The outstanding trumpeter Franco Ambrosetti loves ballads. Over the years he realised that often less is more, and now he has recorded the ballads album 'Lost Within You' with the same dream line up as on 2019's 'Long Waves'. The result is one of the most romantic and sentimental albums of the great European trumpeters career. "Trust and communication were the main points of action for this collection of ballads by Ambrosetti, one of Europes great living jazz masters, and his world class crew" (Bill Milkowski)
Diego Pinera is a unique figure who is genuinely taking music in new directions by juxtaposing the po-lyrhythmic freedom of jazz with other metric systems. As he says, “I studied music in the places where it came from.” He started playing drums as a four-year old in Montevideo. His student years were spent in Havana, Boston (Berklee) and Leipzig.
Based in Berlin since 2003, he has continued to wi-den his musical horizons, immersing himself in the ‘odd’ meters of the title through extensive work with Berlin-based musicians from Greece and Bulgaria.
‘Wisdom’ here refers not just to Pinera’s accretion of wide knowledge and consummate skill, but also to mystery and alchemy: the track “Conversations With My-self” is a hushed, concentrated masterpiece. His ear for fresh colours and timbres is astonishing.
His ACT debut “Despertando” was described as a “treat for the ear,” and “Odd Wisdom” is a kaleidoscope of sonic inventiveness. “Mi Cosmos”, for example, has the rasping sound of a snare over the drum-head. “Robotic Night” features a drum synth pad, played live in the studio.
“Odd Wisdom” is a significant and personal album. “It brings together all of the sounds and rhythms that I have been working on for the past decade.” Pinera gathered a dream team from the New York top flight together for just one day at the Trading 8s studio in New Jersey: Donny McCaslin, Ben Monder and Scott Colley have already made their mark in countless other contexts, and they are on spellbinding form here.
And yet “Odd Wisdom” also has a wonderful ‘lightness’ about it (it is one of Pinera’s favourite words). In these truly capable hands, complex music has a magical fluidity, freedom and flow. Pinera has acquired his wisdom by being watchful. As his evocative lyric for “Space” ex-presses it: “Al mirar arriba, más allá, en el sol.” (I under-stood by looking up, beyond, into the sun.)
Stunning, provocative, impassioned, esoteric, beautiful and soulful - just a few of the many adjectives that can be used to describe Luciana Souza's remarkable new album, The Book Of Longing, set for release via Sunnyside Records on August 24th, 2018. Produced by veteran music executive Larry Klein and recorded at Village Recording Studios in Los Angeles, The Book Of Longing is a tour-de-force for the Grammy-nominated vocalist whose career continues to cross musical boundaries with unabashed curiosity and unbridled sheer delight. The release of The Book Of Longing will be accompanied by select tour dates across the globe. To put it simply, The Book Of Longing is a song cycle - a passionate melding of poetry by the likes of Leonard Cohen, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti and Luciana herself - set to beautiful string accompaniment - for which all of the music was written and arranged by Souza. But this album is anything but simple - and its treasure trove of tracks comb the depths of human emotion from start to finish. When describing the creative process behind the making of The Book Of Longing, Luciana was very concise as to how she approached the recording. "It became clear to me that I wanted this recording to be about words and how they make me feel. How a set of ideas can take me places, reveal things I didn’t know or even knew that I needed to know. As I started setting these poems I wanted the words to be heard, but not necessarily defined. To me, the string instruments offer the best canvas for these songs. Like the voice, the sound of plucked strings decay and brings on silence and more possibility for listening. Also, the idea of counterpoint between the voice and strings was essential to me. The music would have to be simple and unadorned. Thus began the process of editing and shedding layers of more complex harmony and melody in favor of the most basic and expressive of landscapes - it’s about the words, I reminded myself - simple triads moving directly, tonal melodies, no fuss or unnecessary activity or ornaments." Accompanying Luciana on the recording are Scott Colley on bass and Chico Pinheiro on guitar, and the album was recorded as a live project with percussion overdub. Added Souza, "Making music with Chico and Scott is a thing of wonder. They have bountiful hearts, incredibly able hands, and abundant musical intelligence. Larry's generous and curious guidance fostered our creativity and kept things transparent and honest. To all of them, I am eternally grateful."
