Alone Janek Schaefer

"As an improviser, you often find that it‘s not the compositions themselves you‘re playing, but your own memories of them. And as these memories come back to you in the moment, they assert their continuing existence in the here and now," says Michael Wollny. In other words, songs are like ghosts. Wollny‘s new album "Ghosts" is a gathering of some of the ghosts that regularly haunt him. Typically for Wollny, they range from classics like Franz Schubert's "Erlkönig" to jazz standards, film music, songs with a certain fragility by Nick Cave, say, or the band Timber Timbre, and also include his own darkly evocative original compositions.

Krzysztof Komeda has legendary status in Polish jazz, and was also one of the pioneers of European jazz. His wider fame resides largely in his work as a film composer – he wrote the soundtracks for all of Roman Polanski’s early films, notably "Dance of the Vampires" and "Rosemary's Baby". Komeda died in 1969, tragically early, at the age of just 37, but left a hugely influential body of work. Joachim Kühn, now a jazz piano icon in his own right, is a great admirer of Komeda, whom he met in person in Warsaw in 1965. As part of the Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic concert series, curated by Siggi Loch, he performed a major tribute concert to him on 14 October 2022, at which he played in three formats: solo piano, with his New Trio, and alongside Poland’s Atom String Quartet.

Paolo Di Sabatinoè uno di quei musicisti che richiamano all’ascolto l’immagine di antichi artigiani, di quelli capaci, con pochi sapienti gesti, apparentemente semplici, di modellare la materia, di crearequalcosa di bello che fino a pochi attimi prima non esisteva. Paolo Di Sabatino è uno dei pianisti italiani musicalmente più preparati e solidi, la cui maturità emerge in tutte le note non suonate, che sono quelle che danno respiro e senso al resto, nella robusta architettura sonora che sostiene le sue composizioni, piccoli gioielli capaci di imprimersi in maniera indelebile nella mente dell’ascoltatore.Una musica che si rivela vero nutrimento dell’anima, giusto per riprendere il senso dell’ultima sua fatica discografica.“Trace Elements”, importante punto di arrivo (e di partenza) nella carriera del pianista, summa della sua concezione della musica e della vita in generale, richiama nel titolo quei micronutrienti necessari allo sviluppo di un organismo.

With Fade to White, B.J. Nilsen abandons his Hazard moniker and Chris Watson's wind recordings (which have largely defined his sound since his breakthrough album Wind), but his artistry remains untouched and the music is as captivating as ever. If the technique and the approach are the same, the sound sources have changed, which makes Fade to White the exact opposite of Land: new and relevant. Nilsen treats his sources more extensively, their true nature now buried in multiple dreamy shrouds of reality. As usual, Jon Wozencroft's cover photographs add possible clues (or divert us from the true answers). "Purple Phase" opens on cavernous sounds, as if Nilsen was revisiting Janek Schaefer's Cold Storage rooms…