Erik Friedlander - Rings (2016)

Rings is the latest cd from my new trio Black Phebe, with me on cello, pianist and accordionist Shoko Nagai and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi. Rings comes at you from different angles: There are times when the band plays with exhuberance and other times the trio works to create an atmosphere of loneliness and insecurity. The unifying theme of the project are the cycles each piece follows. Each piece has repetition built in. These cycles or rings are the building blocks of the project, sometimes long and sometimes short as a few seconds. 

Black Phebe is really many trios. Shoko Nagai’s charismatic performance on accordion and piano changes the feel of the group. When she plays accordion the band is a world-music band playing virtuoso, mixed meter works (“Risky Business”) or sweet folk songs (“Small Things”). On piano the band is a jazz piano trio (“Black Phebe”, “Fracture”) or a classical chamber group (“A Single Eye”). 

At the heart of the cd are the Rings. 3 pieces that use live looping as a compositional process captured in the recording. In these pieces I create the composition as the trio improvises with me and around me. The Rings are a new thing for me. I’ve never been a fan of looping as a compositional technique but I turned around on it when I tried it with this band. I create the ring as we improvise and the result is hypnotic and beautiful..but organic.

01. The Seducer 04:14

02. Black Phebe 06:22

03. A Single Eye 03:37

04. Fracture 08:45

05. Risky Business 06:40

06. Tremors 03:22

07. Small Things 03:21

08. Solve Me 06:13

09. Canoe 04:51

10. Waterwheel 05:41

11. Flycatcher 07:16

12. Silk 06:02

Releases June 10, 2016 

Produced by Erik Friedlander 

Recorded by Scott Solter at Story Sound in New York City 

Assisted by Jeff Cook 

Mixed by Scott Solter in Durham, NC 

Mastered by Steve Berson at Total Sonic Media 

Design by Vanessa Maynard 

All music composed by Erik Friedlander. 

All rights reserved. 

Erik Friedlander, cello 

Shoko Nagai, piano, accordion, electronics 

Satoshi Takeishi, percussion

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Hector Martignon's Banda Grande - The Big Band Theory (2016)

Label:

Source: Cdbaby

Genre: Latin Jazz Big Band

GAB's Rating: ★★★★☆

Should you be insane enough to want to start a Big Band…. do it in New York! A difficult stage to climb up to and scream; cold and cruel at times but then burning hot and loving, the Big Apple gives you all you need and more… the finest musicians with great attitude, plenty of venues, great audiences, good and affordable studios. In return, you give back what you try to be best at… your music.

It was at that veteran of all venerable old Manhattan venues, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the Lower East Side, where my flirts with the Big Band format became a love affair, with all its challenges and intricacies. Starting off as an experimental workshop, with personnel, compositions and arrangements varying every week, some suitable for the dance needs of the crowd and some suitable for a full concert, my Bandagrande Big Band slowly but surely came of age.

Any composer dreams to write for a large ensemble, be it a large choir, a Symphonic Orchestra or its Jazz version, the Big Band which offers similar resources of color and dynamics, even though smaller in numbers. With close to twenty individual instruments (and their doubles) the arranger takes over from the composer and gradually starts creating like a painter, thinking in terms of color, balances, shade, light and, well… a concept borrowed from music by the visual arts… composition. Given such a range of possibilities, it was only natural to encompass as wide as possible a spectrum of music styles and idioms, from the Baroque sinfonía concertante, visiting the inquiring language of the sixties' and seventies’ Jazz, to the Brazilian eccentricities of a Hermeto Pascoal, adding, of course, my own honest attempts at composing and arranging.

Because of budgetary and space issues, we were forced to divide the recording into four sessions, each of which left (almost) untouched: 1. rhythm section plus some soloists, 2. horns, 3. strings and 4. some solo overdubs. Read more...  

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Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano & Jan Lundgren - Mare Nostrum II (2016)

C’est une histoire de coïncidences. De marées hautes, de traditions. De Nord et de Sud, de Baltique et d’Adriatique. Mare Nostrum est un poème en trois temps, une collaboration des plus fortuites entre l’accordéoniste français Richard Galliano, le pianiste suédois Jan Lundgren et le trompettiste italien Paolo Fresu. Un parcours sinueux en contact avec une Méditerranée paisible, bercail d’une musique évocatrice, où les genres les plus surprenants se rencontrent, s’entrelacent. Au loin, on entend des échos de Charles Trenet, des fragments de chansons traditionnelles suédoises et des airs baroques à la Monteverdi. Une douce mélancolie caresse les compositions de ce trio d’explorateurs qui racontent cet instant de grâce précédant l’orage.

Paolo Fresu / trumpet & fluegelhorn

Richard Galliano / accordion, bandoneon & accordina

Jan Lundgren / piano

01. Apnea (Fresu, Paolo) 05:05

02. Blue Silence (Lundgren, Jan) 05:09

03. Aurore (Galliano, Richard) 03:57

04. Christallen Den Fina (trad., arr. by Lundgren, Jan) 05:49

05. Giselle (Galliano, Richard) 05:09

06. E Varie Notti Tre Vie Notai (Fresu, Paolo) 04:30

07. Farväl (Lundgren, Jan) 04:47

08. Gnossienne No. 1 (Satie, Erik, arr. by Galliano, Richard)) 04:47

09. Lili (Galliano, Richard) 03:42

10. Leklåt (Lundgren, Jan) 04:02

11. Le Livre D’un Père Sarde (Fresu, Paolo) 04:11

12. Si Dolce È Il Tormento (Monteverdi, Claudio, arr. by Fresu, Paolo) 06:11

Produced by René Hess / HR Music

Executive Producer: Siggi Loch

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Gérard de Haro

at Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines (France), February 23-26, 2014.

Assisted by Nicolas Baillard

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