S Vincent

There is a long tradition of "saxophone battles" in jazz with duos such as Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray or Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane performing together in a kind of sporting joust of abilities, a gentleman's contest for who is the better player. On the 2012 concert album Friendly Fire: Live at Smoke, tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander and alto saxophonist Vincent Herring join in this tradition with a swinging, passionate set of standards recorded live at the respected N.Y.C. venue. The album is actually a re-pairing of the duo, who first sparred on 2005's Battle: Live at Smoke. This time around they spar over such numbers as Hank Mobley's "Pat 'N' Chat," McCoy Tyner's "Inception," the standard "You've Changed," as well as Herring's own "Timothy," among others. Backing the saxophonists here are pianist Mike LeDonne, bassist John Webber, and drummer Carl Allen. This is a lively and exciting session of adventurous and old-school straight-ahead jazz.

The Scriabin Mystery is brought to vivid life by acclaimed French pianist Vincent Larderet and celebrates the 150th anniversary of the birth of the Russian composer. Making his AVIE debut, Larderet presents a comprehensive survey of the scope of Scriabin’s output and the evolution of his style, from his early, post-Romantic works influenced by Chopin and Liszt, through to the modernism of the 20th century in his final works. His harmonies famously coloured by his synesthesia, Scriabin’s craft was a revolutionary fusion of freedom of expression underpinned by a sense of unity and geometric proportion, his psychologically complex constructions infused with incandescence and mysticism.

New quartet Sissoko Segal Parisien Peirani presents "Les Égarés" (The wandering), an album recorded by two virtuoso duos (Sissoko-Segal and Peirani-Parisien), who for years have excelled in the art of cross-fertilising sounds and transcending genres.

This album is devoted to Handel's concertante music for solo oboe, of which only a few concertos have survived. He was particularly fond of the instrument and assigned many solos to it in his oratorios, operas, concerti grossi and sonatas. He is even reported to have said of his early oboe works: 'I used to write like the D-v [Devil] in those days, but chiefly for the oboe, which was my favourite instrument.'

It is hard to believe it as one listens to this album: pianist Vincent Meissner is just twenty years old. The drummer in the trio, incidentally, is even younger. Recognition for this major talent has started to grow, however, and the prizes are rolling in. Meißner has so far won six: the Bechstein Piano Competition, the Concert Prize of the Jazzopen Stuttgart, the Förderpreis of the German Jazz Union, the Jazzhaus Competition Freiburg and the Central German Jazz Prize. And he is also already showing quite some capacity to make smart decisions and follow them through. When he was chosen as to represent Saxony in the prestigious “Jugend jazzt” event in 2019, he opted to take a new approach to presenting his music. Rather than building pieces out of fragments or sketches, as he had done until then, he created a suite of connected pieces. This mature quality, the desire to present a coherent programme is also a hallmark of his debut album "Bewegtes Feld".

Allegri’s Miserere, its heartbreaking harmonies, its verses alternately chanted and ornamented, its seraphic voices: sheer Baroque magic. Since its composition in Rome in 1630, the work has constantly been transformed. Le Poème Harmonique approaches the score through the prism of its metamorphoses, the ornaments and transpositions added since the time when Mozart himself transcribed the piece, then jealously guarded by the Vatican, which punished publication of it with anathema.