Pianist-Composer Edward Simon Presents the Album Sorrows and Triumphs,
Featuring Afinidad, his Quartet with Alto Saxophonist David Binney,
Bassist Scott Colley and Drummer Brian Blade
The richly textured Sorrows and Triumphs - to be released April 20, 2018, via Sunnyside Records - is also colored by very special guests: vocalist Gretchen Parlato, guitarist Adam Rogers
and chamber quintet Imani Winds
"One of the strongest pianists of his generation, with intuitive empathy and drum-like ingenuity, Simon solos compositionally with passionate elegance."- DownBeat
Pianist Edward Simon - a native of Venezuela who has made a name for himself over decades in America as a jazz pianist, bandleader and composer-arranger, along with being a Guggenheim Fellow and member of the hit SFJAZZ Collective - presents his latest album, Sorrows and Triumphs, via Sunnyside Records on April 20, 2018. The recording showcases his virtuoso quartet Afinidad, featuring alto saxophonist David Binney, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Brian Blade; the album's color-rich arrangements also include special guests: vocalist Gretchen Parlato, guitarist Adam Rogers and the chamber quintet Imani Winds, along with percussionists Rogerio Boccato and Luis Quintero. The album's material blends two bodies of music commissioned by Chamber Music of America's New Jazz Works program: the suites "Sorrows and Triumphs" and "House of Numbers," their individual movements re-sequenced to form a holistic listening experience that brims with a lyricism both intimate and majestic. This release follows Simon's Latin American Songbook, with the four-and-a-half-star DownBeat review for that 2016 album praising its "grand and sophisticated" sound. Latin American Songbook also won Simon an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album. JazzTimes has said: "Simon is less talked about than many other important jazz pianists from the Caribbean and South America, but he may be the most complete creative artist among them." The three tracks on Sorrows and Triumphs drawn from the original title suite - "Equanimity," "Rebirth" and "Triumphs" - feature Afinidad with Parlato, Rogers and Baccato, the compositions inspired by Simon's studies of Buddhism over two decades. Afinidad first performed the "Sorrows and Triumphs" suite in 2009 at Walton Performing Arts Center in Arkansas and later at New York's Jazz Standard, with performances broadcast on NPR's Jazz Set. "The music isn't narrative in any way," Simon explains. "But it was inspired intuitively by the effects Buddhist practice has had on me, the perspective and the little bits of enlightenment that come every day. I wrote my own words for 'Triumphs,' but Gretchen has also studied Buddhism, so when I asked her to contribute lyrics to 'Rebirth,' she knew exactly how to convey the message. Gretchen is such a special singer, who has the gift making the most of small details to expressive effect. She knows that just a whisper can have a big impact. As for the compositions, I wanted them to bring joy to the listener, to be direct and accessible, with singable melodies." The album's tracks taken from the suite "House of Numbers" - "Uninvited Thoughts," "Triangle," "Chant" and "Venezuela Unida" - feature Afinidad with Quintero and award-winning classical group Imani Winds. The ballad highlight "Chant" also includes words and vocals by Parlato. Simon's compositions explore the cross-cultural resonance of numerology, as well as the musical possibilities that arise when jazz and classical artists combine. The music draws on traditions from Europe, Africa, North America and South America, blending composed structures with sections for improvisation; the numbers 3, 4, 5 and 7 - and their cultural and musical implications - form the basis of the suite's four pieces. The composer explains: "The number 3, for instance, can suggest triple meters, such as 3/4, 6/4 or 6/8, which in turn can suggest certain grooves, particularly in the music of South America. It can also point to the use of triads and three-bar phrases. Above all, the number 3 points to the even distribution of forces into three equal parts, which suggests balance - an ideal in nature and life." Afinidad and Imani Winds unveiled House of Numbers in 2016 at California's University of the Pacific.
