Phisqa - Pachamama (March 2021 Odradek Records)

“PHISQA: a solid fusion of jazz and Peruvian rhythms” – Diario Jaén

“A superior project: six stars” – Ideal (Granada)

“Phisqa: a very solid fusión between jazz and Peruvian rhythms.” – Cultura Jaen

“This is the next step in the fusion of Peruvian rhythms and jazz...” – Oscar Stangaro

“At their head, Calmet is a young musician at the beginning of what promises to be an interesting journey.” – The Irish Times

“... a young group full of promise.” – All About Jazz

“Super...” – Jazz FM

“Peruvian jazz catches your ear by combining thriving rhythms from the Andes with the splendid musicianship of some of the finest European jazz musicians.” – Jazz Am Sunntig

“A trip” is how its creator, Cote Calmet, defines this project. ‘Phisqa’ (‘five’ in Quechua, the native language of Peru) is a word chosen to inspire our five senses as human beings. PHISQA is also the staging of a new way of merging the rich texture of Afro-Peruvian, Andean and Amazonian rhythms with the elegance, spontaneity, freedom and virtuosity of the jazz language.

Pachamama, meaning Mother Earth in Quechua (the native language used by the Incas in Peru), is a tribute to the one, huge, living organism floating in space which gives life to every single one of us. A tribute to the perfect timing in life that puts everything together at the right moment, in the right place, so that all of us can be walking, breathing, laughing, creating, experimenting, listening. Every composition on the album relates to the Pachamama and its inhabitants. It could be a Guacamayo (macaw) taking flight, a Shipiba (healer from the Amazon jungle) like Elisa Vargas chanting, a poet like Nicomedes studying, or anything or anybody that is trying to make the world a more beautiful place.

Formed in the city of Dublin (Ireland) in 2010, PHISQA escapes the traditional way in which Peruvian rhythms have been fused with jazz. Calmet – composer, conductor and drummer of the group – explains: “First of all I tried to approach Peruvian music, trying to use another method of playing it with jazz. I used a lot of the concepts of opening the solos of the themes, as well as having more architectural structures. I have also avoided having a cajón or other type of native percussion next to the drums, so I passed all those rhythms to my instrument. PHISQA explores the wealth of Afro-Peruvian, Andean and Amazonian music but with jazz instruments: soprano and tenor sax, trumpet, guitar, drums and double bass. That way we can move from a totally Peruvian rhythm to the newest in contemporary jazz and fusion.”

01 – GUACAMAYOS

02 – CHAQCHA

03 – COLIBRI

04 – LIMA LA GRIS

05 – LULLABY FOR NICOMEDES

06 – SUSPENSION

07 – MOCHE

08 – SHIPIBA

09 – FOLI

10 – MANU

PHISQA

Carlos Ligero tenor saxophone

Miguel de Gemma soprano saxophone

Albetro Martín trumpet & flugelhorn

Mario Alonso electric guitar

Alejandro Tamayo double & electric bass

Cote Calmet drums, percussion, composition & arrangement

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Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, Džeraldas Bidva - Baltic Concerti (ODRADEK RECORDS 2018)

This CD is a testimony of my sincere attachment to my homeland and its people. And even more than this, it is intended to reflect the spirit of the whole Baltic region...The music of Julius Juzeliūnas is steeped in Lithuanian folklore; that of Pēteris Vasks has a strong sense of nature translated into sound; and that of Anatolijus Šenderovas not only reflects dramatic experiences in the whirlwinds of Lithuania’s turbulent history, but also reveals the richly multicoloured and polyethnic soundscape of our country.

Džeraldas Bidva

Starring exceptional violinist Džeraldas Bidva, three concerti by Vasks, Šenderovas and Juzeliūnas transport the listener to Lithuania in a release which coincides with the centenary of the country’s independence.

