ferreira  baritone saxophone

Compositions: Sessa on track 1 | Tim Bernardes on track 2 | Luiza Lian/Filipe Nader on track 3 | Pedro Pastoriz on track 4

Recorded by Gui Jesus Toledo at A voz do Brasil , São Paulo, Brazil, February, 2017 | Mixed by Gui Jesus Toledo at Canoa Studio | Mastered by Gui Jesus Toledo | Arrangements and musical production by Filipe Nader and Arthur Decloedt

Produced by Filipe Nader and Arthur Decloedt | Executive production by Travassos for Trem Azul | Design and artwork by Maria Cau Levy

Friends & Neighbors - What’s Next (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

When a story is good and the following one is even better you naturally expect that new narratives coming next will explode your expectations, and here it is, with a title saying it all about what you’ll find inside: “What’s Next”. And what you’ll find inside is one more aspect of a huge field of possibilities when dealing with the «neo-New Thing sensation», an expression used by the magazine Downbeat to describe what is at stake in a Friends & Neighbors record: a recriation of the free jazz spirit of the Sixties and Seventies, going from Ornette Coleman to John Carter, through Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders, but with a perspective very much of the present times (at the end of the second decade of the 21st century is obvious we love melodies, and that’s what you have here: melodic free jazz) and a playing style with all the characteristics of Norwegian jazz. If you know the subgenre you’re certainly aware that free jazz is many different things, so André Roligheten, Thomas Johansson, Oscar Gronberg, Jon Rune Strom and Tollef Ostvang have a wide variety of references to tell their stories, keeping them fresh and surprising, despite all the weight of history. Yes, the Old New Thing is a New New Thing again with these five brilliant and incredibly imaginative cultural recyclers.

André Roligheten  tenor saxophone and bass clarinet

Thomas Johansson  trumpet

Oscar Grönberg  piano

Jon Rune Strøm  double bass

Tollef Østvang  drums

Tracks 1, 4, 5 and 8 by André Roligheten (TONO/NCB) | Track 2 by Jon Rune Strøm (TONO/NCB) | Tracks 3, 6 and 7 by Oscar Grönberg (TONO/NCB)

Recorded February 8th and 9th, 2018 by Dag Erik Johansen and Kai Andersen at Athletic Sound, Halden, Norway | Mixed by Ingar Hunskaar, Oslo, Norway | Mastered by Fridtjof Lindeman at Strype Audio, Oslo, Norway

Produced by Friends & Neighbors | Executive production by Trem Azul | Design by Travassos