The Free Jazz Collective

[AHMED] - Play Monk (Otoroku, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

It was only a matter of time. In the cosmology of our music, one thing was certain: the orbits of Thelonious Monk and [Ahmed] were destined to overlap, after having crossed in the name of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, Monk's bassist in the late 1950s quartet, heard on 1958's Thelonious in Action and Misterioso, as well as on the album with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall unearthed in 2005. Pat Thomas (piano), Seymour Wright (alto sax), Joel Grip (double bass), and Antonin Gerbal (drums) "make music about (Note: bear in mind this "about" because is the key to almost everything) Ahmed Abdul-Malik, they excavate, re-inhabit, and use a-new the now overlooked documents and fragmentary plans of his mid-20th-century synthetic vision to produce a new jazz imagination for the 21st century.

[Ahmed] and Abdul share a critical engagement with time, specifically in challenging its linear trajectory and offering sites and modes of synthesis and rupture instead. In their music, fragments of time are scattered and re-arranged in the present". So says the band's official statement, which theoretically should explain everything. Theoretically. Malik (1927-1993), son of Caribbean immigrants, was a NYC bassist, oudist, composer, educator and philosopher, he played with Art Blakey, Earl Hines and Randy Weston and his albums Sahara (1958) and East Meets West (1960) fused aspects of Arabic and East African musics and thought, his committed long-term relationship with Sufi Islam and then-modern jazz and thinking, in revolutionary and vital way. But, as well as honoring these traditions, Malik's straddling, synthetic and inclusive vision is one of the great projects of imagination in jazz. He mixed sounds and ethics, meanings and beliefs in open, experimental ways, without any dogma and this became the true north for [Ahmed]: to visit and re-think his compositions and the process potential in them. This is why we emphasized the adverb "about": neither covers, nor lab experiments in cold musical eugenics; neither free jazz, nor classic (even two super skilled listeners and reviewers like Lee and Fotis, in past reviews, scratched their heads between amazement and ecstasy) but a hypnotic Black Monolith that has cast an enigmatic and fascinating shadow for some years, writing a new chapter destined to remain in the Annals of Music.

From the very first time we heard them, the immediate reference for us, rather than the music, was the cubist painting, in which we found all the elements expressed by [Ahmed] and vice versa: the break with traditional perspective; the geometric decomposition; the simultaneity of views; the reduced color palette and the use of collage. Art must not portray reality but interpret it, like a cognitive tool, as per cubists’ First Commandment, and Pat Thomas & co. are exactly abiding by that. After 6 albums, (all excellent but “Giant Beauty” and “[Sama’a] (Audition)” are two real, unmissable, t-rex carnivorous records) and a 7-inch, here finally, after having engaged with Monk’s standards in various individual or collective ways, the hesitation is broken and [Ahmed] “Play Monk”: when a title says it all. In 2 CDs recorded in March 2025 at Fish Factory Studios (the same “Sama’a” recording sessions), with a cover photo of the legendary pianist at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, portrayed by the lens of Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter that alone is worth the purchase of the album, 6 standards (“Bye-Ya/Epistrophy,” “Friday Thirteenth,” “Round Midnight,” “Epistrophy,” “Evidence,” “Oskar T.)” are atomized in the particle accelerator, “transforming each composition into a shifting quantum time artifact. The melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and spatial gestures of each piece become complex vernacular forms, creating a dialogue in time and a (red)shifting lens through which to view our material present. Into the fissures of Monk’s form, [Ahmed] pour their own play, colliding and dancing with Duke Ellington, Cecil Taylor, Caribbean diasporic music, European improvisation, and Jah Shaka in their pursuit of future music,” to borrow Otoroku’s notes. Too much? If you trust just a little bit in your humble writer: NOT.AT.ALL. As usual, they set out and ride pedal to metal, no self-indulgence or self-referential (or falsely free-form) rotating solos, but a “wall of sound” that Phil Spector would have liked to produce, where more than playing the notes, they use them and the ideas in and about them, as a vehicle for their unique imagination, moving from what they know into new uncharted, creative lands.

It’s too easy to predict that this album will take no prisoners in our end-of-year Top Tens, but it’s even really hard to imagine what other albums will live up to it. We’d like to close with the words of the great Luke Stewart, certainly much more titled than us, in expressing a reflection on Abdul-Malik and [Amed]: “The journey of self-discovery, communing with the eternal sound. A musician steeped in multiple worlds; oceans apart yet closely connected in ancestral memory. Musicians such Abdul-Malik were able to experience the global community of sound warriors, drawing inspiration from ancient cultures to support personal investigation. The connection was made clear, the music of Africa would certainly influence the African in America despite the atrocities of the Middle Passage, chattel slavery and continued racist violence that sought to sever any connection to the continent. The beauty of Malik’s investigation is this original fusion of new music (Jazz) of the African in America with ancient music of Africa. It is a shining example of collaboration in culture, where the music is allowed to shine for itself. This is the inspiration that is being tapped, being explored in this collaboration where rhythm is the basis for the sound. Just like Malik, [Ahmed] allow the spirit of the collective push the sound as the music develops into exalted chaos. Joy Be Upon Us!”I

Play Monk by أحمد [Ahmed]

Ballister + Luke Stewart - Clocking the Wheel (Aerophonic Records, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Martin Schray

When their latest album Smash and Grab came out, I cheekily claimed Ballister might be the best band in the world. I still stand by that statement, and what could be more fitting for Dave Rempis and his Aerophonic label than to celebrate their 50th physical release with a new recording by that outfit? The only question that came up beforehand possibly was what to do to make it special? The answer was relatively simple: You bring in a real powerhouse to give the whole thing even more momentum. And what could be more natural than inviting a bassist for that? Luke Stewart (of Irreversible Entanglements fame) was practically the obvious choice. However, that also means that the expectations for a recording like this are incredibly high.

For Clocking the WheelBallister could have done what we all love them for: simply mixing up their famous cocktail of high energy music, speed metal, free jazz, and brutalistic power, slap it right in our faces, and everyone would have been happy. And of course they do deliver this mix - but they also present another side. Especially in the first part of this double CD, “Carpet Joint,” Dave Rempis (as always on different saxes) and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello) trade off so effortlessly for three minutes that you’d think you were at a chamber concert. What is more, they leave room for solos, for example for percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love, who presents rhythms with a Latin American flavor, laying the groundwork for two ballad-like interludes - something we’re not used to hearing too often from the band. However, you immediately find yourself wishing they would do that every now and then. The icing on the cake is an almost Evan-Parker-esque solo by Rempis and a one-minute nod by the band to themselves, to one of their catchiest riffs (if such a thing even exists in this kind of music). In this piece, which the band performs as a trio, we are once again reminded of what makes Ballister so unique: it’s the combination of these very different styles and sounds, the way the dynamics flow into one another, that they so effortlessly blend into a cohesive whole.

Finally, Luke Stewart joins in on “Sauce for the Goose,” the second track that makes up the entirety of the second CD, and you’re faced with a changed band. For bassists, it’s not easy to keep up with Ballister - with the trio’s force, its radicalism, its rawness, its unvarnished authenticity. The band could literally run you over. But Stewart immediately immerses himself in Ballister’s sound, locking in with Nilssen-Love’s drumming to catapult the higher voices of the cello and saxophone forward. His driving energy is like a tightly stretched rubber band - elastic, yielding, flexible, but always with enough tensile strength to bounce back like a trampoline, as the liner notes put it. And Stewart is also given plenty of space to make his mark, whether in duo or solo passages.

All in all “Sauce for the Goose” shows that there is still a lot of potential with the Ballister project. Stewart’s presence draws even more energy out of the other three members, giving rise to new sound combinations (the use of electronics shines through here and there and Dave Rempis, in particular, is almost reinventing himself) and dynamics. After twelve albums, Ballister is far from running out of ideas; the band still has plenty in store. For me, they’re still the best band in the world - at least when it comes to freely improvised music.

Clocking the Wheelis available as a double CD and as a download. You can listen to “Sauce for the Goose“ on the Aerophonic bandcamp site, where you can also order the album:

Clocking The Wheel by Ballister + Luke Stewart

Victor Vieira-Branco’s Bark Culture - The Giant is Awkward (Temperphantom, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Brian Earley

The most adventurous music offers an exchange with its listeners. Dedicate time and attention to its often unpredictable operations, and receive a return. For me, when I listen to The Giant is Awkward, the latest release from Victor Vieira-Branco’s trio Bark Culture, the return is as immediate as it is sustained. A feeling of something like exhilaration in the moment, of following master improvisers on their way to a circuitous but directing truth.

Victor Vieira-Branco is a vibraphonist and composer who grew up in Brazil, but spends most of his time these days in Philadelphia, that is when he is not touring with Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra or Chad Taylor’s Quintet, which played Big Ears this March. With The Giant, his trio Bark Culture has its second release, the maiden voyage being the acclaimed Warm Wisdom from 2024, and is rounded out by bassist John Moran and drummer Joey Sullivan.

Together, the trio makes music that is angular, surprising, and almost always just off center. The opening track, “Palace,” is a representative example of this. After a slanted theme marked by what sounds like finger pounding by vibes and piano, the music descends into a deep madness with Sullivan and Moran following no particular time or engaging in any semblance of functional harmony. But after several minutes of gleefully wild chaos, the band unifies again, rights itself, and collectively enters a second set of thematic material before leaping into yet one more wall of noise.

I should pause to state that this release is made particularly special by the presence of guest pianist Sam Yulsman. Yulsman is one of the engines behind the supreme madness one finds on this album, as he smashes and mashes and slams his piano keys in the sections I find to be most adventurous, most dissonant and wild. He even contributed a composition, the second song “Farce,” which, with its asymmetrical thematic unison of vibes and piano leading into surrounded moments of unhinged sonic rantings, is right at home on The Giant is Awkward.

Vieira-Branco is composer of all of the other works here. While his compositions are lovely, the interplay of the musicians is what makes this album move from coherent to something really special. Drummer Joey Sullivan seems to me to have a particularly strong musical relationship with Vieira-Branco, and the two are as likely to play their respective percussion instruments with mathematical precision as they are to respond spontaneously to sudden snare rolls, cymbal crashes, or introverted vibraphone bowing.

And all of this is not to suggest Victor V-B’s compositions are not at times stunningly beautiful. Listen, for example, to the penultimate work on the record, “Panic.” The piece is quiet, introspective, full of tenderness and empathy and, in communicating as much, is not at all what I expect when I think of the word panic. The song seems almost guru-like in this way as it flows in and out of time and traditional harmonies to moments of collective improvisation. Panic is a navigable state here, as marked by beauty as it is by its unexpected torsions, but always as composed and improvised as the day itself.

The Giant is Awkward is one of the standout releases of this year for me. Its depth of feeling and spontaneously combustible surprises find themselves one minute collectedly astute, and beard grabbing lunatic raving the next. For all of this work’s intelligence and its musicians technical virtuosity, there is never a moment where I feel the energy is not in service of art or the music itself. And this is the adventure Bark Culture has offered to its potential listeners with this album: follow them with attention and effort, and deep pleasure manifests along the path with wisps of transformation sailing in its sonic wilderness.

The Giant is Awkward can be found here.

The Giant is Awkward by Victor Vieira-Branco's Bark Culture

Revisit the Serious Series

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Back in December, we covered the Serious Series, a concert series in Berlin that showcases a mix of both local and international free music improvisors.

The entire series is available online from the venue where the series took place last year, the Exploratorium, in Berlin's Kreuzberg district. Below is a video from day one, where we begin the show with series organizers saxophonist Anna Kaluza and bassist Jan Roder, then followed by pianist Marina Džukljev, bassist Christian Weber and drummer Michael Griener. The night wraps up with saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter van Bergen in an effortless duo:

More info here.

Irarrázabal Together

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Dan Sorrells

Two recent releases showcase the versatility and physicality of Chilean double-bassist Amanda Irarrázabal as she improvises with very different partners.

**Amanda Irarrázabal - Imprimiendo (Relative Pitch, 2026)**

Imprimiendo is a series of "duets" in which one of the partners remains indifferent and unresponsive—or at least, doesn't respond in the manner you might expect. Amanda Irarrázabal plays her bass along with recordings of churning offset printers made at two printing houses in Santiago, Chile. Improvising along with workaday, nonhuman things calls to mind Günter Christmann and others playing with vacuum cleaners and coffee makers on albums like The Sublime and the Profane. In the liner notes to that release,Elke Schipper suggests that improvising with such sounds—the "profane acoustic environment"—is an act of sublimation. There's an ambiguity here I'm happy to leave unresolved. Are the profane sounds vaulted into the realm of art by being deemed worthy material with which to engage? Or, by "internalizing" these sounds as "emotional and imaginary substance," is it the artist's ability to find self-expression that's being elevated? Are these printing presses mere stimulus, or do they partake in the sublime when joined up with Irarrázabal?

There's a soothing familiarity to the structured sound of the printers: like a sheet of graph paper passing through the drums, it provides an orienting temporal grid. But this structure also marks out the comfortable zone from which Irarrázabal quickly departs. On "Panfletos" she enters tentatively, then assertively, syncopated and dancing around the hiss-click of the presses before moving into feathery bowed overtones. These harmonic explorations of friction and bass push through the obvious rhythmic nature of the presses and draw out the richness in their noise. Still, the printing presses are rhythm. It's interesting to hear the subdivisions buried within their repetitive work. These layers are especially apparent on tracks like "Illustraciones," and as Irarrázabal plays more fervently, the presses seem to respond, her rough texture and volume masking more subtle rhythmic elements while intensifying others. In turn, something about the regularity of the presses amplifies the momentum of her improvisations, like the feeling of speed conveyed by trees as they whip by a traveler's window. This phenomenon repeats itself again and again throughout listening to Imprimiendo : the illusion of change in unchanging elements, driven by Irarrázabal's impassioned performance.

It's not clear to what extent Irarrázabal may have arranged some of the field recordings into collages before entering the studio. Some dramatic interest is created by letting them fade in or out, reappear later, varying their volume. On "Copuchas, entrevistas y más," I had not registered that the hypnotic press had largely dropped out of audibility until it suddenly came roaring back, Irarrázabal drawing jaggedly across the strings. The album ends with Irarrázabal unaccompanied: "En blanco." With its pulsing dynamics and cadent bowing, it's anything but.

