Que cache ce titre singulier ? Une invitation à la peinture religieuse? Non, même s’il sera question de spirituel dans l’art. Et de peinture, on le verra un peu plus loin. Visitation est tout simplement le titre du nouveau CD du guitariste aixois Cyril Achard (www.cyrilachard.com) invitant la saxophoniste alto Géraldine Laurent (www.geraldinelaurent.com) pour un duo autour de ses compositions et de quelques standards judicieusement choisis. Un duo épatant, « vintage » au meilleur sens du mot… Read more in Jazz Magazine
As jazz slowly becomes a more gender-neutral job market, it’s of great value to have talented women looking not just forward, but back as well. Saxophonist Silke Eberhard and pianist Aki Takase are prime examples of the latter, as they seem determined to help feminize the drunk-on-testosterone history of jazz.
They’ve each done albums of Eric Dolphy’s music and, as a duo, recorded two discs’ worth of Ornette Coleman compositions. Takase’s 2013 solo session, My Ellington, remains one of the most strikingly personal interpretations of the Duke’s songbook, and now Eberhard has taken on one of the most macho of bandleaders, Charles Mingus.
Together and separately, their projects have demonstrated a boldness in approach and interpretation, and that’s every bit as true for Mingus Mingus Mingus, the new disc by Eberhard’s trio, which takes the great man’s sentiment, “I am three,” as a band name. The music is stripped down to an unlikely trio of sax, trumpet (Nikolaus Neuser) and drums (Christian Marien), leaving Mingus’ two instruments (bass and piano) by the wayside.
It’s only by virtue of their economically crafty arrangements that the re-workings never seem thin or hollow. So confident are they in their approach that by “Jelly Roll,” the ninth of 12 tracks on this CD, they begin to dampen melodic sections as if to underscore how full the rest of the album sounds.
That's only after a round of successes, of course. The trio marches through Better Get Hit In Yo’ Soul,” does a pounding rendition of “Moanin’” and plays a wonderfully lyrical “Self-Portrait In Three Colors” (underscoring again Mingus’s trifurcated personality).
“Fables Of Faubus” is filled out by some exceptional mute-work by Neuser, and throughout the session Marien capably fills the lower register with bass and toms. The group’s “Orange Was The Color Of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk” uses the dual linearity of the two front line instruments to great advantage, making it dance.
Mingus looms all too large in progressive jazz of the last century to ever be forgotten. He’s too enigmatic a figure to replicate. To varying degrees, such diverse figures as Jean Derome, Joni Mitchell and Hal Willner—not to mention the standing Mingus Big Band and Mingus Orchestra—have attempted to fit into his shoes. This German double-horn trio stands up with the best of them.
01. Better Get Hit In Yo' Soul 02.Fables Of Faubus 03.Oh Lord, Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me 04- Opus Four 05. Goodbye Pork Pie Hat 06. Moanin’ 07. Self-Portrait In Three Colors 08. Eclipse 09. Jelly Roll 10. In Other Words 11. Orange Was the Color Of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk 12. Canon
Silke Eberhard, saxophone Nikolaus Neuser, trumpet Christian Marien, drums
"This is post-music. Some jazz, some folk, some pop-rock, some minimalism, some of this influence and more of that influence—and all of it is one step ahead of the current day. It’s the Music of Tomorrow, now.”Dave Sumner, Bandcamp
"Forging headlong into uncharted territory on the cusp of its twentieth anniversary, The Claudia Quintet continues to adapt aspects from multiple genres and styles for its melodically harmonious grooves, making Super Petite one of the Quintet’s most engaging and enjoyable releases to date."Troy Collins, Point of Departure
"Super Petite is like savoring a long and lingering feast. There is much to enjoy, concentrate on, uncover and sample. The ten tracks each offer a morsel, and the full repast is oh so delicious."Doug Simpson, Audiophile Audition
Pens Rich, Complex Tunes for an Era of Short Attention Spans
on THE CLAUDIA QUINTET's 8th album
- SUPER PETITE -
a Potent Package that Condenses Virtuoso Playing
and a Wealth of Ideas into Ten Compact Songs
“Rigorously executed but earthily grooving, dauntingly precise but flecked with hearty and intriguing improvised solos, the quintet’s set buzzed with freshness and vitality from start to finish. … For all the obvious effort and intelligence to Hollenbeck’s work, his songs could ultimately be straightforwardly emotional and moving.”- Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen
“The bottom line? Every member of Claudia Quintet is a virtuoso; and while that may be true, the beauty of Claudia Quintet is that it's a collection of five outstanding players whose focus is on the music, not unnecessary displays of pyrotechnics...though there was certainly more than a few sparks flying during their Back Stage appearance.”- John Kelman, All About Jazz
"Claudia Quintet alludes to everything from Argentine tango to Pakistani qawwali music. [Hollenbeck’s] music thrives on unique harmonies, appealing melodies, and innovative blends of percussion…The Claudia Quintet deftly covers a large amount of musical territory and…is helping to define jazz today." - Martin Johnson, The Wall Street Journal
Short doesn't necessarily mean simple. Drummer-composer John Hollenbeck acrobatically explores the dichotomy between brevity and complexity on Super Petite, the eighth release by the critically acclaimed, proudly eccentric Claudia Quintet. The oxymoronic title of the band's newest album on Cuneiform Records captures the essence of its ten new compositions, which pack all of the wit and virtuosity that listeners have come to expect from the Claudia Quintet into the time frame of radio-friendly pop songs.
