#float (2022)

These voices are like no choir you ever heard. They can form pale clouds of sound, or pools of glowing light, or bright shafts of pure sound. Phrases can soar before suddenly reversing direction and travelling backwards, but along a different tangent. Rising from the luminous sound beds — sometimes lush, sometimes austere – float a disembodied melody from an ancient world, an overheard conversation, a whisper from the past, the rumblings of a distant storm, the babble of children, or something that sounds like the ambient chatter of an asteroid belt. The individual strands cluster, entwine, swell, and then disperse, perhaps to leave a single voice exposed in all its natural beauty before others return to take up its cues and head off in a new direction.

Acclaimed saxophonist, philosopher, bandleader, and musician Shabaka Hutchings, now professionally known as Shabaka across all solo musical efforts, announces his first major label solo body of work, Afrikan Culture, through Impulse!, out on May 20. Entirely written by Shabaka, the eight-track digital only EP showcases him on various wind instruments and focuses on the aural meditative space.

The composers Frédéric Chopin and Alexander Scriabin sought other worlds – to float, to ascend to heaven. Pianist Catalin Serban juxtaposes their piano works on his new GENUIN CD, made possible by Konzertleben e.V. and C. Bechstein grand piano. A multiple first prize winner at piano competitions in Germany, Italy, and Romania, Catalin Serban has established himself as a soloist and chamber musician. His work has focused intensively on the Romantic and early modern piano repertoire and chamber music literature. In this production, Catalin Serban presents sonatas, nocturnes, and fantasias by the two composers, who are vastly different and yet, in some respects, bear similarities. Serban's highly virtuosic and sensitive piano playing shows the paths of the two, away from compartmentalization and narrowness, towards new spaces and the greatest possible freedom of movement.