Imprimiendo by Amanda Irarrázabal

**Phillip Greenlief & Amanda Irarrázabal - La Verdad Es La Verdad (Mother Brain Records, 2026)**

Moving from Imprimiendoto La Verdad Es La Verdad—duo recordings Irarrázabal made with Phillip Greenlief following a 2023 tour in Chile—it's hard not to think of the album that launched Relative Pitch 15 years ago: Greenlief's duo with Joëlle Léandre, That Overt Desire of Object . Here, as there, Greenlief plays at his usual supernatural caliber, mostly delivered with his breathily fluent tenor tone. He's one of the more remarkable and adept reedmen to come out of West Coast creative music (though nowadays, to my great delight and benefit, he's a fellow Mainer). And, like Léandre, Irarrázabal is a white-hot fusion of voice and arco mastery who obliterates any mistaking of body and sound, creator and creation, as being separate or separable.

Opener "Insomnia at the Zoo" is as restless as its title implies. If it doesn't quite come to crescendo, it arrives at a simmering catharsis, a valve releasing just enough pressure to keep the volatility at the pleasing edge of danger. When speaking about duets, it's easy to treat the music like a conversation, especially music with a strong contrapuntal give-and-take. There's a little of that kind of playing here on tracks like "Riverbeds" (what a metaphor: a broad contour guiding rivulets of water, but with paths not quite predictable). For me, Greenlief and Irarrázabal are doing something more like dance, an elemental synchrony of two bodies attending to their shared sense of movement. There's such focus and physicality in the music—just hear the energy being matched in dynamics and register and density throughout a piece like "Collapse"—that it's often nothing like the operation of reason or speech. Theirs is a bodily listening that goes past brain, straight into limb and throat and back out as sound. On the nocturnal "Later on with Constellations," clarinet and voice wend a rising and falling course together—all the way to an altissimo climax—Irarrázabal's bass a whispering countercurrent beneath. As I listen to their listening, I never hear either player deciding what they'll now "say" in response; instead, they work out the answer to "what's our next move?"

The track titled "Cave Paintings" reminded me of the famous prehistoric paintings in Lascaux. In "The Birth of Art," Blanchot wrote "yet by its nearness and all that renders it immediately readable to us," the work in the caves remains "mysterious as art but not an art of mystery nor of distance." This description transcends Lascaux and feels also like "the truth" of La Verdad: that for all the nearness of these gripping improvisations, for all that feels viscerally "readable" in them, there's a mystery at their center which isn't their end but is instead a ceaseless beginning, igniting our fascination—musician and listener alike.

la verdad es la verdad by Phillip Greenlief & Amanda Irarrazabal

Hound Dog Taylor's Hand and Joe Paradiso - The Structure and Dynamics Of Disordered Systems (self, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Ferruccio Martinotti

What could an old Mississippi bluesman, a Seattle free band and an MIT scholar possibly have in common? Don't worry, music maps the dots and we'll connect them. As one of the legendary figures of American blues, Theodore Roosevelt "Hound Dog" Taylor was an extraordinary guitarist, interpreter of a stripped-down, rocked-out, hypnotic, emotionally powerful, and wildly energizing sound. His left hand had six fingers, a congenital anatomical trait known as polydactyly, which inspired (don't ask us why…) a sonic wild bunch from the beautiful Northwest. Hound Dog Taylor's Hand (HDTH) formed in Seattle in 2010 with Jeffery Taylor, guitars, percussion; John Seman, double bass, piano, percussion; Mark Ostrowski, drums, piano, percussion; Greg Kelley, trumpet; and Joe Paradiso, custom-designed modular synthesizer. They have performed with the likes of Eugene Chadbourne, Acid Mothers Temple, Jooklo Duo, Lori Goldston, Sir Richard Bishop, Lee Ranaldo, Kinski, Chris Corsano, James Brandon Lewis and Mike Watt: all solid swimmers in our cups of tea. John Seman is a truly interesting, larger-than-life cat. With an academic background at the Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Maryland as an ethnomusician, he joins forces with Mark Ostrowski, ingesting every drinkable musical beverage: Zappa, Black Sabbath, free jazz, Mingus, Stravinsky, Motorhead and more. As a festival organizer, John leaves no stone unturned in the musical field. Together with Mark, modeled on the AACM, he founded The Monktail Creative Music Concern, a collective of composers, musicians and artists based in Seattle, “who thrive on the atypical and demanding; the real weirdo stuff.” Could we ever remain indifferent to a mission statement like that? No kidding. And here we are, the scholar. Joe Paradiso is the other partner in crime, a guy who to define smart is a euphemism. To understand who we are talking about it is more than enough to read the official bio infos. Joe is Professor of Media, Arts and Sciences at MIT, where he directs the Responsive Environments group and serves as the Media Lab's Academic Head. He is a pioneer in the development of the Internet of Things and renowned for work in wearable sensing, energy harvesting technology, electronic music systems and controllers. His current research explores how sensor networks and AI augment and mediate human experience, interaction and perception, encompassing wireless sensing systems, wearable and body sensor networks, ubiquitous/pervasive computing, human-computer interfaces, space-based systems, sensate materials, digital twins in virtual worlds and interactive music/media. And the music? you are certainly wondering. A teenage interest in prog rock switched him to synthesizers, and after moving to Zurich in the mid-70s to study at ETH, Paradiso built his own very epic modular synth from scratch: “I was obsessed with building modules, by the end of my stay I had built over 70 of them”. Photos of his creation are readily available on the web, and we highly recommend you to take a look to see what kind of Leviathan we’re talking about. The paths of the Professor and the Hand cross on this album, the group’s seventh, if memory serves: 38 minutes of turbo charged, free-form intensity, declined in a single suite that envelops us like a Texas Twister. “Reverence for the roots of improvised music meets an unbridled passion to push boundaries, making for a propulsive and unpredictable sound.” “A cosmic soundtrack from an alien film noir playing in a half-remembered dream,” the press releases tell us, and we do trust them, because: 1) they say so; 2) we're addicted to press office definitions, and 3) listening carefully to the record confirms the image's correct focus. For those who have never seen an alien film noir playing in a half-remembered dream, we can say that, as reference points, some of Gustafsson’s Hydros projects, Keiji Haino's sonic spirals and, above all, Sonic Youth’s extraordinary (and criminally underrated) works with icp, the Ex, Merzbow, and their double-CD reinterpretations of Cage, Cardew, Kosugi, Maciunas, Oliveros, Ono, Reich, Slonimski, Tenney, and Wolff, came to mind. We’d dare to add the mighty Hawkind as well. The six fingered hand is definitely worth a listen: the surest of the things.

The Structure And Dynamics Of Disordered Systems by Hound Dog Taylor’s Hand and Joe Paradiso

Satoko Fujii + Myra Melford - Katarahi (RogueArt, 2026) *****

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Paul Acquaro

This review should not be confused for a scientific study, regardless of how convincing it sounds, after all, it lacks all sorts of the necessary quality criteria for a scientific work. It's not really objective, it has questionable reliability and only I can vouch for its validity, but my results suggest that repeated listening to Katarahi, the duo recording from Satoko Fuji and Myra Melford, makes one a better person. The findings, I think, are very strong, I'd say, they are basically unassailable. When listening, one's thoughts become clearer, empathy increases, and creativity soars. A wonder for sure.

Myra Melford and Satoko Fujii have been acquaintances since meeting in the 1990s while Fujii was studying with Paul Bley. Over the following years, the two pianists have met and played many times, though they have released just one recording together, Under the Water (Libra) in 2007, which may seem unusual for two such highly prolific musicians. Fortunately, an appearance in 2024 at the Leibnitz Jazzfestival in Austria, captured the two in a dynamic performance that intertwined composition and improvisation in a seamless, living dialog.

Katarahi, which in Japanese is a word meaning a heart-to-heart conversation between friends, lives up to its name. Professional musicianship collides with a palpable personal affinity as the two create a work that captures myriad moments of unbridled joy as well as contemplative introspection.

Opening track, 'Interlude 1', begins with a terse and tense repetitive figure on one piano, the other replies with light tinkling plucks from inside the instrument's soundboard, which then moves slowly outwards, becoming a pensive, slightly dissonant melody. It's expectant and barely resolves before crumbling into 'Signpost', at first equally reserved, but with a slight hint of serious playfulness.

Towards the middle of the recording, on 'Chalk', the approach changes. Lush chords lead to a dramatic flourishing melody. The notes stream effortlessly, building excitement and tension before a quick resolution and drop into the start of 'Kaiwa', a sharply syncopated piece with some hard edges and percussive foundations. This leads to even more intensity and shared focus in the penultimate 'IV' and finally 'From Sometime.' During these final two pieces, the intensity mounts with sudden arpeggiated bursts and explosive tonal clusters, until the sudden end, received with enthusiastic applause.

From track to track, the music is fluid, logically connected, but easy to get lost in. Elements of classical mix with free improvisation, some moments congeal while others deflect off each other. It does not matter where one jumps in to the recording, it can be equally rewarding to listen start to finish, as is to randomly choose a track. Regardless, one is instantly exposed to effects of the music, and the sympathetic and intuitive music making is infectious.

The study conducted here on Katarahi has involved very intense close listening as well as very distracted listening methods. While controlling for nothing by volume, I've listened while chopping onions as well as grading papers. One of which made me cry, and during the other, I felt incredibly productive. In conclusion, this release is completely appropriate listening for wherever you are and whatever your are doing, no matter, you're going to do it better. Katarahi is simply a fantastic album.

Myra Melford also speaks with David Cristol about Katarahi and much more in their interview here.

KATARAHI by MYRA MELFORD - SATOKO FUJII

Lazro Léandre Lovens- For Baritone Sax, Double Bass & Drumset (Relative Pitch, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Martin Schray

In Bernd Schoch’s documentary “But The Word Dog Doesn’t Bark“ about the Schlippenbach Trio, Evan Parker is asked in the bonus material whether it’s possible to play “wrong” in free jazz. In the conventional sense, Parker says, that’s not possible, but that’s not the point. One might miss an opportunity to contribute something to the improvisation, which is worse - because the moment would be gone forever. In For Baritone Sax, Double Bass & Drumset , there are no such lost moments. Here, everything fits perfectly.

There are several examples on this album where you can hear the incredible timing of three masters of European improv - baritone saxophonist Daunik Lazro, bassist Joëlle Léandre, and drummer Paul Lovens. First on the opener “Temps du Corps 1”, which Lazro and Lovens begin tenderly before the saxophone roughens the tone and gives Léandre the opportunity to join in with her arco bass. Or that moment at the 5-minute mark when the musicians seem to be waiting for the perfect moment to kick things off, which Léandre then conjures up with just a few notes, and Lovens brilliantly picks up the pace before they really let loose. Then there’s another example on “Temps du Corps 3“, when Lazro plays Coltrane-ish lines before he and Léandre drop out and leave the field for Lovens, who concentrates on his toms, which lends the improvisation a dark and gloomy quality; after a very short while the three of them really pick up the pace, increase the intensity (it’s mainly Léandre who pushes her instrument to its limits) and bring the improvisation back to the beginning picking up the ballad-like mood again.

In the end, all of this comes together and is taken to the extreme: the final piece even swings here and there, with heart-wrenching, wailing saxophone notes serving as a counterpoint. Finally, it’s taken to the brink of collapse, before exploding at the very end, creating an atmosphere of extreme musical intensity that oscillates between chamber music and free jazz.

All in all, it’s the somnambulistically confident shifts between harsh and lyrical, dense and open, or accelerated and calmer passages, which create the most exciting dynamics.

It’s certainly helpful that the three were able to draw on decades of individual and collaborative experience within the global improvised music scene on this session. For Baritone Sax, Double Bass & Drumsetis a celebration of timbre, texture, sound and communication. Most of the fascination of this outstanding album comes from Lazro’s rich, expressive saxophone language, which is charmed by Léandre’s guttural yet elegant bass lines and Lovens’ subtle and inventive percussive cornucopia.

For Baritone Sax, Double Bass & Drumsetis available as a CD and as a download. You can listen to it and buy it on the Relative Pitch Bandcamp site:

For Baritone Sax, Double Bass and Drumset by Lazro Leandre Lovens

Stein/Smith/Shead – Five Nights in the Midwest (balance point acoustics, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Brian Earley

Asking listeners to pay attention to an entire tour’s worth of music is asking a great deal. But, friends, because you are here you also already know one of the most powerful, even liberating, experiences to be had is patiently, closely listening to sound as it develops, increases or slows in pace, adjusts voicings, and surprises.

Well, Jason Stein (bass clarinet), Damon Smith (bass) and Adam Shead (drums) have not quite given us an entire tour of music, but they come pretty damn close. Five Nights in the Midwest is a three-CD set that preserves, well–five nights of music from a recent tour in December of 2025. Each recording presents one entire live musical take with no editing. Stops include The Sugar Maple in Milwaukee, State Street Pub in Indianapolis, three tracks from The Spot Tavern in Lafayette, Indiana (more on that in a second), Dissonant Works in St. Louis, and Reverberation Records in Bloomington, Illinois.

The project is ambitious and it really pays off for those who pay attention. I have spent the past weekend immersed in this music, listening to it over and over, and the experience reminds me of what happens at an extended festival. Excitement and novelty quickly give way to attention fatigue, but the music is just so constantly good, so impressive and powerful, that fatigue yields again and again to something like spiritual enthusiasm and awakening.

I cannot possibly discuss each track or set in detail here, there is just way too much music, but here is what stands out to me as important.

First, this is music that is not written out. Three people gather and entirely improvise sound into being for twenty minutes. Or thirty minutes (the longest piece runs 29.26). And, like so much I admire about the world we live in, here is an example of humanity at its best. No really. Night four was captured on film and is available on YouTube by Thom Null. Thom writes this with his video: “Sorry that it has taken me half a year to begin posting these long cell phone videos, but the incessant international holocaust has really had me operating at the lower level of Maslow's triangle, so to speak. Namaste!” Yep. Sounds about right. There is a lot of shit out there, and the vast, vast majority of us know this and have long been aware that thousands of deaths, and likely many more in the future, are happening so a very few people can benefit.

It wears us down. It fatigues, but it does not prevail.

Stein, Smith, and Shead embody this by acting together for mutual benefit. All three possess shockingly immense amounts of virtuosity on their respective instruments, but this hardly matters to them if these earned gifts are not in the service of beauty and art. Listeners, then, benefit by learning again that the effort of listening, and effort at all, is part of what makes us human (inhuman AI Data Centers don’t just remove the effort-they remove the searching that makes life meaningful, oh and about five million gallons of water each day).

