Ellen Andrea Wang

Marilyn Mazur's album Shamania is fascinating. Both impressionistic and abstract, it emphasizes wordless vocals and sounds while incorporating elements of global jazz and world music. The ten artists who play with Mazur are all women and hail from the Scandinavian avant-garde jazz scene. Mazur's compositions are like kaleidoscopic postcards. The set begins with the ethereal "New Secret," where vocals permeate over a soft, flowing rhythm as the music evolves into a bird-like dream. On the safari-sounding "Rytmeritual," the vocal bounces off the horns over a rolling rhythm. "CHAAS" begins with a soft trumpet solo and develops into a rambunctious ride, like jeepney travel on the streets of Manila.

Hanna Paulsberg's tenor saxophone voice is increasingly in demand for a wide variety of projects, from the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra to collaborations with Ellen Andrea Wang, Jon Balke, Andreas Ulvo, Erland Dahlen and veteran Knut Rissnaes. Yet her standing as a composer and leader of one of Norway's most outstanding young quartets has been firmly established with releases such as Waltz for Lili (Ora Fonogram, 2012) and Song for Josia (Ora Fonogram, 2014). Eastern Smiles, her third release, and first on Odin Records, continues the course established on her previous two releases, with six original compositions highlighting the dual melodic and rhythmic pulses that drive her music.