Simon Rowe, executive director of Roots, Jazz & American Music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, attended the premiere of "House of Numbers," saying afterward that the blend of the five Imani Winds with Simon's jazz quartet was "mesmerizing," as the "writing juxtaposed the lyrical and often dense textures of the quintet with the ever-changing, percolating rhythmic drive of Afinidad." Reviewing Afinidad's music-making, All About Jazz described the band's sound as "wonderful, accessible and deep." Simon remarks on his bandmates: "Their musicality, openness, and breadth give me the greatest freedom as a composer. I write with the sound and sensibilities of Dave, Scott and Brian in mind, and I depend on our instant empathy and almost wordless communication in the studio. It is our artistic bond of trust, built over many years, that underpins and encourages my exploration in these pieces." Simon and Binney co-founded Afinidad in 2000, with the kindred-spirit rhythm section of Colley and Blade there from the start. The quartet has previously released the albums Afinidad (Red Records, 2001) and Océanos (Criss Cross, 2007). Simon and Binney share a 25-year affinity, their musical visions as simpatico as their personalities. "Dave is eclectic, open to all sorts of influences, and has the ability to put them together into something personal, as a player and as a composer," Simon remarks. "We have both composed for Afinidad over the years, even though this album is mine as a composer. But David's sharp ear for aesthetic beauty makes him a great sounding board in the studio - in addition to being a featured player, he has real producing chops. He co-produced the track 'Triumphs' with me, adding electronics." For his part, Binney says: "I've always enjoyed Ed's sensitive musicality. His musical concept sums up the way I hear things, and because of his Latin American roots, his rhythmic sense is very strong, which complements the way I play. Sometimes I play with more abandon, and he locks things in. And his compositions have such thought behind them." About Colley and Blade, who are leaders in their own right, Simon adds: "Musicians who are composers interpret other people's music in a more informed way, so Scott and Brian have the sensibility to articulate my music with sensitivity to space, to quality of sound, to textural nuance." Guitarist Adam Rogers has been part of the extended Afinidad family for years. "He's such a strong improver," Simon explains, "and his versatility as a player, whether on electric or acoustic, adds a lot to what we can do texturally." About the extra percussion of Boccato and Quintero, Simon adds: "Groove has always been a vital aspect of music for me, and with a lot of this music influenced by classical minimalism - especially Steve Reich - the extra percussion helps articulate the groove. And in 'Venezuela Unida,' Luis plays the culo'e puya, a long, narrow drum, played in sets of three, associated with Afro-Venezuelan music. This composition is dedicated to my homeland. Venezuela has undergone tremendous socio-economic and political changes during the past decade. It pains me to see the strong divisions that have emerged as a result and the great difficulty people are going through. I wish for my fellow Venezuelans to elevate themselves beyond differences in views and hope they manage to find peace, understanding and unity once again."
Edward Simon - who first came to the U.S. in 1981 at age 12, then settled permanently stateside after attending the Performing Arts School in Philadelphia - grew up in a musical family in the oil-refinery town of Punta Cardón, Venezuela. His father planted a musical seed with young Edward and his siblings, the kids raised on the strains of their dad playing guitar and singing boleros with his drinking buddies. Chucho Valdés was Simon's first big influence on piano, then he got the jazz bug watching a VHS tape of Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz playing at the White House - with "the freedom of jazz" forever instilled in him as an ideal. After graduating from the Performing Arts School at age 15, Simon received a music scholarship from the University of the Arts where he studied classical music. Later, he transferred to the Manhattan School of Music where he studied jazz piano. During his stint as a young jazzer in New York City, Simon was inspired by the innovative Nuyorican jazz of Jerry Gonzalez & the Fort Apache Band, eventually playing with the group. As a young striver, Simon took the piano chair in Bobby Watson's band Horizon (1989-94), later moving to the Terence Blanchard Group (1994-2002). Simon made his debut album as a leader in 1994 with Beauty Within (Audioquest). The same year, he placed third in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, with the albums Edward Simon (Kokopelli, 1995) and La Bikina (Mythology, 1998) to follow. Simon co-founded the quartet Afinidad with David Binney, releasing the discs Afinidad (Red Records, 2001) and Océanos (Criss Cross, 2007) with the rhythm duo of Scott Colley and Brian Blade. Simon and Binney also released the duo album Fiestas de