The three musicians focus on giving us one uncut performance from each night of the tour. However, The Spot Tavern in Lafayette is the exception, and this recording preserves three consecutive tracks, titled “set 1,” “set 2a,” and “set 2b” from this location. Close listening reveals why. To my ears, the music here is wonderfully varied, much more so than on the rest of the album. “set 1” functions as many of the pieces do: almost immediate high energy playing by all three. OK, this song takes about 1:30 to reach full energy, but check out almost any other track (say, the State Street Pub set, which is hot right out of the gate and remains that way for nearly twenty minutes).

All three musicians share in the credit for this level of stamina. Each individual’s gifts inspire and propel their bandmates forward. Shead’s drumming, for instance, reminds me of Milford Graves. I know, I know, this is a bold comparison. But Shead’s polyrhythmic dexterity sometimes makes me think he must have eight arms, and the professor is the one of the few other drummers that elicit this response in me.

“Set 2b” from the Spot, on the other hand, proceeds much more like a ballad. The shortest work on the entire album, Stein plays with a breathy introspection. Smith bows atonal angles, but always with tenderness. Shead remains on the smaller cymbals and plays quietly ringing bells much of the time.

The trio clearly was pleased with the results from the Spot Tavern. In fact, they have recorded there before for 2023’s Hum (Irritable Mystic Records).

I think maybe my favorite piece on the entire album comes from the final night, recorded at Reverberation Records. By this point the group has developed a sixth-sense, ESP-like communication system with each other, and they effortlessly build fires to wash them out extemporaneously and quickly ignite them again. On this piece, as on so many of the others, only Smith will lay out. His reasons are likely pragmatic: he has to grab his bow, or a drum stick, or a set of chains (!?) to play the bass. But in this practical restraint Shead often soars over temple wood blocks and slams his dented cymbal while Stein climbs, descends, growls, or sometimes crackles from his lips until Smith reenters, often bowing at a pitch and frequency that sound like he is opening the maws of hell itself. For an example of this, check out the 20.00 minute mark on this final tune.

Someone, likely Shead, screams at about 20.50, the music has worked its way into such a frenzy. And, as the flames cool to embers and the music dies into silence, I find myself feeling lighter than before, like some great weight has been taken from me, some demon exorcized. And here is the gift these three musicians have given us: freedom, shared meaning making, a blessing built from mutual collaboration.

Five Nights in the Midwest can be heard here:

Five Nights in the Midwest by Stein/Smith/Shead

An interview with Myra Melford

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Photo by Gil Corre

By David Cristol

The US pianist and composer is busier than ever. New albums, a freshly launched Bandcamp label, teaching in Berkeley, writing for large ensembles in Europe, new bands to tour and record with : Myra Melford is in control and on a roll. During a stopover between Paris and Italy, The Evanston-born artist talked to David Cristol on a sunny June morning in the South of France.

– Can we start with your new piano duo release with Satoko Fujii, かたらひ (Katarahi)on RogueArt ? You previously collaborated on Under the Water [Libra Records, 2009] . How did the connection come about and how do you go about playing together ?

Myra Melford [MM] – Satoko and I met in 1994. I was playing a solo concert at a little club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, called Club Passim. After the concert, I discovered that Paul Bley was there, and he had brought Satoko with him. She was a student or ex-student of his. So it was Paul Bley who introduced us. But she was in Boston and I was in New York, so we didn't see each other much, but stayed aware of what the other was doing. After I moved to Berkeley in 2004, she came to the Bay Area and we arranged to do a two-piano concert at the Maybeck House in Berkeley. That was our first meeting at the piano. That happened around 2007 and the record came out a couple years later. It was completely improvised. We didn't talk about anything, just played. And learned a lot from that experience. Over the years, I played some concerts with her in Japan, we played in San Francisco in 2015, and started getting concert invitations in Europe. We thought, instead of playing completely free, let's each bring compositions that allow for a lot of improvisation, but where we have some common focus and we can plan a little bit so that there's variety in what we're doing, so that it’s not so dense all the time. By having a roadmap or idea about what an improvisation might be about, we could create more space and feature one or the other, understand a little bit more how to go about it. We played in Europe maybe once every couple of years. And then got this opportunity to play at the Leibnitz Jazz Festival. That was supposed to happen during the pandemic, but it got postponed and only actually happened in the fall of 2024.

– And that’s the new recording?

MM -Yes. It was recorded by Österreichischer Rundfunk, the Austrian radio. They did a really great job, and it was in the back of our minds that we would consider it for a live record. But it wasn't until we heard the recording and were happy with its quality and with our playing that we decided we wanted to release it. Our playing is complementary and compatible. We each have a different way of playing, and a different way of composing. But when we get together, I think on this new record especially, sometimes you can't tell who's playing, even though we're on different channels. We also switch pianos in the middle of the concert, which makes it even more confusing. I like the idea that we're creating one sound together rather than being these two separate pianists who must be identifiable.

– There aren't many live recordings in your discography.

MM –I like live recordings, but haven’t released many. An early one was Alive in the House of Saints [Hat ART, 1993] . And then, 12 from 25 with the Blu-ray documentary [Firehouse 12, 2018] , from my 2015 retrospective at The Stone. It's nice when you get a good recording and you don't feel like you have to edit it too much. For the duo we only had to take out a few coughs, nothing major.

Myra Melford Trio at The Stone, NYC 2015 - credit Gil Corre

DC – Did you have in mind references to previous duos on the instrument ?

MM –I can only speak for myself : it was kind of completely new. I was familiar with the recording of Cecil Taylor and Mary Lou Williams and also with Marian McPartland's show and all the piano duos that happened there. But really it was something new to discover, and not something I had thought about for a long time.

– Do you often record your concerts ? Are there live recordings in your archive that you might release at some point ?

MM –I used to record a lot of my gigs on my phone or some small device like that, but I don't do that anymore. The idea was mainly to be able to listen to how some new music I’d written was working. Most of the concerts that I play now are recorded, if not by someone I know in the audience, then by a professional engineer. If it's being recorded, I always ask for a copy. There are several things that might potentially come out. I'm just starting a Bandcamp label. First I'm releasing my back catalog for which the rights have come back to me and which are no longer available or which the record labels are no longer selling. They've let them go out of print in some cases. The idea is that eventually I'll start to release some live concerts.

– How about the third Fire and Water Quintet [with Ingrid Laubrock, Mary Halvorson, Tomeka Reid and Lesley Mok] album that will come out on RogueArt ? Will it be a suite like the previous ones, to be listened to in one sitting ?

MM –This one is different. It's a set of pieces that in my opinion all fit together, but I didn't have an order to start with, as I did with the previous records. I wrote it as individual pieces. I like the order that we chose as a sequence, but it's not necessary to listen to the full thing at once.

– How did your writing for this group evolve over the years?

MM –It mostly evolved from the first record to the second record. For the second record, I was deliberately writing for the people in the band, thinking about how I wanted to feature each of them. On the third record, it's like I had absorbed or internalized a lot of their playing and approach. While I was writing the music, I was again thinking about who I would like to feature and how, but it was more open-ended than on Hear the Light Singing where each piece was going to feature a different person. This time it was more about breaking things down into duos and trios. I have been continuing to use some of my earlier approaches and strategies but also trying to develop some new concepts in terms of counterpoint and working with different cells of ideas.

Fire and Water Quintet (Jazz em agosto, 2023). Photo Vera Marmelo

– You have a new trio with two members of the quintet. Did the trio idea arose from composing for the quintet?

MM –Not exactly, although the writing is similar and the trio plays some of the same music. I wrote some music for the trio that I ended up expanding for the quintet, and this is the first recording of it. In other cases, I imagined some departures from how I work with the quintet. Part of it was purely practical. It's pretty hard to tour with a quintet all the time. It's expensive, people are busy. I wanted to have a smaller unit that could be a continuation of the ideas that I've been exploring with Fire and Water. So, inviting Ingrid Laubrock and Lesley Mok made great sense. We've done several concerts together and are starting to work on some music for a recording. The band is called SOX 2. It's a a biomedical term that comes from generative gene therapy. It's something about how genes can regenerate. The person who wrote the liner notes for the quintet record explains it very clearly.

– Your all-female quintet is not only women, it's women from different origins, backgrounds, generations. Was that in your mind when forming the band?

MM –That's right. But that’s in the back of my mind. In the forefront of my mind are musical personalities. How does someone play? What's their sound? How do they approach improvisation? Can I imagine them performing my music? That is always the first concern. The second thing is my liking to have, as was already the case with Snowy Egret, different generations and backgrounds involved in the band. The quintet is a continuation of that idea. It's important for audiences to not only see a band of fantastic women players, but also that we are able to get together and make something together, even though we come from different backgrounds.

– How did you hear about each of them? Did you see them live at festivals or listen to their albums?

MM –Both. I had played with Mary and with Tomeka already, mostly through working with Nicole Mitchell. Ingrid came to see me very early after I moved to California. She was interested in some of the things I learned from Henry Threadgill and which I in turn shared with her. I followed what all of them were doing. Originally it was Susie Ibarra in the quintet. She's on the first album. Mary was playing in Tomeka's quartet. Mary and Ingrid had played with Kris Davis, and I was aware of what everybody was doing. These were all people I'd like to play with, and wondering what would happen if we all got together and played ? It went very well, and that's when I decided to turn it into a band. Our very first gig was part of my second Stone residency in 2019. In addition to doing several nights of current bands that I was either part of or leading, I decided to do one night of free improvisation. And I asked this group of people to do it with me. At the time I was starting to work on some new compositions. For the evening I ended up creating a roadmap of different duos and trios with some notated material, text scores, this kind of thing. It was quite open, but there was a little bit of the material that I then incorporated on For the Love of Fire and Water . After that show, I fleshed out the compositions and turned them into a suite that we could record.

– Like you, they're fluent in both composition and improvisation, active in both fields.

MM –For me it's more about blurring those fields, blurring the boundaries. But yes. Let me tell you about Lesley. I had written a second set of music that became the Hear the Light Singing recording. And we did a tour of that. We were going to do some more gigs and a recording, but unfortunately, Susie Ibarra wasn't available to do the tour with us. I started to look for a drummer that could learn the music with us and make the recording. I asked a couple of friends who they’d recommend and Lesley’s name came up. I called the other members and they were super into it. We got together and they played great right from the start. It's wonderful having them in the band, totally great.

– When you start a group, do you think, let’s do this one thing and then we'll see what happens? You sometimes have two recordings with a group, but three, like with Fire and Water, is pretty rare.

MM –That's right. Usually two records is about as far as I go with a band. And that's spread out over a few years. It comes both out of necessity or practicalities and because I wish to renew the writing and playing. I mean, if offered the opportunity to do a new tour, I want to have some new music ready and bring it out there. But in that case it's also that this band is really special and there seems to be room for expansion, like I could maybe develop music that would take us into some new territory. That’s what I am hoping to do. We're playing in Ottawa next month and going to do a tour in Europe in October, so maybe it’ll continue.

– When did you start using guitar?

MM –I have been playing with guitar for quite a long time if you go back to be the band Be Bread with Brandon Ross. That was more or less a quartet that had either Cuong Vu on trumpet and electronics or Brandon Ross on guitar, banjo and electric guitar. I like the combination of piano and guitar. In some ways, the inspiration for that came from doing a project of Henry Threadgill's, where I performed with guitar quartets, of which Brandon was part of. We did a couple pieces. One was « Over the River Club » from Song Out of My Trees [Black Saint, 1994] and the other was « Noisy Flowers » from Makin’ a Move [Columbia, 1995]. I like that sound. And it's about particular players. I worked with Brandon for quite a while, and when I put Snowy Egret together, I invited Liberty Ellman on guitar. Both of them had played with Threadgill. Mary has this big personality on guitar, effects and a very different sound to Liberty. Now they play great together in Ches Smith’s Clone Row. I wanted to keep working with guitar and I wanted to work with Mary. She has a very distinctive sound. I had done a project called Happy Whistlings around 2008, which was with Mary, Taylor Ho Bynum, Matana Roberts, Stomu Takeishi. It was music for the [writer, journalist] Eduardo Galeano project, Language of Dreams , that was eventually recorded by Snowy Egret. Mary played in one of the early iterations of it, and I loved playing with her. I knew I wanted to get back to having her play my music at some point. So this was the perfect opportunity. All the people I work with have their own creative expression which is original and strong, yet they always serve the compositions.

– You always pick the best bass players – Mark Dresser, Michael Formanek, Nick Dunston, Joëlle Léandre…

MM –Gosh, I'm so lucky to play with so many great bass players. Everybody's got a particular feel for time and comping and soloing and how they express rhythm. I'm looking for people who are complimentary to how I like to play the piano and the kind of music I'm writing. I'm fortunate that all these great bass players have been willing to play with me.

– You just toured again with the Tiger Trio [with Joëlle Léandre and Nicole Mitchell] . How did that go?

MM –It was great, we always have a good time when we get together. We hadn't played in about three years. We have two albums out. Or three if you include the one that's a live recording in Joëlle's Lifetime Rebel box set. We don't get to play often enough, but whenever we do, it's really fun. We're all coming from very different places in a way, but when we get together, something special happens. It is all improvised, we don't bring any compositions.

– The most recurring format in your discography is the trio. Is it your favorite?

MM –Well, I would say the quintet is my favorite. It's just a little harder to work with a quintet, to tour, organize schedules, have enough money to pay everybody. So I would say those are my two favorite formats, although I like duos, quartets and solo as well. With a trio, you have everything you need. You've got three different voices, so that not everybody has to play all the time, or you can change the roles fluidly from background to foreground, accompanying or being featured. And I like to do it with all kinds of instrumentations, from Equal Interest with violin and woodwinds [Leroy Jenkins and Joseph Jarman] to this new SOX 2 trio with Lesley and Ingrid, and the classic piano, bass, and drums association, like Splash, Trio M or my early trio. They're all fun and different, but it's easier to work with three people, you don't have a lot of parts to organize. It's less complex in some ways, but it doesn't have to be because everybody is capable of playing either very simply or playing a lot – like with Splash.

– Can you tell us about that trio [with Michael Formanek on bass & Ches Smith on drums and vibraphone] ? You put out a recording last year on Intakt, and took it on tour.

