Hafez Mp3

SOMM Recordings is pleased to announce Birdsong, a fascinating crossgender exploration of art songs associated with the female voice by baritone Roderick Williams, accompanied by pianist Andrew West. The recital features signature songs from the height of Romanticism by Brahms and Clara and Robert Schumann alongside a more recent quartet of sensuous songs by Sally Beamish. In his revealing foreword, Williams recalls having his choice of Brahms’s Sapphische Ode refused by competition organisers because it was “a woman’s song”. Returning recently to the work prompted him to question why some songs are considered gender specific. Birdsong is his response.

Fred Ho & The Green Monster Big Band - Celestial Green Monster (2009) {Mutable Music–Big Red Media 001}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 449 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 174 Mb
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© 2009 Mutable Music / Big Red Media | 001
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Experimental / Modern Creative / Modern Big Band / Saxophone

Asian-American baritone saxophonist Fred Ho has been a champion of freedom and expressionism in modern creative jazz for some time. A continuing battle with cancer has inspired him to assemble the Green Monster Big Band, with reference to the famed left-field wall at Fenway Park in Boston, but more directly related to the huge sound and diverse ideas this juggernaut ensemble represents. Ho is influenced by the '60s big bands, television or movie themes, and the psychedelic rock he grew up with, all present on this ambitious program.

Fred Ho & The Saxophone Liberation Front - Snake-Eaters (2011) {Mutable-Big Red Media 002}
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© 2011 Mutable Music / Big Red Media | 002
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Experimental / Modern Creative / Saxophone

Snake-Eaters debuts Fred Ho's Saxophone Liberation Front, featuring composer Ho on baritone saxophone and Hafez Modirzadeh (soprano), Bobby Zankel (alto) and Salim Washington (tenor). Darker than Blue, inspired by Curtis Mayfield's song, We the People Who are Darker than Blue, employs shifting meters (including a blues section in 11/8 and 11.5 /8), 12-tone serialism, compound meter ostinati, and Lydian chromatic approaches to orchestration. Ho's Yellow Power, Yellow Soul Suite coincides with the soon-to-be publication of the Drs. Roger Buckley and Tamara Roberts' festschrift by the same title, and includes the previously recorded "Fishing Song of the East China Sea" (originally a flute trio with bass violin on the out-of-print recording by Fred Ho and the Asian American Art Ensemble, Bamboo that Snaps Back; and the now-defunct Brooklyn Sax Quartet recording The Far Side of Here), as well as Afro-Asian adaptations of other Asian folk songs.

On every label there are records that can be called landmarks and that's what we have here, a magnum opus by the late great master Muhal Richard Abrams. Some years before his death he received a commission from Bobby Zankel and his Warriors of the Wonderful Sound to write new big band music for this Philadelphian ensemble. He composed the 70 pages and 16 parts of “Soundpath” and attended the first rehearsals. It premiered in 2012 but only in 2018 – some months after Abrams passed away – a second opportunity to present it publically was possible, during the October Revolution festival. Some adaptations were made: Zankel invited Marty Ehrlich (who worked closely with Muhal) as the conductor and some extra instrumentalists familiar with the master’s musical visions were added. The concert received a second standing ovation and the 17 musicians went to the studio the next day. This is the resulting document that makes us all incredibly proud.

Kronos is very excited to announce that the Norwegian record label Kirkelig Kulturverksted (KKV), in association with New York-based Valley Entertainment, will release Placeless on March 1, 2019. ” Placeless is the first collaboration between Kronos and Iranian singers Mahsa and Marjan Vahdat. Recorded in Oslo’s Kulturkirken Jakob in November 2018, the album features 14 songs composed by Mahsa Vahdat to classical poems by Hafez and Rumi and the works of contemporary Iranian poets Forough Farrokhzad, Mohammad Ibrahim Jafari and Vahdat’s husband Atabak Elyasi. Composers Sahba Aminikia, Aftab Darvishi, Jacob Garchik and Elyasi arranged the songs for string quartet.