Džeraldas Bidva interprets three Baltic concerti: two for violin and orchestra, including Pēteris Vasks’ Vox amoris, and one featuring organ and violin, for which Bidva is joined by the young and talented organist Karolina Juodelytė. The Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra is conducted by Modestas Pitrėnas and Adrija Čepaitė.

The music of Julius Juzeliūnas is steeped in Lithuanian folklore; that of Pēteris Vasks has a strong sense of nature translated into sound; and that of Anatolijus Šenderovas not only reflects dramatic experiences in Lithuania’s turbulent history, but also reveals the richly multicoloured and polyethnic soundscape of the country.

This album appears in the year marking the centenary of Lithuania’s restored independence. It celebrates the continuing tradition of musical art in the Baltic countries within the broader context of centuries-old European traditions.

Lior Shambadal, Chief Conductor of the Berliner Symphoniker, said of the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra: “Top level chamber orchestras have become such a rarity in today’s world, whereas you have one and can raise its international profile even higher by presenting projects that no one else has ventured before. The Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra has a glorious past, dynamic present and, I believe, will have a brilliant future”.

01 – Peteris Vasks – Vox amoris

02 – Julius Juzeliunas – Concerto per Organo Violino Orchestra d aschi – I Allegro sostenuto

03 – Julius Juzeliunas – Concerto per Organo Violino Orchestra d aschi – II Passacaglia – Andantino quieto

04 – Julius Juzeliunas – Concerto per Organo Violino Orchestra d aschi – III Finale – Allegro con brio

05 – Anatolijus Senderovas – Concerto for Violin and Chamber Orchestra

Alexander Scriabin: Complete Late Piano Music Vol. 1 and 2 James Kreiling (ODRADEK RECORDS 2018)

When I first became enamoured with Scriabin' s music, 18 years ago, his late works were still dismissed by many students and teachers (in the UK at least) as mere curiosities. Audiences would look back at me, perplexed. Some would even scoff when I explained his ideas regarding art and existence. Of course, this was not everyone’s reaction, but it has been a regular experience. I find this perception of his music unfair: for me, Scriabin’s late works are some of the most extraordinary, original, and beautiful music I know, and demand to be taken seriously...It is art’s transformative capacity which Scriabin develops. He wanted his art to unite people, to break down the barrier between audience and performer, just as music is able to cross social and cultural divides.

James Kreiling

Scriabin specialist James Kreiling invites us into the composer’s heady and intoxicating musical world as he performs Scriabin’s complete late piano music.

Scriabin was a master of the miniature, and these short works make up the majority of his musical output. To listen to Scriabin’s late music is to enter a different world, a realm of suggestion, seduction, delirium, dance, beauty, even terror. Within 20 years, his music had developed from the romantic miniature, influenced by Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt, to music which extended tonality to its limitations.

The late miniatures heard on this release are perhaps the best place to start if approaching this music for the first time. More than just musical experiments in preparation for the longer sonatas, they are perfectly contained musical worlds, each entirely different and unique from the others. They range from more extended works such as the dream-like, half-lit world of the Poème-Nocturne, to rarely-heard gems such as the Feuillet d’album, the Quatre Pièces, and Scriabin’s exploration of the intervals of the 9th, 7th, and 5th, in the Trois Études, Op. 65.

Most of Scriabin’s miniatures were published in contrasting pairs, emphasising a key element of his late style: opposites and contrast. The concept of opposing forces is found throughout Scriabin’s thinking, taking on many forms: impulsive, energised and fiery, versus languorous, beautiful, seductive; or as contrasting states – purity and terror, material and spiritual, good and evil, light and dark.

James Kreiling, who specialised in this repertoire for his Doctorate, brings a rare level of insight and inspiration to his performances of Scriabin’s late music. Every nuance is understood and communicated with subtlety and sensuality, the kaleidoscope of Scriabin’s palette of colours drawn out in Kreiling’s outstanding interpretations.