MM –As I was saying, composing for a trio, I have less parts available, right? You can only have three things going on at once. What's new for me about this trio is that Ches also plays vibes, so I have a second melodic instrument that can either play with the bass or with the piano while somebody else takes a different role. I love the combination of piano and vibes together. With musical personalities that bring something unique to my music, if I record something with Splash and then record the same tune with the quintet, it is performed completely differently. I can arrange some of the same material for quintet or trio. I wrote some interludes for Splash, and then adapted those to the quintet and they sound completely different. « Chalk », for instance, is a piece that can be played by various instrumentations and personalities, it's coming out different every time yet retains the essence of the composition. I do « Chalk » with Splash, with the quintet and also with Satoko.

– You don't have many solo recordings. Your solo piano set at the 2024 Novara Jazz festival was stunning.

MM –Just one, Life Carries Me This Way [Firehouse 12, 2013, reissued as a double LP in 2017] . Which is a studio recording. And I agree the live concert in Italy was strong. I just played another solo in Mantua, that also went very well. They recorded it. Maybe that would be something to consider for release on my label.

– You have been inspired by the works of painter Cy Twombly for some time.

MM –In the mid-90s, I wrote « Drawing in the Dark » for my band Same River Twice. That composition was inspired by Twombly. I had just gone to see a retrospective of Twombly's work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. That's what started the whole thing. I wasn’t aware of his art before, and remember feeling a strong affinity with the energy and gesture and the way his work looked in this gallery when I walked into it. In the back of my mind, I thought, that looks like how I play the piano. So that's what I've been doing for the last five years. It's a project that's being supported by the University of California, and was originally meant to be an evening-long performance comprised of several ensembles, Snowy Egret, Fire and Water and maybe Tiger Trio or MZM [Melford’s trio with Zeena Parkins and Miya Masaoka] , small group things that would culminate in one big improvised orchestra piece. Because of COVID, I wasn't able to make that happen. So I started thinking of it as installments, starting with Fire and Water’s For the love of Fire and Water , and then Hear the Light Singing, and then Splash, and then the upcoming Quintet record, titled Sure Grand Out, and finally an installation in which I will perform a solo piece. The title was inspired by a book, of, not exactly poetry – or maybe it is poetry. Someone had deconstructed a diary from a long time ago that she had found in the Midwest of the United States. Diary entries had be written every day, but the woman who then deconstructed it only took a few words out of it. One line was « a good rain, flowers come fast, sure grand out ». Those are titles I thought kind of worked within my relationship with Twombly's work. I am going back to Italy to work on the final installment of the Twombly project. I'm collaborating with two artists from Chicago, photographer and visual artist and videographer Sandra Binion, and Lou Malozzi, an experimental sound artist. We're creating an installation of our reflections and responses to Twombly's work. This will be the final chapter, and then, I think it's time to move on to something new.

– You have a taste for enigmatic song and album titles. How do you choose them?

MM –I usually find titles after the pieces of music are composed. I keep a list of possible titles around subjects or areas that I'm interested in, and had a number of titles related to Twombly, from writings I've read about him and his work. And I certainly get ideas from poetry and literature. And then some of the new music that I've written in the last year was inspired by the idea of regenerative gene therapy, and regeneration in general, like how the heck are we going to start to really address the climate issues. I talk with my students a lot. I teach at the university of California where the students are studying every subject you can imagine. Many great musicians who play in my ensembles or study with me are pre-med or going to become engineers or astrophysicists. I was talking with one of my pre-med students about this idea of regenerative gene therapy and she was the one who suggested where to look and what to read.

– Teaching, playing, composing, touring, traveling – what is the thing you enjoy the most ?

MM –I'm going to say that without making music, none of the rest makes sense. Performing and composing are central to everything. What's been great for me about being a professor at UC Berkeley is that my students and colleagues are very inspiring and it's been a really good synergistic experience that informs my music. I go out and perform my music in the world and have something that I feel good about sharing with my students when I come back. So, for the most part, it works as a whole. It's a bit tiring sometimes to try to juggle all these things. But on the other hand, if I didn't go out and perform new music, I don't think I'd have the inspiration to teach. So I have to do it all.

– What about the [Canadian clarinet player] François Houle Quintet you’re a member of, and uses graphic scores or at least color indications ?

MM –We use both. It started as a trio with me, Joëlle and François. We played at Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal a few years ago, we had scores and some notated material. And then the group expanded to include Gordon Grdina and Gerry Hemingway and it became more like text scores where François would give us indications, colors to look at and ideas. That's what we did in Novara. Last spring we did a few gigs in Canada. And we're going to perform in Guelph in September. François would like to record it. He did one recording that I couldn't make, with Alexander Hawkins and Joëlle. The next thing is to record in the configuration that we'll be playing in Guelph.

– If you had an unlimited budget to work on some specific project, what would you like to achieve that you haven't already?

MM –That's a good question. I guess I just want to be able to keep doing what I'm doing. I have some concerts coming up in the fall with Splash. Now that Michael Formanek lives in Lisbon, I have to bring him to the US twice, maybe three times. The only reason I would like not to worry about money is so I can keep doing what I'm doing. And, as the next idea comes in, have funding for it, as it’s the hardest thing to manage. I've been fortunate to get some very nice funding over the years, but it doesn't last forever and I'm again in the situation where there are so many things I want to do and I just don't know where the money's going to come from yet.

– You got some awards and grants in recent years.

MM –One was from the Doris Duke Foundation. I got that and the Albert Award and the Guggenheim. Those prizes have enabled me to do everything I've done the last few years.

Now that I'm getting to the culmination of the Cy Twombly project, I'm starting to think about writing for larger ensembles. I've got two commissions for next year. One is for the Kitchen Orchestra in Stavanger in Norway, and the other is for an ensemble called Studio Dan in Vienna. Ingrid has been writing for them. I'm writing a piece that I can do variations of with each of those bands next May and June. And I'm co-composing a piece for improvising pianist and orchestra with a colleague from UC Berkeley named Carmine Cella, which we will premiere next year as well. So I've got lots to do. I'm kind of allowing these things to happen, as seeds, to see what might come next.

Arles, 2019. Photo by Gil Corre

– Do you enjoy writing for larger ensembles?

MM –I do. I haven't done a lot of it, so I'm looking forward to it and figuring out how I want to do it, rather than following someone else's model necessarily.

DC – You worked with Wynton Marsalis and a big band.

MM –Yes, that was a traditional big band. They call it the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. We played one of my compositions. That was fun, I have to say. I didn't know what to expect when I went into it, because I come from another, freer school, so to speak. But I felt welcome. I loved all the guys and Ted Nash did a great arrangement of my piece, which I performed with them.

– Do you listen to a lot of music?

MM –Mostly trying to listen to the new stuff that's coming out, from people I play with. And I don't do a very good job of keeping up with it. Soon as I see something new coming from someone I know, I go check it out. And if it's something that really inspires me, I'll go back and listen to it a lot. Other times I might not get back to it. I'm not going back to older music much these days.

– How about listening to your own recordings?

MM –I don't like to do that, but if I have to, for a project or something, I will. But I can’t say I enjoy it. It's partly because I hear things that I know what I was going for and didn't quite achieve. But you know, I feel good about the music I've done overall.

– You often are your own producer. How does the relationship with the record labels happen?

MM –It's different with each label. I’ve learned that it's important to retain control over my own work, and as much as possible own the rights to it. I've been fortunate that there have been labels that have wanted to put out my music, and we've been able to talk about which project or projects might make the most sense. I think it's good to not be only with one label these days. It's a difficult time for labels and a difficult time for musicians. And it's nice to be able to share your music to different audiences and on different platforms. Just having opportunities to get my music out there is the most important thing.

– There was a point when you didn't release a lot of records. Now it might seem as you have accelerated a bit.

MM –It’s true. I have more projects now. Some of those are collectives, like Trio M or Lux Quartet. I have the Quintet and two different trios that are part of the same constellation, so to speak. And I don't know if it's getting older and feeling like, I want to make sure I accomplish these things and get them out in the world, or just that there are more opportunities to release things since I’m doing more things.

– You’ve played with drummer Allison Miller for a number of years, and were a member of her band Boom Tic Boom.

MM –I’m not in that anymore. We did some concerts with the original band last fall, but I think Allison's moved on with Boom Tic Boom. Instead, we're co-leading the Lux Quartet.Allison made a number of really nice records that I got to play on. I like the first one called Live in Willisau [Foxhaven Records, 2012], and the most recent one, Glitter Wolf [Royal Potato Family, 2019] on which I also play harmonium. She has a new band that she's still calling Boom Tic Boom but it’s a completely different line-up.

– What else have you been involved in recently?

MM –I've been playing with some musicians in the Bay Area. I was invited to collaborate on a project, as a performer, called Insect Life, which is Ben Goldberg on clarinets, Ben Davis on cello, Raffi Garabedian on tenor and Danny Lubin-Laden on trombone. They invited Hamir Atwal and me to play with them. There should be a recording of that coming out next year, maybe on Ben's label [BAG Production Records]. And I've been playing in a trio with Ben Goldberg and one of my students, Matt Muntz, a fantastic bass player. Matt is getting his PhD in composition at UC Berkeley and he, Ben and I have a trio that we're going to record next fall. Ben Goldberg, cellist Ben Davis and I have a new trio project that we're going to try and record as well. I love playing with Ben [a collaboration that harks back to duo performances in the US and Europe from 2012 onward, the album Dialogue and Myra being part of Goldberg’s Orphic Machine project in 2015].

Myra Melford & Ben Goldberg in 2013. Photo by Jean-François Laberine

Addendum...

- Which are your three favorites among your own albums, the most artistically successful in your opinion?

MM - This is a tough one. I'll say :

Snowy Egret - The Other Side of Air (Firehouse 12, 2018)

Fire and Water Quintet - Hear the Light Singing (Rogueart, 2023)

Myra Melford Splash (Intakt, 2025)

- Could you recommend three albums from other artists that you currently enjoy?

MM -

Ches Smith - Clone Row (Otherly Love, 2025)

John Carter - Fields (Gramavision, 1988)

Anna Webber and Matt Mitchell - Capacious Aeration (Tzadik, 2023)

I haven't checked out Mary's new album with Ambrose Akinmusire yet - looking forward to that!

Current and upcoming releases:

Myra Melford « Splash » (Intakt, 2025)
Myra Melford/Satoko Fujii « かたらひ (Katarahi) » (RogueArt, 2026)
Ben Goldberg/Myra Melford/Danny Lubin-Laden « Trouble Trouble » (BAG, August 2026)
Fire and Water Quintet « Sure Grand Out » (RogueArt, September 2026
Find out more here: https://myramelford.bandcamp.com/
Myra Melford on RogueArt: https://roguart.com/artist/myra-melford/160
Revisit an interview with Myra Melford on the Free Jazz Blog in 2022.

Teiku - Klang (Ginko Records, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Sammy Stein

Teiku comprises pianist Josh Harlow, percussionist Jonathan Barahal Taylor, double bassist Jaribu Shahid, and, newly adopted into the ensemble, bass clarinettist Jason Stein. Their sophomore release on Gingko Records is Klang, a meditation on focus and intention. It follows ‘Teiku’ (577 records, 2024) – a release that built on the foundations of the music of their Jewish-Ukrainian ancestors that they grew up with.

Teiku was founded by Chicago pianist Harlow and percussionist Barahal to interpret their respective families’ unique Passover melodies as conduits for spontaneous musical expression. On Klang, Teiku expands on the meditative themes of ‘Teiku,’( 577 records 2024), which was a meditation on their shared history and a tribute to the aurally transmitted ancestral melodies that they grew up singing. Klang expands on these themes and takes its source from historical music, but also rare manuscripts, voice recordings, and chants. All the elements imbued in this album stem from influences on the lives of the musicians, so the music feels personal and intimate, yet not to share it would seem a selfish act because the music is exceptional.

Five of the six tracks represent the same Passover song/liturgical text, Ki Le Naeh (For Him It Is Fitting), but each, due to regional and family variations, is a distinct, unique melody. Far from the standardised versions prevalent today, the ancient melodies are transfigured, deconstructed, and reframed, but their essence, of respect, collective power, and remembrance, remains.

Stein comments, "Improvisational music has always been squarely in the tradition of expressing the essential right of all people to be free. It’s a great pleasure and opportunity to be a part of Teiku’s musical expression and alignment with this sense of freedom from oppression as it applies to the present moment in the world. It was a great pleasure to work with Josh, Jon, and Jaribu. I love the collective and open feeling everyone brings to the music and to the process of interpreting this traditional and deeply spiritual music."

Understanding the recording requires attentive listening if you are to comprehend how vocal sounds, musical exploration, references to free expression, and detail come together to create a recording that is both communicative and profound. Every time the oral traditions are imagined and re-imagined, subtle changes happen, and with Klang Teiku adds their own voice to this lineage. You can hear strong references to Jewish traditional music, with the associated rhythms, chordal changes, and beautiful harmonics that lend themselves to the musical interpretation of emotive, lyrical music. Yet, although the interpretation is of historical music, Teiku treats it as living, evolving material, adapted to modern trends of exploration, divergence, and freedom of playing. The listener needs to know nothing of the influences that helped create it, because the music is complete in itself, while the tracks feel distinct, yet connected.

Barahal’s drumming adds beautiful touches to the patterns and dance-like themes of some of the tracks. There is a step-like motion to his rhythms that can’t be ignored. His vibraphone playing creates intimate moments through delicate phrasing and harmonic subtlety. Harlow builds a harmonic foundation and rich textural atmosphere on both piano and electronics, and his use of silence is deliberate, creating space for other instruments and configurations to be heard. Stein knows when to support or solo, and his innate sense of dynamics means there is movement to the music, carried in some places by his interpretation and how he builds and relaxes the intensity. Jaribu Shahid’s bass lends its voice to poignant moments and also offers structural support in many areas, and the same can be said of Harlow’s input. The sense of musicians playing in harmony is strong in Teiku, and a sense of reverence in this music that is inexplicable. It is as if each track is taken and delivered with sincerity and respect, while at the same time allowing the individuality of the players to be heard and felt. While Teiku is a quartet, the unannounced, yet constantly present fifth member is the historical music that is an essential collaborator with a modern jazz style of playing.

Barahal and Harlow comment, “The process of reframing our ancestral melodies to make this music reminds us to keep searching and imagining. As Jews, we embrace our spiritual and cultural heritage of care and community, of rituals and questions. We reject all forms of violence that have become associated with that heritage by genocidal nationalists. To that end, we dedicate this set of music to the Palestinian people and all suffering people. Thank you to our families, our mentors, and our friends, who continue to teach us the way forward in a fractured world.”