Agosto (Red Records, 2008). In 2010, Simon was named a Guggenheim Fellow, and he became a member of the SFJAZZ Collective, which comprises what The New York Times called "eight of today's most in-demand" performer-composers. Following his leader discs The Process (Criss Cross, 2003) and Simplicitas (Criss Cross, 2005), Simon recorded several albums featuring his All-Star Trio with Blade and bassist John Patitucci; complementing the studio discs Unicity (CamJazz, 2006) and Poesía (CamJazz, 2009), the group's most recent release is the 2013 Sunnyside album Trio Live, recorded at New York's Jazz Standard. The New York Times praised Simon's "warm touch" as a pianist, while Jazz Journal International singled out his "deep emotional statements" as a composer. With the folk-accented compositions of his album Venezuelan Suite (Sunnyside, 2014), Simon garnered some of the most glowing reviews of his career, including a rating of four-and-a-half out of five stars from DownBeat. With Venezuelan Suite, the pianist blended the tuneful, buoyant sounds of his native country with the harmonically sophisticated, forward-looking manner of jazz. The compositions - written on a grant from Chamber Music America - featured star saxophonist Mark Turner alongside virtuosos of the Venezuelan folk tradition. All About Jazz marveled over the album: "Venezuelan Suite is pianist Edward Simon's love letter to his homeland, but that's not all it is; it's the perfect confluence of Venezuelan ideals, jazz language and chamber-esque sophistication. In short, it's a masterpiece." Latin American Songbook (Sunnyside, 2016) saw Simon create artful piano-trio arrangements of such classics as Astor Piazzolla's "Libertango" and Antônio Carlos Jobim's "Chega de Saudade," as well as the Cuban ballad "En La Orilla Del Mundo" (On the Edge of the World). NPR's All Things Considered said: "This recording works because an expert musician applies himself so sincerely to songs that were formative for him. Simon puts his head and heart into Latin American Songbook, and the album gives Latin standards a rightful and joyful place at the center of instrumental jazz." In fall 2017, Simon, Colley and Blade released their first album as a cooperative trio, the eponymous Steel House.
1. "Incessant Desires"
2. "Uninvited Thoughts"
3. "Equanimity"
4. "Triangle"
5. "Chant"
6. "Venezuela Unida"
7. "Triumphs"
8. "Rebirth"
Produced and composed by Edward Simon
"Triumphs" co-produced by Edward Simon & David Binney
Lyrics for "Chant" and "Rebirth" by Gretchen Parlato
Guitarist Nels Cline debuts a new band with the April 13 release of Currents, Constellations (Blue Note) featuring The Nels Cline 4, an intrepid unit that builds upon Cline’s acclaimed collaboration with guitarist Julian Lage by adding the fierce and versatile rhythm section of bassist Scott Colley and drummer Tom Rainey. The album’s lead single “Imperfect 10” is available to stream or download today
Guitarist Nels Cline debuts a new band with the April 13 release of Currents, Constellations (Blue Note) featuring The Nels Cline 4, an intrepid unit that builds upon Cline’s acclaimed collaboration with guitarist Julian Lage by adding the fierce and versatile rhythm section of bassist Scott Colley and drummer Tom Rainey. The album’s lead single “Imperfect 10” is available to stream or download today The Nels Cline 4 will celebrate the album’s release with a show at (le) poisson rouge in New York City on April 16. Tickets go on sale here on Friday, March 9 at 12:00pm ET. A European tour will follow, with Cline joined by Lage, Rainey, and bassist Jorge Roeder. Of all the rich and varied projects guitarist Cline has pursued since his emergence as a leader in the late 1980s, his two-guitar duo with Lage, documented on the 2014 Mack Avenue album Room, ranks among the most special. “When Julian and I started playing together it kicked my ass hard,” Cline told JazzTimes around the time of Room’s release. “At the same time it inspired me and refreshed my soul.” Lage, for his part, declared he had “found his people” playing with Cline: “At last I found a scenario where … you could be free and adventurous, you could utilize sound and be extremely melodic and evocative.”
“Even in the earliest days of the duo we used to say, ‘I wonder what we’d do if we ever had a rhythm section,’” Cline recalls. In 2016 he decided to find out by inviting Colley and Rainey to collaborate with he and Lage during a residency at The Stone in New York City. “I brought in a few themes and we just kind of went for it. Everyone was enthusiastic about continuing the work.” Known as the lead guitarist of Wilco since 2004, and one of Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists,” Cline is coming off the success of his 2016 Blue Note debut Lovers, a “quietly ravishing double-album” (NY Times) featuring Cline with a large ensemble conducted and arranged by Michael Leonhart that was “wildly inventive in its watercolored way” (Rolling Stone). On Currents, Constellations Cline embraces a sparser but edgier instrumentation, which serves the adventurous thrust of the music, brimming as it does with raw energy and wild beauty.