Massimiliano Coclite 4tet - Strange People (ODRADEK RECORDS 2018)

I started to write the tunes recorded on this album many years ago, while I was living in Berlin. I spent much time alone, in a little room on the east side. The ideas came easily, but I never imagined that an album would come of it many years later. This album means a lot to me: it emerged from many years of trouble, from many different causes. What’s more, this is the first of my albums on which I only play the piano and don’t sing.

Massimiliano Coclite

Italian jazz pianist Massimiliano Coclite presents Strange People, a collection of deeply personal works which have evolved over time, the album’s concept coalescing during the recording process itself.

The musicians collaborating on this release – Stefano ‘Cocco’ Cantini saxophones, Ares Tavolazzi bass, Marcello Di Leonardo drums – share a similar vision of how the music should breathe, creating a soft, spaciousness of sound, drawing the listener into a musical journey of bewitching musical narratives. This is music of mystery, of strangers meeting, of enigmatic feelings hinted at but not always expressed; of introspection and intrigue. A haunting, crepuscular soundworld of seductive, dark-hued beauty.

Jesús Rodolfo - Transfixing Metamorphosis (ODRADEK RECORDS 2108)

The magical music that accompanied the story of Beauty and the Beast was what aroused in me, aged 4, the love of music. From that moment, my life events had a soundtrack that would shift like a kaleidoscope. Nearly 30 years later, it feels like looking through the glass of that kaleidoscope again, and a new soundtrack plays in my head describing each of the three decades of my life... And so, when I least expected it, the transformation happened. These experiences coalesced and, all of a sudden, I realised I was an adult. I am nothing but the result of what has been learned during those different phases of my life, paired with the beautiful dreams, experiences and wishes that brought about the metamorphosis of these reminiscences, producing who I am today, as an individual and as a musician.

Jesus Rodolfo

Described by the New York Times Digest as “a star whose light transcends the stage”, Spanish violist Jesus Rodolfo combines the spontaneity and fearless imagination of youth with the discipline and precision of a mature artist.

Jesus Rodolfo’s Odradek debut, Transfixing Metamorphosis, takes us on a journey through music for solo viola – a journey felt deeply by the artist as one which resonates with key moments in his own musical development.

We hear a transcription of J.S. Bach’s Sonata No. 3, BWV 1005 (originally for solo violin), a work of sublime power which includes the longest fugue ever written by Bach, a breathtaking tour de force.

Paul Hindemith’s Viola Sonata, Op. 11, No. 5 was written in 1919 at a time when Hindemith the performer was making his final transition from the violin to the viola. The sonata is one of a group of works started in 1918 at the tail end of World War One. Hindemith’s approach to sonority and counterpoint, articulated using a neoclassical musical language, finds parallels with J. S. Bach, leavened by a purity, even a romanticism, of spirit.

György Ligeti’s Viola Sonata (1991-1994) is considered perhaps the hardest solo viola work yet written. Over the course of its expansive six-movement structure, this work creates a sense of reminiscence, an evocation of something which has gone before, without resorting to pastiche. Ligeti explores all the capacities of the instrument and stretches the skill of the performer almost to breaking point, a challenge audibly relished by Jesus Rodolfo in this thrilling performance.

Carion Wind Quintet - Dreams of Freedom (ODRADEK RECORDS 2108)

The story of this album begins back in 2015 with a young Syrian musician playing in the streets of Istanbul just to scrape by. Denied access to Europe, Moutaz Abass sat on a small stool and casually played Beethoven’s Ode to Joy without attracting much attention from the passers by – a tune we all know too well and the meaning of which we often forget. The irony of this was startling – a war refugee, abandoned to his own devices, stringing along a melody on his oud that symbolises the humanitarian values we cherish so much: brotherhood, equality and acceptance of all.

Egīls Šēfers

The award-winning Carion Wind Quintet returns with Dreams of Freedom, featuring the world-premiere recording of Borderless by Syrian refugee Moutaz Arian, alongside Mozart, Zemlinsky, Hindemith, Stravinsky and Pärt.