The first track, ‘Ki Le Noeh (Krumholz melody),’ is deeply traditional, with modern inputs. Krumholz means twisted, contorted, and the melody is repeated, varied, and tested in different ways throughout the track. Stein's bass clarinet lends expressive tones and melodies, while the insistent drums and the full-voiced bass line add depth and cohesion. The piano, when it emerges from the background, is gloriously uplifting, particularly when it is duelling with the bass clarinet. What is great about the track is how the traditional melodic patterns are underpinned by explorative free styling from all four members of Teiku.

‘Ki Lo Laeh (Fendrick Melody)’ is other-worldly and reverent, with gentle vocal recordings from Sue Fendrick; there are some wonderfully warped tones that add to the ethereal nature of the music. It feels oddly like a prayer, in its delivery and comparatively tentative nature, particularly the final phrases.

In ‘Khasul Seydur Peysakh (Chasman Melody)’ there are melodic lines from Stein’s bass clarinet, toned with supportive bass and percussion, and a piano that underpins everything, seemingly in a melodic thought of its own for much of the time, but one that reflects the rest of the ensemble. Stein excels in his free, explorative expression, while the track swells and ebbs, creating waves of change. Shahid’s solo evolves into an expressive solo punctuated by percussive elements and eventually accompanied by the ensemble, with Stein's melody leading into a brief dance rhythm and an ensemble finish.

‘Ki Le Noeh (Shlita Melody)’ is at the beating heart of this album, and as the translated honorific of the title might suggest, is an homage to many rhythms of Jewish music, but afforded the Teiku treatment and given a modern free jazz twist. The bass ukulele adds sonorous undertones, while Stein’s bass clarinet positively dances its way across patterns, changes, and rhythmic explorations. The final minute is explosive and somehow cathartic in its energy expenditure.

On ‘Ki Le Noeh (Gerster Melody)’ there is the gentle start of the vibraphone solo, into which the ensemble drops, the clarinet rendering an equally gentle line. The track has essences of modern jazz along with the traditional music, and the bass solo is beautiful. The closing track, ‘Odir Bimlikhe (Lunski Melody) is a free-played improvisation paired with elements of traditional-sounding melody lines. It is standout, with the ensemble creating a dynamic, energetic track filled with the emotional input of all that has gone before.

The album is outstanding in many areas. Teiku is apt as a name for this ensemble of musicians because it has several meanings. In Japanese, it means to keep doing or continue, while in Aramaic, it is a derivation of the word meaning ‘the question stands,’ and the ensemble feels as if they have addressed several questions, explored some of the answers, but in the end, the question remains, and it is this. How do we relate historic, traditional music to modern styles of playing and freely improvised expression? Teiku tried to find at least part of the answer.

Klang by Teiku

Lance Austin Olsen and Jamie Drouin – a field far beyond form and emptiness (Infrequency, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Nick Ostrum

A field far beyond form and emptinessis a return to form. It is Lance Austin Olsen and Jamie Drouin’s first musical collaboration in six years, following a period marked mostly visual arts projects, some joint work on comic books, and an extended bout with Covid. And as with previous recordings, it features Drouin and Olsen on a range of instruments acoustic - dulcimer, cello, piano, children’s and trainer guitars, objects – and not – radio, laptop, amplifiers. Likewise, as with their previous collaboration, this one focuses on unconventional techniques coupled with a lot of frictive and crumbly percussions and Drouin’s electronic manipulations.

The result is a noirish soundtrack to the equally dark and perplexing comics they released a few years ago. Sounds are ephemeral and together evoke a disjointed assemblage of incidental and environmental sounds from a radio play. Woody clicks spatter across one ear. Dramatic tinny dulcimer chords and a lone piano key pock the other. Then silence, and hums, and a quick tumble of acousmatic clatter. One can only imagine what, if anything, is lurking behind it all, the creaks of a settling house, a clumsy cat, or some more ominous disturbance gathering. Breaking the acousmatic spell, a news reporter intervenes at 21:, announcing “The shortages have been fueled by US sanctions.” An extended hum follows, which opens into a period of silence, then a busy minute-long stretch of rummaging.

Silent intervals fill much of the space, serving not only as markers of subtle change but also curious spaces of musical sound in the Cagean sense. They also give the listener time to process and wonder before the next brief flutter of activity. In sense, the core of a fieldmay very well be these loose agglomerations of sounds and the silence, the connective tissue holding it all together. However, one could also flip that equation, as the sound elements are imposed and intrude upon the underlying silent base, which could be the titular field that transcends shape and order but is also pregnant with possibilities. Whichever way one may consider the album – as sounds on silence or intervallic silence amidst sound - the listener is left to wonder what all this space and abstraction is about. It is something unpleasant, for sure. It also says something about the uncertainty of today, as the sanctions report, just one of two spoken insertions, hints. If anything, that contemporary ambiguity and precarity can be a menacing and lonely place, albeit with the dialectical potential for calm and beauty.

a field far beyond form and emptinessis available as a download from Bandcamp:

a field far beyond form and emptiness by jamie drouin | lance austin olsen

Caroline Kraabel / Pat Thomas / John Edwards / Steve Noble - Transgressive Coastlines (Shrike Records, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Richard Blute

I was happy to see saxophonist Caroline Kraabel reviewed in Stef’s recent article “female artists and solo horn performances”, as I had been spending a great deal of time listening to Transgressive Coastlines. I’ll admit I bought it because of her bandmates. The trio of Pat Thomas on piano, Steve Noble on drums and John Edwards on bass struck me as an unstoppable combo, and it was a pleasure to discover that Kraabel more than holds her own in this distinguished company.

Pat Thomas is a member of the great band [Ahmed], who put on one of the most astonishing shows I’ve ever seen at Big Ears 2025, and also appeared on The Locals Play The Music Of Anthony Braxton, the album where Braxton gets the funky treatment. Noble and Edwards have worked together on countless albums, providing the backbone for any number of the most important albums in free jazz. Check out their work with Peter Brötzmann and Jason Adasiewicz on Mental Shakes or that quartet’s live album, called simply The Quartet. It’s Brötzmann’s final show.

Caroline Kraabel is a saxophonist, conductor, composer and improviser. She’s performed with an extraordinary number of great musicians, including her bandmates here, Charlotte Hug, Maggie Nichols, Louis Moholo, Susan Alcorn, and on and on. She also “founded a large improvising group made up of all sorts of trans-masc, trans-fem, nonbinary, and women improvisers…. they have been exploring improvisation and difference in monthly labs and regular performances”. I would love to have heard her “solo saxophone improvisations while walking in London and elsewhere with her infant child/ren in their pushchair.” [Both quotes are from her website.]

The opener Dark Rainbow begins as a masterclass in how to gradually build up tension. Edwards is scraping his strings, inviting his bandmates to join him. Thomas plays just a few notes, seemingly always at the right moment. Noble and Kraabel are also lightly responding. But they build up the sound quickly and before long Kraabel is playing longer flowing lines with occasional shrieks as punctuation. I’m always impressed with Edwards in the way he switches so smoothly from bowing to plucking in response to his bandmates. The intensity of all four musicians increases sharply, they’re communicating deeply, with lots of stops and starts and changes in tempo. As in all the best free improvisation, we feel as if we’re listening in on a profound conversation. The whole album is full of subtle moments of peace and eruptions of intensity. Each of the musicians are happy to take the lead or take a step back as the collective wishes.

I really enjoy Kraabel’s playing throughout this album. While I clearly hear Evan Parker in her style, I also hear something unique in her use of the high extremes of instrument and in her use of breath sounds. She seems to be talking into her sax at several points.

This is a year-end list contender for me. I’ll be diving into Kraabel’s Bandcamp page as soon as I finish this review.

Transgressive Coastlines by Caroline Kraabel / Pat Thomas / John Edwards / Steve Noble

Some AACM on Record (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Gary Chapin

The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) was one of the most fertile creative organizations … ever … (yes, I said “ever”), serving as apprenticeship for swarms of indispensable players. Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrahms, Lester Bowie, Wadada Leo Smith, and a ton others formed and emerged from the AACM. In any discussion of post-Coltrane jazz, improvisation, avant garde, experimentation, and black identity in music, you will hear of the members of the AACM. They created the standards and then exceeded them.

Sixty years later, the organization continues apace, perhaps a more conventional non-profit, but still the hotbed of iconically iconoclastic innovation that it has always been. Bandcamp recently ran a piece featuring the AACM artists featured on that site , and it was indeed great! Every disc on there was worthy of the attention, but they were almost all re-releases or resurrections of work by the masters back in the day.

We decided to look at some current releases either by AACM members or featuring them. Like the recently reviewed dance! skip! hop! by AACMer Tomeka Reid (reviewed here), these are filled with life, worthy of attention, and driven by AACM values.

Yowzers - Ben Lamar Gay (International Anthem, 2025)

Yowzers opens with an old old feeling church-ish song (reminded me of “I got a Bible I can read”), laying in some solid ground and then going into a creatively abundant set of compositions that lean into small percussion, chants and songs, electronics, and the post-bop jazz fractured rhythms that I love so much.

The main band is Ben LaMar Gay - cornet, voice, synth, bells, diddley bow, percussion, programming, manipulations; Tommaso Moretti - drums, percussion, voice; Davis - tuba, piano, bells, voice; Will Faber - guitar, ngoni, bells, voice. With a few “also featured” joining with their voices and Rob Frye on flute and bass clarinet. It’s an unusual ensemble but feels entirely organic — one section leads to the next with the inevitability of a great story.

Yowzers by Ben LaMar Gay

Emma Dayhuff, Kahil El’Zabar, Dee Alexander, Isaiah Collier - Innovations and Lineage: The Chicago Project (Division 81 Records, 2025)

Innovations and Lineage: The Chicago Project (featuring Emma Dayhuff, Kahil El’Zabar, Dee Alexander, and Isaiah Collier) plumbs similar depths but spends much more time in the dirty, mumbling groove that immediately brings to mind Kahil El’Zabar. This project builds more on traditional percussion (tambourines, gourds, thumb piano) than on Art Ensemblish “small instruments” and its reliance on a careening 6/8 feel for so much of the time is addictive. You can feel the after-rhythm when the song ends. Alexander and El’Zabar sing and vocalize their bluesy moans and shouts. Emma Duff’s bass is relentless — the MVP of the record. Isaiah Collier’s tenor is bar sax and post-Monk — I hear some Charlie Rouse.

In the end it’s meditatively rhythmic, driving and energetic. So in the pocket and joyful that you become the journey.

Innovations & Lineage - The Chicago Project by Dr. Emma Dayhuff

Paula Rae Gibson and Alex Bonney - In Another World We Will Live For Ever (33Xtreme Records/33 Jazz Records, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Sammy Stein

When Paula Rae Gibson contacted me to ask if I would review her new album, she described it simply yet profoundly as ‘an ode to friendship.’ Her best friend had died the year before, and, as she explained, “the least I could do was try to articulate what she meant to me, as a way to heal and a way to stay close to her.”

Few artists possess the imagination and musical instinct required to translate grief into something tangible, but Rae Gibson does exactly that here. This album is steeped in loss, love, and longing, yet reaches far beyond. It becomes, ultimately, a path toward hope, reminding us that beauty and sorrow are often inseparable. That such beauty can result from loss must be a sign of hope and a vehicle towards acceptance and light that we all crave at times.

The album’s origins are as intimate as the music. A small Japanese publisher released a limited edition collection of photographs Rae Gibson had taken of her friend, and while collaborating with trumpet and cornet player, producer, and live electronic musician Alex Bonney on a soundtrack incorporating her friend’s voice messages, the project gradually ‘came to life,’ as Rae Gibson described the experience.

The music moves through emotional and sonic spaces that feel almost suspended between worlds. Bonney’s visionary electronics don’t just accompany Rae Gibson’s vocals; they deepen and amplify them, creating an atmosphere that feels immersive, spectral, and oddly transcendent, as if the listener is afforded fleeting glimpses into another, almost tangible dimension.

The eerie opener, ‘Alive’ is atmospheric and backed by electronic fuzziness that perfectly depicts the sense of otherworldliness that loss can blanket us in. There is a keening keyboard that carries throughout the number, and layers of electronic haze drift beneath whispered words like a prayer, and distant church bells that toll like a summons but also set an undertone of reverence. The sense of emotional dislocation is carried into ‘The Gloves That You Gave Me,’ which sums up the strange power objects acquire after loss. Everyday items become saturated with memory, carrying traces of those who once touched them. The whirring background rhythms feel like a whirlpool, the undertow dragging us towards a darker place. The organ-like background and the gentle, mesmeric vocals of Rae Gibson, punctuated by occasional birdsong, evoke a deep sense of absence. The words ‘everything feels broken’ and ‘nothing will ever be the same, only rain feels right, right now, only tears feel right, right now’ perfectly sum up loss and cut to the heart of bereavement with devastating simplicity.

‘Dreamt of You’ is a beautiful summation of how we dream of those who have gone, and how our imagination fills in the gaps, using phrases they used to say. Offering herself comfort, the singer tells of dreaming of a lost one and how they tell her they are fine – comforting and yet disturbing, as the music adds touches of menace and uncertainty to the snippets of conversation, which the intellect tells us cannot be real, but is redolent of the collective brainstorm our minds flood us with when we have lost. Tender, unsettling, and painfully human.

‘Wait For Me Wait’ is heartfelt in its sincerity. Pitched against relentless rhythmic repetitions, the vocals sing their plea but also accept that it cannot be different. The words speak of talking forever, that there is so much more to say, and a wish for just a little more time. ‘Funny Confessions’ is about sunshine, joy, and how the presence of someone can change things, and the lingering instinct to wonder what someone might say if they were still with you.

‘Lean On’ is an investigative journey into the feelings of leaning on the love for someone, sharing their fire, dancing, and celebrating who they were with the world, while ‘Very Alone,’ is the album’s emotional centrepiece, a number that will resonate with anyone who has experienced deep loss. The lyrics, ‘checking in with you, checking in with me,’ capture the strange ongoing dialogue we maintain with people we have lost, while the line ‘I’ve got to learn to do this alone’ lands with heartbreaking honesty, demonstrating the reluctant acceptance our minds understand we must come to.

This album could have turned into something of an introspective journey, but, while the essence of the album is loss, there is also music that continually reaches outward, and this carries the listener beyond the subject. There is warmth and connection. The album is uplifting, a testament to music’s ability to hold pain, transform it, and return to us a gift. The journey toward the light of how music can carry us, heal us, keep us close to those we have temporarily lost, and offer a vehicle for emotions that no other art form can do.