As always, Hollenbeck's uncategorizable music - which bridges the worlds of modern jazz and new music in surprising and inventive ways - is realized by Claudia's longstanding line-up: clarinetist/tenor saxophonist Chris Speed, vibraphonist Matt Moran, bassist Drew Gress, and accordionist Red Wierenga. Over the course of 19 years and 8 albums, the band has forged an astounding chemistry and become expert at juggling mind-boggling dexterity with inviting emotion and spirit.
Like the band's name, the title Super Petite originated as an affectionate nickname for one of the band's fans. "I thought that was a funny juxtaposition," Hollenbeck recalls, "but it also became a good frame for the album because the tunes are short but can also be grand in a way - just not in length."
The concept was both a personal challenge for Hollenbeck as a composer always dealing with a wealth of ideas, but also a reaction to a tendency in modern music toward the epic. "I'm feeling things in the opposite direction," the composer explains. "When tunes are longer, there tend to be moments when not a whole lot is happening. If you have a really short tune, the whole thing has to be compelling."
Nowhere is that principle better exemplified than in “Pure Poem” which clocks in at under two minutes but is the most difficult piece the quintet has ever recorded. It was inspired by “Pure Poem 1007-1103” by Japanese poet Shigeru Matsui, which consists solely of sequences of Roman numerals and was used by controversial poet Kenneth Goldsmith to illustrate his theory of “Uncreative Writing.”
Hollenbeck draws inspiration from a number of diverse sources throughout Super Petite, including two unrecognizable interpretations of classic jazz – which, in its earliest years, demanded short songs due to the limitations of the day’s recording media. The mesmerizing “Nightbreak,” which opens the album, is built upon a slowed-down translation of Charlie Parker’s famous break in “Night of Tunisia,” while “Philly” transforms an infamous Philly Joe Jones lick into an exercise in bebop deconstruction.
Two variations on the same theme, “JFK Beagle” and “Newark Beagle”, were sparked by the contraband-sniffing dogs that patrol the international baggage claim area of airports. They are the living embodiment of Super Petite – utterly adorable but all business. “My problem is I want to pet the beagles but they’re so focused on that one thing,” Hollenbeck laments. “That piece began as a portrait, a combination of being really cute but staying focused. I don't know exactly what that would sound like musically, but that’s the challenge. In the end it doesn’t really matter to me if it happens or not, because it still leads me into a certain world.” In this case, the idea of international travel inspired Hollenbeck to use his passport number as a series of pitches that formed the basis for the pieces.
Similarly, “If You Seek a Fox” began life as a dig at the composer’s least favorite 24-hour cable news network, then morphed into an aural description of the eponymous animal. “A-List” began with an even more fantastical scenario, imagining the Claudia Quintet walking the red carpet. (“Think Entourage meets the Geek Squad,” as Hollenbeck wryly puts it in his liner notes.) If the tune’s urgent pulse is unlikely to attract the paparazzi, it’s nonetheless a compelling mood piece that Hollenbeck insists “feels almost like a Led Zeppelin tune in our heads.”
