David Murray is a giant of modern jazz. His saxophone fuses all the great things that black music has produced: Gospel sounds, free jazz, Afro-Caribbean, blues and soul as well as the beautiful standards of classic jazz. Murray's colorful tone, unsurpassed intonation, flair for swing, melancholy tones, and improvisational power and ingenuity make him one of the most important voices in music today. The newly formed Brave New World Trio congregates style-setting jazz greats with bassist Brad Jones and drummer Hamid Drake. Together they draw from the African-American tradition as well as from other cultures and with Seriana Promethea they present an impressive musical statement.
The composer and bassist Barry Guy presents here an extensive work with a new orchestra: The Barry Guy New Orchestra: Inscape -Tableaux. Like few other musicians, Barry Guy taps the current centers of improvised music, new classical music and jazz. The numerous works for the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, compositions for the strings of the City of London Sinfonia, for the Kronos Quartet or for the voices of the Hilliard Ensemble reveal Guy’s immense musical cosmos.
Pianist Giovanni Guidi and trombonist Gianluca Petrella, key figures in what some are hailing as a “golden age” of Italian jazz, found their strong improvisational rapport inside Enrico Rava’s band (see for instance the 2010 ECM album Tribe) and, keen to play more, formed a duo, giving many concerts in which they are intermittently joined by guests. For this studio recording, producer Manfred Eicher brought the duo together with US drummer Gerald Cleaver and French clarinetist Louis Sclavis, for an outgoing set of music which includes lyrical free improvising and tunes composed by Giovanni and Gianluca.