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New Jazz Albums


RodH

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Something a little different than "What are you listening to" for those of us into jazz.

Not reissues, but newly released albums.

 

Please introduce the artist/group and a little info about the album.

 

A link to an album cover is cool, videos are not necessary. 

 

 

I'll go first

 

Latest discovery: Thicker than Water by Brian Bromberg. 

Brian is an accomplished bass player both electric & acoustic.

 

The album was released in July of 2018

 

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Norwegian Mathias Eick, trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, composer and bandleader, "a highly listenable blend of emotions, without jolting fluctuations...deeply atmospheric", melodic in a way that summons up early Pat Metheny. I think of his music as cinematic,  moving one through a window and out into the world, watching it as it passes by, dissolving into it,  only to emerge back home transformed. 

 

Good thread, Rod, thanks.

 

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Another bass player...

 

Kevin Reveyrand / Reason and Heart

 

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"Kevin Reveyrand has been participating to many musical projects as a bassist, upright player and arranger.

As a very versatile musician, he has been performing for the last twenty years at the most prestigious venues of the world in different contextes, jazz, world music or pop music and is often called up to play in studio sessions…

For the last 3 years, Kevin has been touring with Christopher Cross, Charles Aznavour, Asa, Patrick Bruel, Lara Fabian…

He is also working as a producer and arranger for several artists, Fabrice Legros (Reunion island), Asa (Nigeria), Tipari (Reunion Album), François Buffaud (France), Ivan Jullien Jazz big band.

Kevin is also a Jazz player and has performed with huge musicians like Billy Cobham, Robben Ford, Larry Carlton, Olivier Ker Ourio, Mike Stern, Nguyen Lê…"

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" I first started listening to jazz when I was a teenager in Tunis in the 70s. At the time I was I was passionately & exclusively devoted to the the traditional Arab music...Paradoxically, I was full of curiosity about other forms of musical expression...The aesthetics of jazz were very different...I didn't always understand...[but] it was an extraordinary field for ...intermixing & cross-breeding...and I felt I could find my place there."

 

"The album title,  by Tunis oud master Anouar Brahem, signifies the union between the incredibly complex Arabic modal and harmonic system and the 'blue' so often evoked in jazz improvisation. Throughout, Brahem seamlessly combines the uncommon time signatures, sonic timbres, and whole-tone textures of Arabic music with the dynamic adventure of jazz improv. There is Arabic melody augmented with layers of rhythmic invention,  the uncommon time signatures, sonic timbres of Arabic music with the dynamic adventure of jazz improv,  Western chamber and Arabic classical music &  full-blown quartet jazz jam. "

 

This has been on my wish list–chanced upon it at the library. ?

Edited by dcl
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Of Danish guitarist  Jakob Bro, “There is no hurry to this music, but there is great depth."  And, "landscapes of sound that are achingly beautiful, sparse, yet full bodied at the same time”. 

 

“Much of my music is constructed around melodies. My compositions are almost like a song. But within the frame I set up with a melody, a lot of things can happen. New layers of music are constantly added to the vocabulary, and when you play, you unconsciously get to a new place.”

 

If you cotton to Bill Frisell,  or,  the lyricism of Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko (whom Bro played with), you might like this.

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Esbjorn-Svensson-Trio-e.s.t.-live-in-Lon

 

Svensson passed away 11 years ago, but this live recording was released in May of 2018 as a 2 CD set - with little information. 

 

Esbjorn Svensson Trio, Live at the Barbican Center, London

 

From the Independent (UK) 27 May 2005:

 

"The Esbjorn Svensson Trio, or EST as they like to be known these days, do to the jazz piano trio what James Joyce did to coming-of-age tales by cutting up the form and starting afresh.

This acclaimed Swedish group have been a hit on the European scene for a while now. In 2000, the German news weekly Der Spiegel hailed Svensson as "the future of the jazz piano", and since then his trio have consolidated their position as one of the top bands on the circuit. They are currently more popular than most big American jazz names.

 

Attracting the kind of following EST enjoy prompts accusations - often well founded - of dumbing down. But Svensson is one of those rare musicians who dispenses the common touch without compromising his art. He avoids the usual jazz musician's stock-in-trade of cramming as many notes as he can into the square inch, instead favouring innovative silences and a darkly intense lyricism that allows his emotional honesty to show through.

 

Although he once dabbled among the magical spells of the pianist Keith Jarrett's Belonging period, the new spirit Svensson has come up with is shorn of Jarrett's angst and the feeling that a good thing has been taken to wearying extremes. Featured were several tunes from EST's current album, Viaticum (which went gold in France and platinum in Germany), including "Tide of Trepidation", "Eighty-eight Days In My Veins" and the title track.

 

The suave use of lighting underlined the shifting moods of EST's music while their careful use of dynamics, unusual in jazz, which usually opts for fast-equals-loud, slow-equals-soft, made Svensson's lyrical intensity stand out in sharp relief. Yet the non-conformist Dan Berglund likes Jimi Hendrix and Richie Blackmore (of Deep Purple) and is not afraid to use a wah-wah pedal or feedback with his acoustic bass ("Mingle In the Mincing Machine"), while the drummer Magnus Ostrom dances around formal regularity with a variety of techniques, such as using his fingers on his snare to emulate pop's rhythm samples.

 

EST renew the notion that the cutting edge of jazz need not involve volatile experimentation. At the head of a sense-sharpening breeze of change currently blowing through European jazz, Svensson and his back-up band, the guitarist Eivind Aarset's Electronique Noir, gave further evidence that the best European jazz is no longer a pale imitation of what is happening in the United States. Indeed, here was evidence that Europe is now moving ahead in creativity and originality.