“Peterborough” was written in the titular New Hampshire town, where Hollenbeck spent six idyllic weeks in the fall of 2014 as a resident artist at the famed MacDowell Colony. It was there that Aaron Copland composed his Pulitzer-winning “Appalachian Spring,” which inspired the hint of Coplandesque American optimism in Hollenbeck’s combination of clarinet and vibes. The residency also provided the opportunity to explore the work of master Senegalese drummer/composer Doudou N’Diaye Rose, whose “Rose Rhythm” forms the basis for Hollenbeck’s “Rose-Colored Rhythm.”
Hollenbeck describes the MacDowell Colony as “a beautiful space where you can do whatever you want all day and no one bothers you. You can work hard all day on something, but you can also get out and ride a bike or run if you want. Then in the evening you see all these other people from different disciplines who have been doing the same thing as you, talk about what they’re doing, go to bed and do it all again the next day.”
The album concludes with “Mangolds,” a mood piece built from a slow, elongated melody line named for Hollenbeck’s favorite vegetarian restaurant in Graz, Austria, where he worked with the renowned Jazz Bigband Graz on his 2006 release Joys and Desires.
"The Claudia Quintet...is one of the most exciting groups in contemporary jazz. ...Each of the discs comes at you with the force of a manifesto: this band knows exactly what it is about, and the compositions charge forward with inevitability. ... the band now sounds so thoroughly integrated and seamless that you'd think it was a tenor-trumpet quintet or a 16-piece big band. ...The Claudia Quintet, inimitable, deserves to inspire."- Will Layman, PopMatters
On the heels of his critically-acclaimed Criss Cross debut, Mythology (Criss 1373 CD), bassist Matt Brewer presents an inspired quintet recording, convening tenor saxophonist Ben Wendel, pianist Aaron Parks, guitarist Charles Altura, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey -- all top-of-the-pyramid under-40 improvisers and consequential composers in their own right -- to perform a nine-tune program that includes seven Brewer originals, and reimagined versions of Bill Frisell's "Twenty Years" and Charlie Parker's "Cheryl". Having garnered wide acclaim as a sideman playing the challenging music of such major figures as Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Greg Osby, Steve Coleman and Vijay Iyer, among others, Brewer displays not only his lyric gifts and virtuoso instrumental prowess, but his ability to convey his intentions by allowing his bandmates freedom to express their perspectives within the flow of his ideas.
01. Juno (Matt Brewer) 4:41
02. Unspoken (Matt Brewer) 6:53
03. Twenty Years (Bill Frisell) 4:03
04. Lunar (Matt Brewer) 9:08
05. Evil Song (Matt Brewer) 3:00
06. Cheryl (Charlie Parker) 8:06
07. Anthem (Matt Brewer) 6:10
08. Aspiring To Normalcy (Matt Brewer) 8:38
09. Tesuque (Matt Brewer) 5:27
Matt Brewer, bass
Ben Wendel, tenor sax
Charles Altura, guitar
Aaron Parks, piano
Tyshawn Sorey, drums
Total Time: 56:25
Recorded February 19, 2016 in Brooklyn, NY, USA by Joe Marciano
Jazz singer Sanna Ruohoniemi (Fin) releases "Tales of a Stranger" on October 7th
Sanna Ruohoniemi, a Finnish jazz vocalist & composer, will be touring Finland and Sweden in October-November 2016
The album, “Tales Of A Stranger”, will be released on October 2016 via Finnish record label Eclipse Music, and presents Sanna and four Swedish musicians from the thriving jazz scene of Stockholm. It is Sanna’s debut album and will feature her as a jazz vocalist, improviser and composer.
Sanna together with her group makes a strong statement of what jazz is today. This quartet creates music that has it’s root in tradition of jazz with a mixture of the Nordic folk traditions, free improvised music and everything in between. The musical dialogue, their solid group energy, playfulness and catchy compositions draws the attention of the listener, as does the enchanting combination of delicate vocal sound with a twist of long Nordic winter’s rawness translated into music.