Columbia Icefield - A Silence Opens (Out of Your Head, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Eyal Hareuveni

A Silence Opens is the third, and unfortunately, the last album of the Columbia Icefield, the quartet that trumpeter Nate Wooley founded, and featuring pedal steel master Susan Alcorn, guitarist-vocalist Ava Mandoza, and drummer Ryan Sawyer. A Silence Opens is informed by the death of close ones and the endless grief their death entails, and began as a tribute to the trumpeter Ron Miles (who passed away in March 2022), Wooley's mentor and someone he looked up to as an older brother, credited for saving Wooley’s life and making him a better person, expanded to a memorial album for Alcorn, whose idiosyncratic sound distinguished the quartet’s sound, who passed away in January 2025, while Columbia Icefield completed the album.

Wooley writes: “Death is a lack with weight. At the moment that you realize that someone you love is irrecoverably gone, a small tear in your life opens up. As days go by, the sliver of grief grows, becoming a rift, a gap, a gulley, a canyon. At the point that you feel lost in the immensity of space where that person used to be, the expansion stops; the hole—the vast and airy part of your life that used to be occupied by that person—becomes solid. Maybe it decreases in size, but more likely, your memories grow to occupy its space”.

Wooley decided to transform the “pressure with sadness” and fill the silence and the vacuum that death brings with new sounds and new voices, creating a deeply emotional and life-affirming musical statement. The album includes three Miles’ pieces, and Alcorn’s favorite protest song - Chilean singer-songwriter Víctor Jara’s “El Derecho De Vivir En Paz” (The Right to Live in Peace, the song that closes Alcorn’s Canto album, Relative Pitch, 2023). The third, unrehearsed interpretation of this song featured a choir of Alcorn’s friends - Mary Halvorson, Ingrid Laubrock, Wendy Eisenberg, gabby fluke-mogul, Laura Ortman, Patrick Holmes, with Wooley, Mandoza, and Sawyer. “We just felt the joy—in saying thank you, we love you, and goodbye—that Susan would have taken in seeing friends and bandmates all lined up, eyes closed, following the lines of a melody she felt in her heart”, Wooley says.

A Silence Opens immediately occupies your full attention with its powerful emotional urgency, faithfully capturing the complex musical essence and personas of Miles and Alcorn. It is structured as a mournful suite or ritual that celebrates the lives and the gift of knowing Miles and Alcorn. It begins with Wooley’s vulnerable whistling solo, the melody of “El Derecho De Vivir En Paz”, followed by Miles’ ballad “Howard Beach” (from My Cruel Heart, Gramavision, 1996), with Mendoza contrasting and pushing Wooley’s touching and soulful playing into aggressive storms; then Mendoza, who almost cries as she recites “El Derecho”; Miles’ dramatic “Darken My Door” (from I Am a Man, Yellowbird, 2017); the choir who “El Derecho” in a waythat makes you want to join their singing; Wooley’s poetic centerpiece, “We Say Goodbye Twice/Wildwood Flower”, that distills the musical and emotional core of this inspiring, heartfelt album with Alcorn’s arresting playing; the quartet offering a joyful interpertation of “El Derecho””; an intense and urgent, distortion-heavy and propulsive version of Miles “You Taste” (from Woman’s Day, Gramavision, 1997); and concluding with Wooley’s solo trumpet of “El Derecho”, simultaneously singing and crying this song, and then whistles it, marking a final acceptance of the passed one, and also as a requiem for Columbia Icefield itself, until it disappears in silence.

Columbia Icefield was in many ways a kind of musical family, and it sounds like a close-knit musical organism. It was one of those few, rare bands that keep expanding its musical universe with every new album, a band that you cherish all its albums, a band that is larger than its parts. “May we always bear the weight of these losses as a gift of presence and memory,” Wooley concluded.

A Silence Opens by Columbia Icefield

The Utopia of Better Processes: An Interview with Christian Lillinger

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Photo by Nino Halm

By Ljubisa Tosic*

Anyone lucky enough to have seen Christian Lillinger's project Open Form for Society live in 2019 at Donaueschingen or at the Jazzfest Berlin will easily understand why he calls it a "sound organ." After years on hiatus, the drummer is now reviving this deeply resonant project.

When one confronts Christian Lillinger with prominent colleagues' names, intending to find out how lasting his encounters with figures such as Rolf Kühn, Joachim Kühn, David Liebman, Alexander von Schlippenbach, or John Tchicai may have been, he responds with a staccato stream of additional names that have inscribed themselves into his musical biography:

Tamara Stefanovich, Mat Maneri, Craig Taborn, Joe Lovano, Christopher Dell, Peter Brötzmann, Beat Furrer, Peter Evans, Sofia Jernberg, John Schröder, Bob Degen, Lotte Anker, Barre Phillips, Evan Parker, Wadada Leo Smith, William Parker, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, and many others...

Of course. When it comes to lasting influence, says Lillinger, "It's a difficult matter." To speak only about 0.1 percent of those influences would be unfair.

On the other hand, there were naturally his own decisions and major life steps that were connected to certain individuals. Lillinger speaks first of the decision "to start playing drums at all," and then of "having the opportunity, at sixteen, coming from a village, to study and pursue a professional path."

Here the support of Günther "Baby" Sommer, a towering figure of free jazz, was essential. "Another decisive moment was getting to know Joachim Kühn, who encouraged me to manifest my own music." From this ultimately emerged Christian Lillinger's Grund, an ensemble known for its distinctive dynamic forms of interplay.

If we continue digging deeper, Lillinger agrees that his search for a controlled freedom and openness in music-making is connected to personally perceived limitations- such as the traditional role of the drummer in jazz- as well as to his own biographical experiences:

My outlook was shaped by independence from a very early age. At the same time, I believe the classical role of the jazz drummer should be one of further development and expansion. Tradition is a constantly evolving form while preserving its roots.

For him, tradition also means, "being able to articulate oneself freely on one's instrument and develop one's own language." No surprise, then, that Lillinger regards jazz itself "as an art music" that demands alertness and continuous development.

Only in this way, he argues, can one do justice to the legacy of great innovators and carry their heritage forward through one's own artistic stance. "Everything else is dead music to me- music that merely fulfills a certain mood or expectation and thereby loses its timelessness. That interests me very little..."

Listening to Lillinger's music, it quickly becomes apparent that here is someone who hovers powerfully above stylistic boundaries. It is therefore tempting to throw a few more names and concepts at him to discover if he is influenced by contemporary classical music. Perhaps the aleatoric methods of John Cage or the open-form concepts of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Earle Brown play a role.

Open Form for Society group shot. Photo by Nadja Hoehfeld.

Perhaps the great sonic precision known from works by Pierre Boulez is also essential, particularly for the current and second recording by his ensemble Open Form For Society (OFFS). "Aleatoricism plays no role whatsoever in OFFS," says Lillinger. "My music is very concretely composed and written down in conventional notation."

Nevertheless, influences from contemporary classical music are numerous. He describes them with terms such as "serial" and "microtonal." His musical thinking also revolves around traditions such as spectralism, New Complexity, and concepts of micro-time and irrational time. These are, he says, "important procedural and inspirational sources."

Someone who formulates his ideas so consciously can perhaps summarize his aesthetic position in something approaching a manifesto:

It is a "new new" chamber music that incorporates space into its actions just as much as what is prescribed and written. The placement and interpretation of the notes are always in dialogue with spatiality. The performers create the space; within this space they navigate themselves. I am opposed to genre labels, so I would rather speak of "post-genre" and of "composer-performers," because everyone involved bears responsibility for shaping and further developing the material. It is a music that operates in a certain scientific manner and thereby continuously discovers new paths.

Immersing oneself in the recording Open Form for Society II (Plaist), one feels as though embarking on a journey through an enchanted sonic garden that gathers collective musical reflexes and conveys an atmosphere of highly energized, controlled freedom.

At times there are slowed-down events reminiscent of musical stalactite caves, as in "Aufgefächert." Elsewhere pulsating sound structures emerge, creating an almost nervous sonic world. Abstract piano figures and energetically charged sound spaces continually return, while density is omnipresent within this sounding architecture.

"Vector" and "Ocker" recall an originally abstracted and further-developed bebop aesthetic, yet with their own freely treated thematic material and repetitive patterns. Introspective and expressive structures form the poles of this musical universe.

How does such a world, constantly shifting between these poles, come into being? Does the personnel come first, or the composition?

It is a very heterogeneous process, one that I wanted to pursue as naturally as possible. Initially there was the vision of assembling a larger ensemble with a strongly percussive sonic language that reflects my way of seeing and realizing structure. Here the sound of Boulez's Sur Incises was an important inspiration.

At the same time, his work with nearly all of the musicians involved in various ensembles was another important factor.

Whether Dell Lillinger Westergaard [DLW], Stemeseder-Lillinger, the collaborations with Petter Eldh and Kaja Draksler, with Robert Landfermann, or with Anna D'Errico through my work with Klangforum Wien- all of this was formative and gave me a clear idea of how and what I can write and hear.

It is fitting that Lillinger mentions Boulez's Sur Incises. With its instrumentation of three pianos, three harps, and three percussionists, it is a sonic laboratory, an organized form of energy that Lillinger has expanded upon. Alongside himself on drums and electronics are Kaja Draksler (upright piano), Elias Stemeseder (spinet and synthesizer), Georg Vogel (electric clavinet), Anna D'Errico and Cory Smythe (piano), bassists Robert Landfermann, Jonas Westergaard, and Petter Eldh, and Christopher Dell on vibraphone.

The process of selecting collaborators was equally heterogeneous:

The criteria emerged from previous work with all participants in different projects. For me, this ensemble is the perfect way to connect and transcend the worlds of classical music and modernity. Some musicians are primarily responsible for the text, others for further developments regarding sound. My musical utopia requires excellent preparation: precise reading, abstraction, further writing, and transcendence. In this ensemble I consciously distribute that responsibility.

Transcendence, he says, is less a concept than "a result of working with the material itself. We combine influences from contemporary classical music, the avant-garde, and modern beat culture, creating a common point of fusion. Everyone involved must be capable of developing their own further plan based on what is written."

What may sound free is nevertheless clearly prescribed in many respects and directions, including highly detailed polyphonic notation and rhythmic structures:

[This project] has very little to do with conventional notions of freedom and openness. Freedom begins with the possibilities of variation and dynamics. Through repetition and the slow variation within those repetitions, an individual space emerges. Everything conditions everything else and appears as a shared whole: a meta-instrument, a sonic organism.

Working with the same colleagues over a long period can, of course, lead to a comfortable routine. One knows what the other person will do, adapts accordingly, and clichés may emerge.

Lillinger sees it differently. "I don't see that danger. Because I work with the same musicians over a long period, a genuine awareness develops of what the next stages might be." Intensive work and insight make it possible "to take those next steps. With consistent and continuous work, neither boredom nor routine arise."

A convincing explanation.

This leaves the title Open Form for Society, which seems to suggest a close connection between music and social thought. "The collective negotiation of the music I initiate serves as the foundation and basis for negotiation."

Does this also concern ideas of an open, liberal society, or democracy?

The latter, absolutely! It concerns the utopia of a continually improving social process sustained through negotiation and the collective discovery of solutions. However, I must say that this project is more a sound that accompanies and encourages open processes than one that fully embodies them. Because I am the composer and initiator, it ultimately belongs more to a closed, albeit flexible, structure.

For the openness of jazz, it is far too fixed and strict; for classical music, however, it remains too open. "It therefore exists between these often rigid and ultimately inadequate categories and hopefully inspires further thinking about these social limitations. The point is this: Never stop communicating and working. Never stop thinking!"

This is Lillinger's ambitious approach. One that could also help people outside music avoid more than a few traps of cliché and convention.

*Interview originally published in Jazz Podium, translated from German.

Christian Lillinger - Open Form for Society II (Plaist Records, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Martin Schray

There is improvised music that grabs you right by the guts, the connection to this music is immediate and direct. Often you can feel it; it sweeps you away, strikes right to the core, and is able to lift you into a different state of consciousness. Peter Brötzmann and Joe McPhee, might come to the mind, Matana Roberts and Mette Rasmussen represent a younger generation. But there’s also music that takes a more intellectual approach, it’s harder to access, more abstract, more conceptual. That doesn’t mean it can’t move you, though - it just does it on a different level. The classic example of this would certainly be Anthony Braxton. Christian Lillinger’s projects also work this way - and they do so in a thoroughly fascinating way, especially when it’s his Open Form for Society outfit.

Lillinger describes the second album of his project as conceived, condensed chamber music - an exploration of sonic possibilities featuring a specially developed ensemble, which can be rightfully called a who’s who of modern European improvisers (plus an American one): Kaja Draksler (celesta, upright piano), Elias Stemeseder (harpsichord, synthesizer); Georg Vogel (claviton), Anna D’Errico and Cory Smythe (piano) make up the keyboard section, Robert Landfermann, Jonas Westergaard and Petter Eldh are on the basses, Christopher Dell is on vibraphone, and Lillinger himself is responsible for percussion and the composition of the music. Added to this are electronic and electroacoustic enhancements, conducted via metronome. Characteristic of this music are highly condensed conceptual structures and rhythmic polyphony, yet at the same time there’s a springy openness that makes it possible to appreciate this music even without prior knowledge of music theory. Spaces of freedom emerge every now and then, in which individual shaping and independent interpretative decisions become possible - and it’s precisely in these moments that the music happens to be more tangible and exciting.

At the heart of the album is the 14-minute “Poliform” - OFFS II in a nutshell, so to speak. Driven by flickering percussion and bone-dry basslines, the keyboards duel and support one another, creating expansive textures, breaking them up with rapid runs, and ensuring that the focus is constantly changing. Space and time are permanently shifted; it often sounds as if a cassette was wobbling along in an old cassette player. This creates the impression of coexisting temporal structures and a multitude of perspectives; rhythmic and harmonic cells are analyzed as if under a magnifying glass, only to then rewind the composition and direct the gaze toward a larger whole. The music thus eludes immediate grasp because it undergoes maximum change through its minimal shifts. Free jazz clusters exist alongside airy, transparent passages; frantic drum patterns reminiscent of pinball machine sounds are attacked by heavy bass lines. Here and there, a swing passage flashes briefly; in various corners of the room, individual keyboard chords flare up, only to burn out again very quickly.

One can hear this album as a musical inquiry into the relationship of time, a question once posed by Karl-Heinz Stockhausen and discussed here by Lillinger, but one can also simply enjoy tracks like “Topping Abnormal” for their unusual beauty, or the punk attitude of “Vector“. Another possibility is to explore the psychedelic side of “Setzung” or the heavy metal influences of “Plant.” For this album is, quite simply, a lot of fun.

