Posts in tag

contemporary jazz


Album Review : Adam Moezinia’s ‘ Folk Element Trio’ – A Sonic Travelogue

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Perceptions and pronouncements about Nordic Jazz can often return to parts of the classic ECM catalogue with its sophisticated coolness, ambient leanings and breathtaking spaciousness. But naturally, the Scandinavian scene is so vibrant that the music’s boundaries are forever shifting, on the reach for new horizons. Over the last couple of decades, ever since the …

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There’s a playful irony in both the band and album names chosen by this new London jazz quartet led by guitarist/composer Greg Sanders. For a start this lush, intricately woven set of tunes played with finesse, vibrancy and uncanny sensitivity is anything but ‘lo-fi’. Perhaps the ‘Lophae’ just hints at Sanders’ move away from the …

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For a musician who puts out an annual album release, pianist, cellist and composer Raffy Bushman manages to keep surprisingly under the muso-radar but you sense that’s just how he likes it. His music is part, yes a significant part, of what he recognises as his whole life. Watching any of the documentary shorts, which …

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It’s tricky to summarise the range and significance of pianist and composer Bill Laurance’s musical CV to date. The chance hook-up as a student in Leeds, backing a young Michael League during his sojourn from the States; the subsequent return invitation to travel to the US to play in League’s new band the then unknown …

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Straight after any hugs or handshakes the first thing musicians ask each other when they meet up is ‘Are you busy’? For sax-player, clarinettist and composer Benjamin Samuels the answer for some time now has been a ‘yes’. He’s worked with Californian fusionist Balkan Bump and Brighton’s own global beat pioneer Seb Taylor (aka Kaya …

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For many the jazz piano trio is an edifice that shouldn’t be tampered with, the classic enactment of pure jazz, a rhythm section suddenly given license to express itself but with a heritage that binds them together. So any messing with the tradition needs to be done well, with a purpose and conviction. Plucking at …

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Operating out of Zurich the brothers Kiss, Georg and Christoph (a.k.a Okvsho) are on some kind of a mission to shake up the music scene in their city. Unlike say Geneva that throbs to pulse of a vibrant underground art network, Zurich may lack some impetus but the producer/ instrumentalist brothers are looking to pick …

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Vocalist, song writer, dancer and visual artist, Andrea Isabelle Phillips (aka And Is Phi) talks about her first album ‘Double Pink’ out now on Albert’s Favourites as something that’s been cultivated over time. Well it may have been simmering in her imagination for a while but that doesn’t mean we have a recording that’s stewed, …

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You have to be paying close attention to pick up on the whispers and murmurings from the dynamic Finnish underground scene but when you catch the signals it’s usually something that needs shouting about. That certainly goes for multi-instrumentalist Antti Vauhkonen’s Oiro Pena project which has been beaming messages packed with outsider jazz innovation for …

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It’s always a pleasure to champion female artists, and one day I do hope we can all champion each other. Serbian pianist Maja Alvanovij is no exception to this with her fourth studio album ‘ Wind Rose’ out and already making waves across the musical spectrum. Hailed as ‘ spiritually sublime jazz music ‘ ( …

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