The rich variety of music on this album is unified by each composer’s ‘dream of freedom’. All of these composers experienced exile of one kind or another, travelling far from home in order to pursue their vocation. Mozart left the stifling confines of Salzburg for the cultural riches of Vienna. Stravinsky, Hindemith, Zemlinsky and Pärt all left unsympathetic or even hostile regimes, and Kurdish composer Moutaz Arian escaped Syria and now lives in China; he dedicated his piece, Borderless, to Carion. Yet despite the profound, sometimes painful origins of this music, this is an album full of joie de vivre: music full of hope, intellect and even humour.

Mozart’s delightful Serenade No.11 in E flat, KV 375, was his first known foray into the Viennese tradition of wind band music, and Stravinsky’s Suite No. 2, derived from earlier piano pieces, features a March, Waltz and Polka which are all wonderfully skewed takes on convention, while Stravinsky’s unmistakeable harmony, reminiscent of Petrushka, imbues the quirky Galop.

Zemlinsky represented an important link in the evolution of music from Brahms to Mahler to the Second Viennese School; dating from 1939, his Humoresque was one of the last pieces he wrote. Hindemith’s Kleine Kammermusik features a witty march followed by a wry waltz which parodies overly sentimental music. In the fourth movement each instrument enjoys cadenza-like passages before the demanding swagger of the finale. Arvo Pärt’s Quintettino dates from 1964, before his “holy minimalism” style emerged, and so represents a fascinating example of his earlier experiments in sound.

Moutaz Arian is a Kurdish composer from northern Syria who now lives in Beijing, performing his compositions in China and Japan. Arian’s Borderless is a powerfully pertinent and hugely topical work. He says of this piece that it expresses “our desire to live more freely in a world without the borders that separate us, not only borders of land, but physical and human barriers, too.”

The Blue Voice of the Water - Works of Luís Tinoco _ODRADEK RECORDS 2018

The Blue Voice of the Water was written for a co-commission from the Gulbenkian Orchestra and the São Paulo Symphony. I started to explore Brazilian poetry, especially Manoel de Barros, finding a verse of his that may be freely translated as “the voice of the water has a blue accent”. This triggered my imagination for this piece, which starts in the dark blue of the deep ocean, gradually rising to lighter tones as if returning to the surface. Luís Tinoco

For Portuguese composer Luís Tinoco, music has always been connected with the visual arts, film, theatre, and even with the light of Lisbon itself. Growing up near the ocean has also infiltrated his soundworld; not in a directly pictorial sense, but in a deeper, structural understanding of ebb and flow, of constancy and evolution.

Tinoco’s orchestral works reflect these influences, alongside other cultural allusions: Before Spring is a tribute to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, and the vivid poetry of Manoel de Barros helped inspire The Blue Voice of the Water. The magical, ethereal Cello Concerto is dedicated to the artist who performs the work on this recording, Filipe Quaresma, acclaimed for his “precise, superbly articulated playing, full of passion yet often quite thoughtful” (The Strad). Frisland refers both to an imaginary island first put on the map by the 16th-century cartographer Nicolo Zeno, and to the jazz artist Bill Frisell. The result is a vibrant work which Tinoco describes as “an imaginary voyage through an (also imaginary) soundworld inspired by Frisell’s music”.

The recording features performances by four internationally-acclaimed orchestras gathered together on one disc.

Colibrì Ensemble & Alexander Lonquich: Schumann - Burgmüller on ODRADEK RECORDS

The lives of Robert Schumann and Norbert Burgmüller intersect in fascinating ways. Both were born in 1810, and both spent significant periods of their lives in Düsseldorf, which is how Schumann came to orchestrate the Scherzo of Burgmüller’s Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 11. Acclaimed pianist Alexander Lonquich has long been intrigued by the complex interrelationships between these two composers and their circle of influences. Lonquich brings his unique and scintillating insight to this performance of Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, a work which began life as a Phantasie for the composer’s wife, pianist Clara Schumann, but was later augmented to become an irresistible full-length work.