In contrast to the first release, where the separation in the studio was the focus, OFFS II is about the unity of a shared space. The recordings were made in the studios of Deutschlandfunk in Cologne and reflect a sonic live image in which the entire material (with only a few overdubs) resounds and lives in a single room.

Open Form for Society II is available as a double album on vinyl, as a CD and as a download.

You can listen to parts of it and buy it here.

You can also watch a teaser of the recording sessions:

Hyper Elastic Jinx - We Vote Force Majeure (Barefoot Records, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Brian Earley

Let it happen at our peril.

This is the title of the final track on We Vote Force Majeure, a powerfully free set of collective improvisations by the band Hyper Elastic Jinx, and it is a prophetic warning.

For instance, climate change is projected to increase coastal flooding around Norway, Denmark, and Germany, where the musicians on this album primarily reside, by a factor of 10, 100, or even 1000 depending upon emissions scenarios.

“Let It Happen At Our Peril,” the song, opens with two saxophones, one the alto of Signe Emmeluth, one a tenor played by Nana Pi, both of whom are deeply connected to the Scandinavian experimental music scene. The saxophones warp and twist around each other as the song progresses. By mid-tune, the piece has erupted into a catastrophic explosion of sound, with drummer Halym Kim crashing down on the snare and cymbals, and guitarist Keisuki Matsuno firing hits and chords full of color and fuzzy, chorus-filled reverb that sounds to me like it's played on an old Fender amp built in the 1970s. Kim and Nana Pi have played extensively together on the Northern European scene, including on the 2022 album Tactical Maybe , a gorgeous and raucous experimental work I highly encourage everyone to check-out. Matsuno, on the other hand, has ties to the John Zorn world, playing on Zorn’s Bagatelles Volume 11 in 2022 with Jim Black. Emmeluth, of course, has forged a fiery reputation as dynamo of what the Free Jazz Collective has called The New Danish Thing.

But We Vote Force Majeure is not about its individual performers. It is an album of collective free improvisation for which all musicians share equally in the song-writing credits. It is a community in communion with the greater good, and despite my use of the word catastrophic in the previous paragraph, notes about the album on the Barefoot Records webpage state “The album is not an invocation of catastrophe, but a longing for a superior and irresistible force that people can’t ignore - a force that focuses on social values, cultural exchange and ecological sustainability.”

Despite this persistent optimism of the will, the album is meant to remind listeners “that the world and the structures we are living in are not socially, economically, ecologically or politically sustainable and benefit only a minority of people.”

The album warns it is “Always the Others,” the title of the second work on the record. Experts on the history of concentration camps point out that camps functioning in far away times and places are easily labeled as evil, while those erected and running here and now are commonly believed to hold the real bad guys. The individuals held in these places are so quickly othered. And, it is so easy for fascism to take root when its citizens believe it is always the others who face genuine danger. Here in the United States, for instance, by April 2026, 42,000 people with no prior criminal records were being detained in camps throughout the United States. These are camps for the mass detention of civilians, not war-time prisoners, who have not been given due process and were detained on the prejudicial basis of a larger group identity.

Perhaps “Let It Happen At Our Peril” and “Always the Others” call back and ahead philosophically to the album’s fourth track “Zero Point 75.” In the world of optometry, +0.75 Diopters is the lowest level used in a prescription to correct short-sightedness. The short sightedness of humanity may be a reality, but it is still at a correctable state. I don’t think the musicians play programmatically on this album, but I find it fitting that Halym Kim opens this song playing the drums as though it were the ticking of a manual alarm clock. We can only remain short sighted for so much time.

So, instead of shrinking away in despair of catastrophe, we can choose now to function like the example set by the musicians on this record: individually contributing to a working group dynamic. Here, this musical dynamic is one where the energy rises and washes over the listener more than any individual solo. The value is located in the spontaneous and present collective, not in a perfected show of musical virtuosity. It is force majeure: a force of such superior power that it is irresistible. And, as displayed on this wonderfully powerful album, it can be used as a force for good.

We Vote Force Majeure by Hyper Elastic Jinx

JAZZ IS DEAD! FESTIVAL - Torino, May 29-31

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Ferruccio Martinotti

A small yet great festival that along the years brought into town the likes of Peter Brotzmann, Mats Gustafsson, The Necks, Zu, Oren Ambarchi, Jamie Branch, Boris, John Edwards, Evan Parker, just to name a few, earning the perennial gratefulness of a faithful, constantly increasing, legion of diehard followers. But not only. While the music industry is devouring itself in a sick cannibalism of insanely expensive gigs, pre-sale tickets in the clutches of mafia-like algorithms and fake sold-outs, here at JID! for 15 euros (10 if you can’t afford more and 40 for the 3 days pass) you can see concerts from morning till night, when even the most grindcore eardrums beg ENOUGH. For its ninth edition, the festival is moving from post-industrial warehouses (The Bunker) to the green grounds of a farmhouse (Cascina Falchera), less than a mile from the noisy and busy outskirts of the city. Trees, lawns, camping, showers, blankets on the grass, hammocks, and barefoot children running around, create a fun and enjoyable short circuit between a hippie-esque, micro-Woodstock atmosphere and a soundtrack that is the furthest from those muddy Peace & Love days. This year’s lineup highlights once again what a properly focused festival should be: a defined perimeter, within which to showcase the various facets of the "editorial" prism, setting aside the rhetoric of a headliner and a bunch of (often out of context) support bands in front of a bored/distracted/pissed off audience, frantically waiting for the Star. Then there's everyone's taste, as it should be. Below, ours.

DAY 1

Lucrecia Dalt

The Colombian, Berlin based musician takes the stage with her guitar, flanked by bass/double bass, and drums for a set that, almost entirely, features her latest album, "A Danger to Ourselves," released last year. Her experimental electronica, a blend of avant-garde pop and dreamlike sound design, is always intriguing, but in its live outdoor dimension, it loses something compared to her recordings.

Photo Fabiana Amato

Matmos

After 30 years spent mixing up and transforming all kinds of electronic madness into "enjoyable" music, Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt seem still eager to have fun, and, of course, so are we. Glitches, loops, beats, and a set of steel containers struck with concentrated mastery are the menu of the evening. For the final piece, to bid farewell to the audience, they launch an irresistible straight-kick, 4/4 groove, which, for people who used to record liposuctions in operating rooms, is truly Super Yacht Rock Time! Legendary.

Photo Fabiana Amato

DAY 2

Yazz Ahmed

The Bahraini-born trumpeter, here on flugelhorn, accompanied by Ralph Wyld on vibraphone, weaves wonderful sonic textures that blend jazz and psychedelia, all flavored with Arabic fragrances inspired by her home country: a rock-solid sonic bridge between ancient worlds and contemporary avant-garde. Sublime, even at 11 am.

Photo Fabiana Amato

Moor Mother

She prepares her laptops gently and smiling, but when she presses the ON button, the San Andreas Fault sends a shockwave that can be felt all the way to Torino: Apocalypse Now. In the maelstrom generated by devastating industrial sounds and telluric dub rhythms, Camaye Ayewa dives headfirst, not only taking possession of the music but being totally possessed by it, just to reemerge wildly fiery and furious. Seen a month ago with Irreversible Entanglements, in her solo version she reaffirms one certainty: there’s no one like her out there.

Photo Fabiana Amato

Sorvina

From New York, but based in Berlin, the smiling charm of Sorvina jumps on stage as a full-band on this occasion, and her music, which blends jazz, rap, soul, and gospel, is enriched in its unique expression. Through her unmistakable voice, capable of conveying joy and vulnerability, she combines lyrical complexity and groove, always remaining faithful to the roots of authentic hip-hop.

Photo Fabiana Amato

The Heliocentrics

Among the cornerstones of British nu-jazz, they were one of our highlights on the agenda, and the concert fully met expectations. Featuring bass, cello/electronics, keyboards, drums, and sax/flute, theirs is a stunning synthesis of jazz, funk, and psychedelia, producing a hypnotic and sizzling sound, articulated by the stunning talented singer Barbora Patkova. After all, they've collaborated with true legends like Mulatu Astatke and members of the Sun Ra Arkestra for a reason.

Photo Fabiana Amato

DAY 3

How would you measure the love for music? The number of records you own? Too easy. The concerts you’ve seen? Nah. Or maybe, starting Day 3 of the Festival at 2 PM, while the heat bomb hits Torino like Milford Graves on his drum kit? Well, that could be a unit of measurement.

Dwarfs of East Agouza

Is it possible to blend the radical improvisation and hypnosis of krautrock with the energy of Egyptian shaabi? You have to be an absolute champion to pull it off, but with Maurice Louca, Sam Shalabi and Alan Bishop we are talking about off the scale cats. Assembling electronics, wind instruments, Arabic scales, jazz, and psychedelia, their angular trajectories obliterate any space/time dimension, and their constant balance between chaos and composition, imbued with an emancipatory free jazz spirit, is captivating above and beyond daydreaming.

Photo Fabiana Amato

Glacial

Elusive is an understatement. In 25 years, a single album and a handful of concerts for a rendez-vous of legends, Lee Ranaldo, Tony Buck, and David Watson: those who were there will be able to tell their grandchildren about it. Buck's polyrhythms (of Necks' fame) are accompanied by Ranaldo's anti-guitar playing (Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth), where the instrument is struck, dragged on the ground, played with the bow and Watson's bagpipes (Yoshi Wada, Phil Niblock), all generating a cascade of noise, free, drones, and psychedelia. Glacial in name and in deed.

Photo Fabiana Amato

Sanam

Blossomed into the Beirut scene after a collaboration with Hans Joachim Irmler from Faust, they confirm on stage the amazing, original outcome heard on their last album “Sametou Sawtan”. Modern Arabic poetry delivered by the stellar singer Sandy Chamoun, feedback, improvisation, traditional music and jazz, are delivering a unique sonic synthesis that defies all genre boundaries. The geographical boundaries of their Homeland have already been defied and breached by tanks.

Photo Fabiana Amato

The Avant Garde Flamenco Trio – Lunar(Redshift Records, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Nick Ostrum

Lunar came as something of a surprising to me. I found the title of the group appealing and somewhat cryptic. So, I loaded the music into my media player and clicked play.

For the first 5 minutes, I could not figure out what was happening. The music sounded Latin. The guitar had that recognizable Andalusian flair and emotive sheen. The trumpet blared with a similar snap, sometimes fading into a style reminiscent of later Dennis Gonzalez electro-acoustic productions and sometimes cutting forward in fanfare. Then, an oddly familiar voice cut through, singing in a gruff Spanish. It was in the spacious, non-melodic parts that I started to notice the slightly askew cadences and scales, that evoked the pastures of Mesopotamia as much as the Mexican grasslands. Then, it dawned on me: this is Emad Armoush.

I have written about Armoush before. He has played in Gordon Grdina’s Haram and his own Rayhan, both of which have strong Middle Eastern roots. In the Avant Garde Flamenco Trio, Armoush has distilled his six-strong Rayhan group to a core of three: JP Carter on trumpet and electronics, Kenton Loewen on drums, and Armoush himself on guitar, oud, and vocals. The result is absolutely riveting.

Lunarfollows a flamenco tradition, but, as with the Armoush’s other projects, it strays far into improvisational territory, not just varying a theme or running charts and scales but diving head-first into expansive passages – backed by some wispy electric ambience and Loewen’s soft and itinerant drums – that lack a predetermined center. The melodies and vocal patterns draw the listener in. But it is these long moments, where the musicians fumble for direction through terrain alternately spacious and pastoral and raucously discordant, that hold the album together and distinguish it from the classical and folk traditionalists that have pioneered these forms before.

The title, Lunar, is telling. Per Armoush, the album is about the Middle East, more so than its potential Spanish or Latin American terrain. It is about war, conflict, and suffering. The pastures noted above have been turned to a barren moonscape of rocket pockmarks, twisted and charred flora, absent of the life – the farms, the animals, the crops, the fellaheen, the villages – that preceded. However, the very act of commemoration, of lamentation, is, also, an act of life, that is absent any genuine lunar terrain. A true gift, even if it is riven by suffering and tragedy.

Lunar is available as a download from Bandcamp.

Lunar by The Avant-garde Flamenco Trio

18th Jazzdor Strasbourg-Berlin Festival (June 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Paul Acquaro

Based in Strasbourg, France, Jazzdor has been producing its flagship festival for more than 35 years, with a sister edition in Germany for over 18 and a new collaboration now taking root in Budapest. The music presented by Jazzdor has been consistently illuminating, introducing both emerging and established musicians to new audiences and fostering collaborations between European and even some American musicians. This year also marks a transition, with Vincent Bessières stepping in as artistic director following the long tenure of founder Philippe Ochem.

Spread over four days in early June, Bessières brought his vision for the festival to the Gretchen Club in Berlin's Kreuzberg neighborhood. Featuring two sets per evening each night featured groups linked by their style and, of course, their French connections. As opposed to other years where groups had been curated for their premier performance, Bessières was relying on working groups, something he attributed more to the time he has had so far to develop his vision than to future ambitions.

The new location lent a different feel to the event. Previous years were held in the cavernous Maschinenhaus in Berlin's Kulturbrauerei, located in a 19th century brewery in the city's gentrified Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood. Offering a large stage area and ample room, the space could host large ensembles, which they did with a big band playing Carla Bley's music or Steve Lehman's ambitious Ex Machina orchestra, but could also feel a bit impersonal. Gretchen Club, in the grittier Kreuzberg, has a cozier jazz club like atmosphere with it's low arched ceiling and columns.

Waken

Tuesday's show kicked off with the group WAKEN, a piano trio led by France-based pianist Francesca Han with bassist Pierre Fenicheland drummer Fred Pasqua. The trio presented a vibrant, melodic set of songs, with pieces containing atmospheric and dreamy moments, along with syncopated and uptempo passages that often slowly developed into driving tunes. Elements of classical as well as pop music were interwoven with expressive soloing from all three musicians.

Amaury Faye NOLA Quartet

They were followed by the Amaury Faye NOLA Quartet featuring the drummer Herlin Riley. Group leader, French pianist Faye, had an extended stay in New Orleans where he spent time immersing himself in the local culture and taking long walks through the city (one time apparently wearing a panda costume), soaking in the atmosphere. One impression that he came away with was "rust," as he explained, it was on the bridges, around the buildings, and in the rail yards. Another was, obviously, the music and the set was an often uptempo take on traditional New Orleans jazz with a modern jazz sheen. With him was saxophonist Julian Lee, bassist Edouard Pennes and Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra drummer Herlin Riley, who played with an animated showmanship.