“Sanna is a very special singer, she will move you. With her quiet, naked persona and her truly honest musicianship she will take you to places and she will touch your heart. Sanna Ruohoniemi is a genuine jazz musician, true to her inner self, a seeker exploring the boundaries of her musical ability – very brave in her pursuit and certainly succesfull. This applies also to her group, they work really well together."– Irene Sjögren
Brooklyn-based composer-bandleader Darcy James Argue and his innovative 18-piece big band Secret Society will release their third album, Real Enemies, out September 30, 2016. Composed by Argue, Real Enemies is a 13-chapter exploration of America’s fascination with conspiracy theories; narratives behind the Red Scare, the Illuminati, Edward Snowden, and alien sightings are meticulously examined and interrogated through Argue’s dazzling score. Real Enemies debuted as a multimedia performance (co-created by Argue with writer/director Isaac Butler and filmmaker Peter Nigrini) to impressive acclaim at BAM’s 2015 Next Wave Festival. Taking its title from Kathryn Olmsted’s 2009 book Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11, the project is the product of extensive research into a broad range of conspiracies, from the familiar and well-documented to the speculative to the outlandish. Real Enemies traces the historical roots, iconography, and language of conspiracies, and examines conspiratorial thinking as a distinct political ideology. It chronicles a shadow history of postwar America, touching on everything from COINTELPRO to the the CIA-Contra cocaine trafficking ring to secret weather control machines to reptilian shape-shifters from Alpha Draconis infiltrating our government at the highest level. Real Enemies invites the listener to explore and engage with the conspiratorial mindset. Argue explains:
“Belief in conspiracies is one of the defining aspects of modern culture. It transcends political, economic, and other divides. Conservative or liberal, rich or poor, across all races and backgrounds there exists a conspiratorial strain of thought that believes there are forces secretly plotting against us. Conspiracy theories often take hold because they provide an explanation for disturbing realities.
They tell a story about why the world is the way it is. Paradoxically, it’s often more comforting to believe that bad things happen because they are part of a hidden agenda than it is to believe that they came about as a result of mistakes, ineptitude, or random chance.”
As befitting a journey into postwar paranoia, Real Enemies draws heavily on 12-tone techniques, a compositional system based on a tone rows — a sequence of all 12 pitches in the chromatic scale — devised by Arnold Schoenberg in the aftermath of World War I and embraced by American composers during the conspiracy-rich postwar era. However, Argue’s wide-ranging score exhibits a mischievous disregard for how those techniques have been traditionally deployed. Other musical touchstones include the paranoia-inducing film scores of Michael Small (The Parallax View) and David Shire (All The President’s Men), the revolutionary songs of Nicaraguan singer-songwriter Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy, the psychedelic space-jazz of Sun Ra, the FM synth-fueled grooves of early 1980’s LA electro funk-influenced hip hop, and much more.
Significant pieces of spoken text from figures like JFK, Frank Church, George H. W. Bush, and Dick Cheney are expertly woven throughout the robust and provocative score, with a concluding voice-over narration provided by actor James Urbaniak. Real Enemies is an intense musical and sensory experience that spins and explores a web of paranoia and distrust, and resonates long after its last note.
01. You Are Here 08:06
02. The Enemy Within 04:37
03. Dark Alliance 07:04
04. Trust No One 05:20
05. Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars 06:47
06. Best Friends Forever 04:26
08. Casus Belli 05:37
09. Crisis Control 07:02
10. Apocalypse is a Process 05:47
11. Never a Straight Answer 07:27
12. Who Do You Trust? 04:17
13. You Are Here 06:01
14. Best Friends Forever (single) 04:26
Dave Pietro - piccolo, flute, alto flute, bass flute, soprano sax, alto sax
Rob Wilkerson - flute, clarinet, soprano sax, alto sax
Sam Sadigursky - Eb clarinet, Bb clarinet, A clarinet, tenor sax
John Ellis - clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor sax
Carl Maraghi - clarinet, bass clarinet, baritone saxophone
Seneca Black - trumpet, flugelhorn
Jonathan Powell - trumpet, flugelhorn
Matt Holman - trumpet, flugelhorn
Nadje Noordhuis - trumpet, flugelhorn
Ingrid Jensen - trumpet, flugelhorn
Mike Fahie - trombone
Ryan Keberle - trombone
Jacob Garchik - trombone, tuba
Jennifer Wharton - bass trombone, tuba
Sebastian Noelle - acoustic & electric guitar
Adam Birnbaum - acoustic & electric piano, FM synth
Matt Clohesy - contrabass & electric bass, bass synth
Jon Wikan - drum set, cajón, misc. percussion
James Urbaniak - narrator on "Who Do You Trust?" and "You Are Here" reprise