Aarset's here-and-now reflection of jazz mixed improvisation with rhythms inspired by club culture. In the same way that Miles Davis refracted the influence of Hendrix through the chattering symbolism of Bitches Brew, his seminal jazz-rock album of 1969, Aarset projected the spirit of Hendrix's pyroclastic flow into the jumpy, nervous 21st century." - Stuart Nicholson

 

http://www.londonjazznews.com/2018/05/cd-review-esbjorn-svensson-trio-est.html

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Laila is a great talent and this a fine album. (I prefer some of her earlier material but this is getting some crossover airplay)

Refugee is my favorite cut. 

 

I suspect that the other nominees are worth a listen also...

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Nie Bartsch's Ronin, Live

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"Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch describes the music of Ronin as "Zen Funk" or "Ritual Groove Music". This is a band that gets into a groove and won't let go, setting up—with extended repetition of three, four or five-note riffs and layered rhythms—huge tension, released (finally) by explosive, rock energy bursts that settle back into new momentums, new repeated motifs, new layers. The collective band sound has a sharp edg; Bärtsch's piano often has a metallic sheen. Bassist Bjørn Meyer locks hard into sometimes loping, sometimes hyper-tight runs. Sha, the band's reedman, who in a more standard ensemble might be the lead melodic voice, sets up deep low moans on the contrabass clarinet that sound like the atomic power source of a starship approaching a leap across interstellar space, while drummer Kasper Rast and percussionist Andi Pupato drive the sub-nuclear energy sources serving the ship's mechanical components."

 

ps: This is part of a just arrived  package of CDs, some taken from recommended new jazz here. ?✌️

 

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On my trips to Philadelphia, at an Abe Fisher 'hole-in-the-wall' called Dizengoff, I hear Alone in South Carolina often. It is also an indication that it is close to 1858ET, and a polite request to finish up the Hummus plate in front of me and trudge to my hotel-du-jour

 

You can hear the 2015 offering in it's entirety here Back To The City.

 

Bit of his CV (copied, of course)...

 

"Hoffman started playing guitar at the age of 6, and the oud a few years later. He studied guitar privately, and later attended the prestigious Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. His search for new musical experiences led him first to Amsterdam, and then to New York City, where he played jazz with both established musicians and up-and-coming talents like Jason Lindler, bassist Avishai Cohen, and Claudia Acuna."

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3 hours ago, Rod H said:

Chris Potter - Circuits

Very nicely etched/spelt, as well. It also reminds me of a huge Railway yard/junction/terminus. 

Edited by loner_t
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13 hours ago, DrummerJuice said:

Being that my only exposure to Jazz was playing Birdland in Highschool Jazz band (and the Monster's Inc sountrack) ;)  would you agree that this is a good start?

 

https://blog.discogs.com/en/a-beginners-guide-to-jazz-vinyl/

 

That looks like a good start.

 

I would add anything by The Rippingtons, George Benson, Earl Klugh, Wes Montgomery, John Klemmer, Grover Washington Jr., ...

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On 2/24/2019 at 3:04 PM, DrummerJuice said:

Being that my only exposure to Jazz was playing Birdland in Highschool Jazz band (and the Monster's Inc sountrack) ;)  would you agree that this is a good start?

 

https://blog.discogs.com/en/a-beginners-guide-to-jazz-vinyl/

 

Imagine a beginners guides to jazz  but inverted–"Something a little different...Not reissues, but newly released albums." Point a compass to New Jazz horizons, sail the seas of recent recordings or (different) most recent recordings of an artist's catalogue. Flipping through Downbeat, JazzTimes & JazzIz magazines at a bookseller is a favorite weekend leisure.  I jot down things to search for, one thing leads to another & like opening a dictionary you eventually arrive at the destination. Zig-zag. There is jazz to be heard around the world!

 

 

 

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"This is a watershed moment in Weber's recorded output, because it reveals his collective gifts as a musician, which, even when understated, are shining examples of the European jazz, folk, classical, and new music he has forged these last 40 years as a leader and as a valued sideman and composer."

Edited by dcl
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Yep. So many subsets of the jazz genre.

Listen to a few of the classics, try some new jazz, some fusion jazz, some world jazz - you're bound to find something that piques your interest.

Jazz is about not being the 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 repetition of some other genres.

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53 minutes ago, Rod H said:

Listen to a few of the classics, try some new jazz, some fusion jazz, some world jazz - you're bound to find something that piques your interest.

Jazz is about not being the 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 repetition of some other genres. 

I couldn't agree more.  Some say they believe jazz to be a bit too chaotic.  But if you take a little time to seek out newer forms ie. smooth jazz, fusion jazz, soft jazz  and new age jazz, you'll discover there's now something for everyone I believe.  And if you open up your mind, allow the jazz to flow in, it will sooth your soul if you give it a chance, I know it sure has for me. 

 

I'd like to add that I really enjoy many that have already been mentioned in this thread and would add Keiko Matsui, John Coltrane(old, but love his piano too), Russ Freeman(Plays with Rippingtons often but does solo too), Fusion of Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Michael Brecker. Cool jazz of Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Kenny Burrell just to name a few.  And there's just so much more.

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The piano trio, a classic jazz configuration. Tord Gustavsen Trio, is one of my favorites " a paradoxical blend of simplicity, quietude, and sensuality built on the hymns of his youth, a Nordic kind of blues, and an instinct for composition... leaves room for an exemplary amount of space in its music, but engaged listeners will find no dull moment." 

 

Edited by dcl
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