1. Furtive (Nels Cline)
2. Swing Ghost '59 (Nels Cline)
3. Imperfect 10 (Nels Cline)
4. As Close As That (Nels Cline)
5. Amenette (Nels Cline)
6. Temporarily (Carla Bley)
7. River Mouth (Parts 1 & 2) (Nels Cline)
8. For Each, A Flower (Nels Cline)
2018 Tour Dates:
April 16 - New York, NY - (le) poisson rouge - ON SALE 3/9
April 20 - Geneva, CH - AMR - Sud des Alpes - TICKETS
April 21 - Oslo, NO - Nasjonal Jazzscene, Victoria - TICKETS
Modern Lore finds Lage playfully flipping the script he followed on his acclaimed 2016 Mack Avenue debut, Arclight. That album — produced, like Modern Lore, by Lage’s friend and collaborator, the singer-songwriter Jesse Harris — was his first trio set on electric guitar and found Lage inspired by the sounds and the attitude of the freewheeling, pre-bebop jazz era, when, as he puts it, “country music and jazz and swing were in this weird wild-west period.” This time he incorporates the sensibility, if not the outright sound, of early rock and roll, a similarly hybrid form driven by rhythm, personality and a passion for the electric guitar.
Three well-known instrumentalists are building a new band called Steel House. The foundations of this house are deep and strong, the roof sturdy. Inside is one big, light-filled room occupied by the three leaders: Edward Simon on piano, Scott Colley on acoustic bass, and Brian Blade on drums. Each man is a world-class jazz player with his own robust composing, recording, and performing career. Since meeting in New York in the early 1990s, they have shared stages and studios, playing many different styles of music together. They decided to form (build) Steel House to create a dedicated place for their own musical explorations. The music of Steel House embraces both silence, and emerging from that stillness, conversation. The communication among Simon, Colley, and Blade stays nimble, focused on moment-to-moment interaction. Musical structure is minimal, poetic, and full of purpose. Walls of genre, category, and style are torn down. Light and space abound. We can hear them down the street now, Simon, Colley, and Blade building their Steel House. The music is infectious. It is everything you wanted – spirited and serious, caring and carefree.
In celebration of Thelonious Monk’s centennial, Joey Alexander performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Appel Room in June of 2017. The resulting live album, Joey.Monk.Live! captures Joey’s trio, with bassist Scott Colley and drummer Willie Jones III, exploring Monk’s music in imaginative and deeply-felt ways. In solo, duo and trio performances, Joey pays tribute to the pianist and composer who first made an impression on him and who still serves as a guiding inspiration.
A live performance took place at the Vanguard in New York one night in April 2015: Enrico Pieranunzi played in quartet with Donny McCaslin on sax, Scott Colley on double bass and Clarence Penn on drums. In the sold-out club, the lights were dimmed, the audience stopped talking and, that night in New York, jazz started to flow out from the only Italian artist who has played as a leader three times on that legendary stage. The concert was recorded and released on CAM JAZZ. The music Pieranunzi and his quartet deliver here is all portrayed in the CD title, “New Spring”: renewal, vital energy, promises that come true, in the city that has always been the cradle, school and springboard for, but also and again the point of arrival of jazz, the city whose breath is perceived, between tracks, in the clapping hands of the audience at the Vanguard. This is a modern, internationally-oriented jazz, entirely featuring original tracks, except for the standard “I Hear A Rhapsody”, and resulting from the interplay among four real jazz giants, who skillfully blend their forceful personalities into excellent music. The Vanguard is the shrine of American jazz and here, in the amazing harmonies and unexpected melodies of Pieranunzi’s superb, creative piano, you can feel it throbbing. You can almost see Scott Colley filling that small historic stage with his double bass, grinding out rhythm and weaving passionate, moving melodies. You can picture the audience captivated by the scratchy voice of Donny McCaslin’s saxophone that soars with soft phrases and mingles with Clarence Penn’s rich, full drumming, while Lorraine Gordon, the legendary owner of the Vanguard, seated in a corner of her reign, attentively listens to each note. “New Spring” is ever-evolving music with an immediate impact on the listeners’ emotions. It is a small great journey through New York, Italian, American and European jazz: a picture, a photograph, a moment, a film clip, a night to be enjoyed and breathed wherever you like that then makes you really want to pick up and go to the place where jazz is, maybe precisely in spring, hoping for another beguiling April in New York. Under the supervision of music producer Ermanno Basso, New Spring was recorded live in April 2015 at The Village Vanguard, NYC, by SoundByte Engineer Paul Zinman and mixed by James Farber at Sear Sound in NYC, and mastered by Danilo Rossi.