Polybahn

What could be considered the 'traditional jazz' night was followed on Wednesday by two experimental leaning groups. The first group, Polybahn , is the occasional working group of saxophonist Michael Attias , drummer Samuel Ber and pianist Benoit Delbecq , announced by Bessieres as "abstract, but poetic." Adhering to this description, the group performed a set-long improvisation that flowed effortlessly from quiet introspection to agitated formulations. Beginning with Attias gently blowing into the horn and sprinkles of notes from Delbecq, the music unraveled patiently with Ber's gentle but firm persuasion. Switching between saxophones, Attias played long melodic strands on the soprano while Delbecq punctuated his phrasings with palm plants on the keyboard. Ber, an intense drummer, concentrated on the core of his kit, a snare, bass drum, one cymbal to underscore the group's palpable pulse.

Hélène Duret's Synestet

Wednesday's second set, clarinetist Hélène Duret's Synestet featuring Nils Wogram, had the French - German collaboration performing the music from their latest recording, Perception.From a trembly, squeaky start through some deep rumbling notes, the music emerged slowly but assuredly. A simple repeating pattern from guitarist Benjamin Sauzereau then set the group in full motion. Saxophonist Sylvain Debasieux began playing an oozing, layered solo that built up to a final defiant squawk from Duret on the bass clarinet. Trombonist Nils Wogram came to the stage about a quarter of the way into the set. Having recorded the last album with the group, he was already well poised to lend his expertly melodic voice to the group. Across their diverse set, the music veered from slow, hypnotic vibes to fiery uptempo pieces with cinematic scope with the superb support of bassist Fil Caporali and drummer Maxime Rouayroux. The final piece, the appropriately titled 'Adieu,' was carried by Sauzereau guitar work centering around an extended solo that synthesized Bill Frisell's Americana twang with angular jabs of surf guitar.

Trouble

Successfully lowering the audience's median age, the third night of the festival shifted in a more electronic music direction. Even though both groups played primarily using traditional acoustic and electric instruments, they both also had woven electronics deep into their approach, in quite different ways. The first group, Trouble, offered a compelling vision of how electronics, looping and minimalism could work in a jazz context. With drummer Antonin Leymarie's drums at the center, perfectly supported by Fabrizio Rat's reductionist piano work, Clément Petit's and Maëlle Desbrosses ' captivating cello and viola playing, and Élise Caron's hypnotic voice, the group spun repetitive acoustic grooves, adorned with electronics and effects, into euphoric climatic moments. One piece, apparently a story of love between robots and a later piece, both of whose name escaped my note taking, were rather spellbinding moments of classical music that used the minimalist looping to a maximum effect. The following group, Photons with Gauthier Toux on electronics, Giani Caserottoon guitar, Samuel F’Hima on bass, and Julien Loutelieron drums, took a different approach, opting for a ‘live techno’ direction in which the electronics and formulaic beat structures became the primary focus.

Garden of Silences

Friday, the final night, offered yet another perspective on the state of jazz — an ethno‑folk jazz strain, if we look for a term that steers clear of the loaded ‘world‑music’ label. Both Garden of Silences and Mosaic were truly multi-cultural blends that sought - and found - new ways to blend strong traditions into something captivating and new. Garden of Silences is formed around violinist Clément Janinet and trumpeter Arve Henriksen along with accordionist Ambre Villermoz and bassist Robert Lucaciu. Mixing classical repertoire with free improvisation and Swedish folk, the group plays a music that is not jazz nor classical nor folk, but with all of these elements, utterly captivating. Beginning with a swirl of accordion and the trumpet playing a slow melody, a gentle, provocative classical countermelody emerged from the violin and bass. The next piece featured a dramatic introduction from Henriksen over a churning undercurrent from Janiet. Throughout, the trumpeter employed electronic elements and vocals and the groups final tune was a turn toward a more modern melodic approach. They have an self-titled album out on BMC records.

Mosaic, comprised of musicians from Bulgaria, France, Portugal and Tunisia, met at a music event in Malta and have developed a unique Mediterranean-jazz. Big rhythms, dynamic interactions and even some renaissance music flair brought out by Georgi Dobrev's kaval, a Balkan flute. Slowly building pieces gave way to epic storms with swirling counter melodies and mounting polyrhythms. Interactions between Dobrev, cellist Adèle Viret, accordionist Noé Clerc , bassist Zé Almeida, drummer Diogo Alexandre and percussionist Hamdi Jammoussi kept the audience enthralled up until and after Jammoussi's climatic solo credenza encore on his blue back-lit hand drum.

Even in a somewhat more compact format, the festival successfully again spotlighted a fertile and varied European scene, with an eye towards the future of jazz. With its growing network of events in Strasbourg, Berlin, and Budapest, Jazzdor is clearly still evolving. Bessières speaks of new partnerships and new directions; if this year is any indication, there’s real potential in that aspiration.

Achim Kaufmann, Yorgos Dimitriadis, Michael Thieke – Hiss and Whirr (Wide Ear Records, 2025)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Dan Sorrells

In this moment of hollow AI mimicry, the hiss and whirr of three musicians locked in improvisation starkly highlights the very creative capacity that our inhuman technology tries and fails to co-opt. Like cogs that can be retooled and reconfigured on the fly, Achim Kaufmann, Yorgos Dimitriadis, and Michael Thieke create something genuinely novel and in constant renewal, even as it may remind us—perhaps uncannily—of the regularity and precision of machines.

Dimitriadis has previously worked in the duo format with both Kaufmann and Thieke. To the extent putting the three together calls machinery to mind, it's of the churning, industrial sort. Throughout Hiss and Whirr, the interlocking of Kaufmann's prepared piano, Dimitriadis's percussion, and Thieke's frequently beguiling clarinet takes on a cryptic quality, like hearing unseen work from behind closed doors. What reach us on the other side are the sonorous workings of machines or systems whose purpose is hopelessly obscured. Much of this derives from the fascinating way the trio arrests and warps time. There's a constancy that feels more like cyclical layering than linear exposition, even as the music ceaselessly changes. This lends a hypnotic feel to pieces like the opening title track with its thumping toms and gently clanging piano. It can also yield drama: "an epoch of rain" is a ratchet with almost no forward movement—just increasing tension, winding tighter and tighter. But these rhythms and tempos aren't rigid. Their contours flex and are redrawn as patterns accumulate and dissipate. Eventually, the sounds darken, becoming damp and subterranean. "or hunger that gets lost" works itself into an eerie space, notes dripping like the intricate, unsteady polyrhythms in a cavernous cistern.

The trio further obscure their human hands through the nuanced deployment of electronics, which both Kaufmann and Dimitriadis use as atmospheric augments and occasionally to cast doubt on true causes. Thieke, for his part, uses his formidable technique to conjure the same effects. There's an electric charge gathering in his feedback tones from "the minute it isn't held," and the subtle tongue slaps that end "of fragments flowering" sound like a clipping audio track.

The sounds on Hiss and Whirr often seem influenced by the technological thrum of our modern lives and the ways in which individuals are subsumed in the complexity that emerges as intersecting processes are set into motion. But just try to imagine this music being spat from a soulless algorithm. It could never be derived from a series of probabilistic calculations, because its improbability is its greatest asset. Free improvisation is the antithesis of derivative slop.

hiss and whirr by Achim Kaufmann / Yorgos Dimitriadis / Michael Thieke

Ivo Perelman and Damon Smith - Duologue 6: Core of Existence (Squid Note, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Sammy Stein

Ivo Perelman continues his duologue series with a conversation with bassist Damon Smith, and this is a duologue well worth listening in on. Bass and saxophone seem naturally attuned to interact: two instruments built on vibration, the sax of a reed and the bass of a string. In both instruments, the air moved by vibration is passed through a resonant body to create texture, warmth, and depth. Their kinship is physical, but their voices are utterly distinct, and that tension is where the chemistry happens.

Across the album, the musicians explore the full expressive range of their instruments. They trade thunks, whispers, vibrato, sudden bursts of intensity, and passages of exquisite stillness. What emerges is a sense of deeply engaged conversation.

The tracks on Duologue: Core of Existence are numbered 1-12, and across the album, the range and versatility of both musicians is demonstrated. From the sax-led inspiration on track 1, the extemporised playing of Perelman on track 2, supported by the depths of resounding notes from the bass, to the dance-like trilling of the sax on track 3, supported by the bass, this time using higher notes and vibrato to add a different texture to the music.

On track 4, there is a shift in emphasis, and the bass supports Perelman playing in a range of styles, at one time creating a fuzzy background texture and another a plucked, plinky, rhythmic style. On track 5, the bass is fast, furious, and then suddenly delicate under Perelman's intensity, the beauty of the track developing as each musician listens not only to each other but also uses silences to add punctuation.

Across the album, tenor sax and bass are used as instruments of engagement, negotiation, and to exchange ideas, sometimes one suggesting, sometimes the other. While this is free playing, without supposed form, there are different patterns, rhythms, and styles, from the intense to the gentle and sublime. Even when Perelman is following a delirious line or sliding in a snippet from a traditional jazz tune, the bass is ever changing, reacting, and engaging with the ideas. On track 8, the final phrases see the bass loose stringed and plucked, creating a shimmering effect under the tenor line.

Track 9 sees a shift in emphasis, as this is bass-led and glorious, with Perelman affording the Smith ample room and scope while supplying notions, ideas, and quicksilver rivulets of sound for the bass to react to. Even when Perelman is at his most unrestrained, Smith’s bass is in motion, reacting with invention and agility, introducing ideas of his own making. The fabulous contrast in the middle section between the high-pitched screams of the tenor and the deepest, darkest throat of the bass is extraordinary.

As in all the Duologue series, Perelman seems to relish conversing with other musicians and instruments in a musical encounter where he can pitch the tenor sax against different bodies, materials, and modes of vibration, yet the underlying principle remains. Sound is a shared exploration. Perelman and each of the musicians he has played with in the series tap into creating vibrations: notes, music, in different ways, but as ever, there is a commonality in conversations. Perelman, in this series, is the alchemist who makes it happen, drawing out the unique resonances of each collaborator. With Smith, the chemistry is profound, two musicians creating vibrations in different ways but providing meaning and conversation in equal measure. It is here where magic happens.

Duologue 6: Core of Existence by Ivo Perelman and Damon Smith

Ivo Perelman, Matthew Shipp, Bobby Kapp, and William Parker - Synesthesia (Defkaz, 2026)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Acquaro) — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

By Sammy Stein

Ivo Perelman is a musician, artist, and jeweller who works with many musicians of different styles. He sees the world slightly differently from some of us, in that he sees sound in colour. So the title of the recording, Synesthesia, is apt. In his contribution to my book Music Is Your Superpower, Perelman describes music not as a choice, but as an essential for existence. He says of music, and jazz in particular, “What truly connected me to jazz was the emotional intensity within its structure, especially in the music of Shorter. It felt almost impossible to perform music that was so intricately constructed while simultaneously conveying such depth of feeling.”

He also talks about his synesthesia – the phenomenon of seeing sound as colours. When Perelman plays music, it feels as if he is creating a work of art, and when he is painting, he can relate it to creating a saxophone solo. Art, colour, and music are interlinked. His intense need to create may explain his productivity in music. His way of playing and interpreting musical dialogue draws to him musicians who understand his musical visions.

On Synesthesia, Perelman has teamed again with close associates Matthew Shipp (piano), William Parker (bass), and Bobby Kapp (drums) in a new recording that captures their deep connection and still evolving voices in contemporary free jazz. With the pathways forged with ‘Ineffable Joy’ and ‘Heptagon’, the group continues to establish new routes in spontaneous composition, open form, and strong collective interplay.

The difference on ‘Synesthesia’ is that the music is more crystallised, and has a deeper sense of flow and connection. That connection is revealed in the rapid reactions of the musicians as they listen and respond to each other, offering individual takes that go to create a whole. Perelman explores his tenor sax, moving across its range with soft, melodic interludes, intense, electric solos, and contrasting altissimo. Shipp demonstrates his innate art of support as his circling, looping chordal progressions offer up subtle melodic ideas that pilot the ensemble in places. The bass of Parker is constant, with deep, sonorous melodies, with space left for musical dialogue. Kapp adds colour and motion, while filling in the detail of the sonic landscape with percussive touches and occasional solos.

Across the album, there is that contrast of intense energy, such as on ‘First Color Heard,’ and quiet, reflective passages, such as those on ‘Afterglow.’ The contrasts coexist, interlinked and cohesive to create the harmonic dialogue that only comes with experience and understanding other musicians.

On ‘Phosphene,’ Perelman travels familiar pathways, yet introduces new elements into each, creating a sense of the unexpected. Shipp’s piano excels on this track with its quiet support and triumphantly emergent solo work. The beautiful moment when Perelman enters across the piano solo with astonishingly accurate pitch contrast is just beautiful. There is even a snippet from a song from Perelman before he reverts to free playing. Into the quiet moments, Parker’s bass sighs and works its magic – an excellent track.

On ‘Blue Taste,’ the influence of jazz masters past and present can be felt as the ensemble delivers free-style jazz commentary across a blues-infused rhythm pattern. Perelman's pipping, and squealing contrast with the steadfast whirr of the accompaniment, while ‘Afterglow’ is a much gentler affair altogether. ‘One Sense’ has an atmosphere of a ‘50s jazz venue for some inexplicable reason, possibly because of the interaction between traditional rhythms and free playing – glorious.

Like in a lot of Perelman’s work, the blues and bop elements make themselves known, interwoven amidst abstract sonic textures that create a flowing, organic development. Synesthesia is a recording that has the quality you might expect from an experienced ensemble, who know each other’s ways so well, yet it still has elements of surprise and supreme intuitive styling that give it its energy and expression.

On Synesthesia, there is no discernible fixed structure, yet the harmonics and classically linked progressions tell of a musical ensemble deeply knowledgeable in musical scaffolding and pinning on that scaffold experimental lines that always work back to the root. The title says it all, a kaleidoscope of jewelled, colourful music, with deep, dark textures and light, contrasting hues. There are shapes woven here, along with colorful landscapes, through which the ensemble meanders, careens, and gently rests on occasion. This is an album that will have broad appeal.

Synesthesia by Ivo Perelman, Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Bobby Kapp