Soul Jazz Records’ new album ‘Kaleidoscope – New Spirits Known and Unknown’ brings together many of the ground-breaking artists involved in the new jazz scene that has developed in the UK over the last few years. Featured artists include Matthew Halsall, Yazmin Lacey, Ill Considered, Tenderlonious, Theon Cross, Emma-Jean Thackray and many, many more in this ground-breaking release.
American top pianist Kenny Werner and Scandinavian star saxophonist Benjamin Koppel have become musical brothers through 15 years of ongoing frequent musical collaboration. Their duo album WALDEN was highly acclaimed, as has their long line of other releases, including COALITION with Lionel Loueke and FREEBOP with David Liebman.
Charismatic trumpeter Avishai Cohen launched his exuberant, home-grown band Big Vicious six years ago, after relocating from the US to his native Israel, rounding up players to shape the music from the ground up, and co-authoring much of its newest material together with them. The group is an association of old friends. “We’re all coming from jazz, but some of us left it earlier”, Avishai says, summing up the stylistic reach of his cohorts. “Everyone’s bringing in their backgrounds, and that becomes part of the sound of the band.” Textures from electronica, ambient music and psychedelia are part of the blend, so too grooves and beats from rock, pop, trip-hop and more. A wide-open approach to cover versions – from Massive Attack to Beethoven - is also integral to the Vicious vision. Recorded in Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in August 2019 and produced by Manfred Eicher, Big Vicious’s debut album is issued as the band gears up for extensive international touring.
Artists’ greatest inspiration often comes from sources that once surrounded them in their native communities. Pianist Lucian Ban, violist Mat Maneri and woodwind master John Surman come from different backgrounds but are connected by their focus on improvised music along with their appreciation of folkloric and classical styles.
David Liebman, Marc Copland, Ralph Alessi, Drew Gress and Joey Baron are well known contemporary jazz masters–each a player, composer, and bandleader in his own right. Grounded in the jazz tradition, they are also committed to stretching the boundaries of the possible. These musicians have years of experience touring and recording together– Baron and Copland in Gary Peacock's trio; Gress and Baron in Copland's trio; NEA Master David Liebman and Copland in duo, quartets, and quintets; Drew Gress in Ralph Alessi's ECM groups; and Alessi in Copland's quartet. All the members contribute tunes to the band's repertoire.
The French/Martinique percussionist Mino Cinelu and the Norwegian trumpet-player Nils Petter Molvaer got together for an outstanding piece of music.They were reflecting their roots: Sula is the island from which Molvær stems, Madiana is a synonym for Martinique, where Cinelu’s father comes from. “SulaMadiana” combines all which is perceived as trusted, familiar, and achieved, with a notion of sounds beyond the horizon: glittering, shimmering, and always promising.
Mode for Titan proves that the bass is a melodic and ambient force in its own right. Writing on — and exclusively for — the bass, Josh Werner explores new dimensions of composition and improvisation, effortlessly moving through varying sonic textures, all without a conventional rhythm section. Producer Bill Laswell helps steer seasoned composer and performer (and abstract painter) Werner through novel instrumental territory, including the sitar bass, seven-string bass and fretless bass. The wide array of influences on Mode for Titan reflects Werner's vast experience and diverse skill set, yet the music maintains an introspective focus and understated minimalist beauty. Laswell's production endows this sonic journey with a vast sense of space, painted in an array of colors as boundless as the producer's own palette.
Unique in Europe: Under the artistic direction of the Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel, six and nine jazz musicians, who were selected by a specialist jury for the Focusyear in the Jazzcampus Basel from applications submitted worldwide, meet to spend a whole year together with the Focusyear with a scholarship to devote the band intensively to the music.
Ase Kleveland releases her first album in almost 45 years. Ase Kleveland and The Salmon Smokers played for the first time at the big tribute concert for Leonard Choen in 2017, where they together rocked a packed Oslo Spektrum with a spectacular version of Choen's "First We Take Manhattan". The concert and the television recording left viewers with thoughts about what an artist we lost when Ase chose a career in cultural bureaucracy and politics.
Henri Texier, double bass player, multi-instrumentalist traces his path, record after record since 1967. The more the years pass, the more the importance and the originality of Henri Texier impose themselves on all the musicians, fellow travelers, or not. A wonderful combination of a great tradition of double bass and a modernism that has never been frightened of anything. Time passing seems to have no hold on his game: round, powerful and above all animated by an extraordinary awareness of rhythm. A high-flying cast and a sequence of scenes and landscapes that give the listener the certainty of a global scenario.