The conversational principles of the concerto’s first movement are taken even further in the central Intermezzo, in which Schumann creates a sense of intimate dialogue enhanced by the delicate, almost chamber-like treatment of his orchestral forces. We then tumble effortlessly into the finale, which is full of subtle touches that reveal a composer at the peak of his powers: there are no perfunctory finale fireworks, but rather a movement of quirky good humour and perfectly-judged invention.

Burgmüller’s Second Symphony unfolds with charming ease, undulating between genial lyricism and stormier interjections reminiscent of Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony. The work culminates in the Scherzo, a tussle between a refined dance, perhaps representing the civilised aspects of humanity, and sudden torrents of sound reflecting the irrepressible forces of Nature.

Alexander Lonquich is joined on this disc by The Colibrì Ensemble, a chamber orchestra which performs regularly in Pescara, Italy, where it has its own concert season. Founded in 2013 by Andrea Gallo, this vibrant collection of musicians has already forged strong relationships with a host of outstanding artists, including a special connection with Alexander Lonquich, who is now a regular guest each season.

Pina Napolitano: Brahms the Progressive on ODRADEK RECORDS

Brahms the Progressive

“A masterful disc... where the fullness of timbres is matched only by the mastery of musical conception.” — Thierry Vagne

Pina Napolitano

The greatest challenge for me in playing Brahms, and the thing which makes his music an inexhaustible source of wonder and stimulates continuous research, is trying to do justice to all of these aspects: the excruciating romantic beauty of melodic and timbral invention, the never-deformed classical proportions, the omnipresent counterpoint, and finally the elusively modern aspects.

                         Pina Napolitano

For acclaimed pianist Pina Napolitano, there is no better way of looking at art and history than through the lens of inverted time, from the present to the past. This seems to be what Schoenberg invites us to do in his essay, Brahms the Progressive, in which Brahms, often considered a musical “conservative”, becomes instead the father of modernism. This provides the essence of this album: traversing time in two directions, looking at Brahms from the future of the modern Viennese, and vice versa, looking at the Second Viennese School from the past of Brahmsian romanticism.

For Pina Napolitano there are romantic echoes in the works of the Second Viennese School; an enormous expressive force distilled and compressed, all the way up to Webern’s rarefied language where even the silences are charged with music and significance. And on the other hand she has always perceived Brahms’ music as a magic prism, in which an entire musical past (encompassing Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann…) merges together, before breaking off into rivulets that will give birth to 20th-century music.

We hear on this album Berg’s Op.1 Sonata, in which there is an intricate network of motivic relations, rhythmic flexibility and metrical ambiguity, the music unfolding with the sort of fluidity and connectedness which are hallmarks of Brahms’ style. Harmonically, the sonata begins and ends in B minor, but includes a range of non-tonal harmonies. Webern’s Satz (1906) was written not long after he had begun to take lessons with Schoenberg, but the piece shows clearly how Webern’s music grew out of the 19th century. Written in 1924, Webern’s Kinderstück is his earliest complete piece using 12-note serialism, but it is with his Variations, Op. 27 (1936) that we hear a more typically sophisticated serial technique from Webern.

If Webern’s Op. 27 looks back to Brahms in its sense of motivic connectedness, it is perhaps possible to see the opening Intermezzo of Brahms’ Op. 119 looking forward to Webern. Both Opp. 118 and 119 were written in 1893 and are among Brahms’ final works. Brahms gives the sets the title of Klavierstücke – which Schoenberg would use later for his own works for solo piano.

Italian pianist Pina Napolitano made a splash with her debut CD in 2012: Norman Lebrecht featured her recording of Arnold Schoenberg’s complete piano works as his CD of the Week, shortlisting it for his Sinfini Music Album of the Year; Guy Rickards in International Piano Magazine called the CD “outstanding”, citing the “tensile strength to her playing that is distinctly hers”, and Calum MacDonald in BBC Music Magazine gave it five stars for its “rare penetration, understanding, grace and elegance.”

www.pina.com