Imaginary Niazura

2012 collaboration between banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck and Jazz pianist Marcus Roberts and his trio. Roberts' Trio is known for its virtuosic style: a style that is strongly rhythmic, melodic, and filled with dynamic contrast. Fleck is often considered the premier banjo player in the world. He has virtually reinvented the image and the sound of the banjo through a remarkable performing and recording career that has taken him all over the musical map and on a range of solo projects and collaborations.

Bill Laswell - Imaginary Cuba (1999) {Wicklow-BMG Classics 09026-63514-2}
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© 1999 Wicklow / BMG Classics | 09026-63514-2
Dub / Cuban Music / World / Downtempo / Electronic / Dark Ambient / Jazz

Bassist and producer Bill Laswell has dabbled in several varieties of African music over the long and circuitous course of his career, with uneven results. But Latin America is a region he's left largely alone, until now. Imaginary Cuba finds him taking an approach somewhat similar to the one he employed on his Off World One project – building on a foundation of field recordings, he constructs complex and often dub-inflected sound collages that sound like no one but Laswell while still maintaining respect for the music's origins.

As the billing on the cover indicates, Chris Potter extends the creative envelope of his longstanding Underground Orchestra on his second date as a leader for ECM. Guitarist Adam Rogers, drummer Nate Smith, and pianist Craig Taborn all return. The additional architecture includes not one but two bassists in Scott Colley (acoustic) and Fima Ephron (electric). Steve Nelson (Potter's former bandmate in Dave Holland's quintet) plays marimba and vibes, and a string quartet – violinists Mark Feldman and Joyce Hammann, violist Lois Martin, and cellist David Eggar – make this the "Underground Orchestra." "Lament" is introduced by the string quartet playing a near-Baroque melody before the jazz group enters with Rogers' warm, electric guitar…

Coming off his Grammy-nominated 2013 album, The World According to Andy Bey, vocalist/pianist Andy Bey delivers the equally compelling 2014 release Pages from an Imaginary Life. As with its predecessor, Pages finds the jazz iconoclast returning to his roots with a set of American Popular Song standards done in a ruminative, stripped-down style. This is Bey, alone at the piano, delving deeply into the harmony, melody, and lyrics of each song. But don't let the spare setting fool you. Bey is a master of interpretation. In his seventies at the time of recording, and having performed over the years in a variety of settings from leading his own swinging vocal trio, to working with hard bop pioneer Horace Silver, to exploring the avant-garde with Archie Shepp, Bey has aged into a jazz oracle who doesn't so much perform songs as conjure them from somewhere in the mystical ether of his psyche.

One of the most promising and talented composer/arrangers of her generation, Grammy-nominated Miho Hazama releases her inspired new album, Imaginary Visions - her first album to feature the Danish Radio Big Band of which she is chief conductor.