Mesmerism is a beautiful, swinging trio meeting led by drummer Tyshawn Sorey featuring two musicians whom he has considered his closest colleagues: pianist Aaron Diehl and bassist Matt Brewer. Sorey – a 2017 MacArthur Fellow, Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, collaborator with Vijay Iyer, Kris Davis, Roscoe Mitchell, Hafez Modirzadeh, Myra Melford, Marilyn Crispell and other musical luminaries – puts forward his vision for Mesmerism as follows: “My intent was to record this project with only an hour or two of rehearsal, and with a group of musicians who never performed on stage together. To that end, Mesmerism is a departure from the recordings I produced that contained thoroughly rehearsed, rigorously notated music for piano trio. For a long time, I felt an intense desire to record some of my favorite songs from the Great American Songbook as well as those by composers whose work I feel should also exist in this canon. Recording Mesmerism with these two wonderful, inspiring musicians inevitably proved to become the finest occasion for me to document my lifelong connection to the ‘straight-ahead’ continuum of this music.”

Sublime Frequencies finally unleashes it’s ESSENTIAL compilation from 1970’s Egypt. Modal instrumental tracks from Baligh Hamdi - one of the most important Arabic composers of the 20th Century (writing for legends Umm Kalthum, Abdel Halim Hafez, Sabah, Warda, and many others). Features his legendary group the “Diamond Orchestra” with Omar Khorshid on guitar, Magdi al-Husseini on organ, Samir Sourour on saxophone, and Faruq Salama on accordion. All of these musicians were discovered and recruited by Hamdi to interpret his vision of a modernized, hybrid Arabic music. Under Hamdi’s direction, this orchestra charted a new melodic direction and created a new musical language. This compilation is culled from a specific era of Hamdi’s long career, a decade where he fully realized an international music which incorporated beat driven Eastern tinged jazz, theremin draped orchestral noir, tracks that feature searing guitar solos from none other than Omar Khorshid, and a selection of buzzing, sitar driven, Indo-Arabic tracks establishing a meeting of mid-east and eastern psychedelic exotica, and a vision that created some of the hippest music coming out of the Middle East from the late 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s.

Fred Ho and the Monkey Orchestra - Monkey: Part Two (1997) {Koch Jazz - KOC 3-7840-2H1}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 379 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 152 Mb
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© 1997 Koch Jazz / TAP | KOC 3-7840-2H1
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Experimental / Modern Creative / Baritone Saxophone / Flute

I’m honored to discuss this CD. I found Fred Ho’s Monkey: Part One a glorious surprise, and this second section of his musical setting for the trickster tale is no disappointment. The ensemble’s personnel has few changes, notably Francis Wong as tenorist; but its spirit remains dramatic, flexible and visionary as Ho achieves tremendous range from trombone, three saxophones (including his own baritone), bass and drums, and several performers on Chinese traditional instruments.

Fred Ho and the Monkey Orchestra - Monkey: Part One (1996) {Koch Jazz - KOC 3-7815-2H1}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 333 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 130 Mb
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© 1996 Koch Jazz / TAP | KOC 3-7815-2H1
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Experimental / Modern Creative / Baritone Saxophone / Flute

Monkey is a two-part recording of baritone saxophonist Fred Ho's multimedia musical Journey Beyond the West, centered around the Chinese trickster figure of Monkey (à la Coyote in much native American lore) that combines Chinese folk music and instrumentation with jazz. Acts I and III (composed in 1990/1989, respectively) are featured here, with Acts II and IV (both written in 1994) on the companion Monkey, Pt. 2 disc.

Working with Danish producer and DJ Mashti, "Sufiyan" is a special combination between the ancient and traditional, connecting it with the modern and technical. If asked, Bahram says about the origin of his music: "It is simply spontaneous and comes from the heart, it develops out of the moment."
Somehow Bahramji and Mashti combine what should be polar opposites: soothing, flowing, meditative santoor, flute, ney, settar together with powerful beats and mystical Eastern vocals. It's done in a truly symbiosis. Sufiyan combines influences from ancient, traditional Sufi melodies as well as Kurdish and Indian sounds. The multi-layers of their music reflects itself also in the texts about wisdoms and experiences, which go back to old Persian mystics and poets such as Rumi, Attar or Hafez.