Annika Chambers Wild & Free

On February 26, the venerated multi-instrumentalist and composer Joe Chambers will release Samba de Maracatu, a notable Blue Note Records return for a significant figure in the label’s history. The album is a nine-song set of original compositions, standards, and pieces by Wayne Shorter, Bobby Hutcherson, and Horace Silver.

The composer Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944) is representative of many musicians and composers, most of them with Jewish roots, who lost their lives in the Nazis' extermination camps. To mark this 75th liberation anniversary, the pianist Annika Treutler has devoted her new release to proscribed music. To musicians and composers like Viktor Ullmann, Bohuslav Martinu, Pavel Haas and many more: none of whom ever had the opportunity to fully develop their creativity because they were barred from pursuing their artistic careers in freedom.

The composer Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944) is representative of many musicians and composers, most of them with Jewish roots, who lost their lives in the Nazis' extermination camps. To mark this 75th liberation anniversary, the pianist Annika Treutler has devoted her new release to proscribed music. To musicians and composers like Viktor Ullmann, Bohuslav Martinu, Pavel Haas and many more: none of whom ever had the opportunity to fully develop their creativity because they were barred from pursuing their artistic careers in freedom.

For nearly two decades, Brazilian-born and Brooklyn-based saxist Ivo Perelman has been evolving his own path of improvised jazz, playing solo, in duos, trios & quartets with a number of downtown's best musicians. One of Ivo's most constant companions is contrabassist Dom Duval who has recorded on perhaps a dozen of Ivo's previous duo & trio CD's. Violinist Rosie Hertlein has also recorded and performed with Ivo on occasion and is yet another local talent who has knocked me out whenever I've heard her play although she remains beneath the radar screen of recognition…

Despite a well-documented incident where Larry Ochs was legally challenged for inflicting psychological damage on a festival goer who’d been expecting “jazz” (it’s a great modern parable), he doesn’t have quite that confrontational a vision. Likewise Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura, who have embraced populism as well as the avant-garde. This isn’t music that furrows the brow, but it is not without challenge and its greatest challenge is that it delivers rich complexities as natural forms and allows us to inhabit them for extended periods. This music doesn’t take time; it creates time and suspends our usual functional attitude to it. Brian Morton, excerpt from the liner notes.

Back in the late 1960s, Free was just one of hundreds of blues-based bands that grew up under the shadow of the Rolling Stones and, later, Cream. Like Fleetwood Mac, Free came together with a little help from those twin founders of the British blues boom–John Mayall and Alexis Korner–and like Led Zeppelin, they hit lucky–and big–early on…

Although Free was never destined to scrape the same skies as Led Zeppelin, when they first burst out of the traps in 1968, close to a year ahead of Jimmy Page and company, they set the world of British blues-rock firmly on its head, a blistering combination of youth, ambition, and, despite those tender years, experience that, across the course of their debut album, did indeed lay the groundwork for all that Zeppelin would embrace…

The composer Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944) is representative of many musicians and composers, most of them with Jewish roots, who lost their lives in the Nazis' extermination camps. To mark this 75th liberation anniversary, the pianist Annika Treutler has devoted her new release to proscribed music. To musicians and composers like Viktor Ullmann, Bohuslav Martinu, Pavel Haas and many more: none of whom ever had the opportunity to fully develop their creativity because they were barred from pursuing their artistic careers in freedom.