Sebastian Rochford

This “short diary (of loss)”, as drummer Sebastian Rochford calls it, is offered as “a sonic memory, created with love, out of need for comfort.” It is dedicated to Rochford’s father, Aberdeen poet Gerard Rochford, 1932-2019, and to his family. Seb, one of ten siblings, wrote most of the music shortly after Gerard’s death and delivers it here, in performances of deep feeling and hymn-like clarity, together with pianist Kit Downes. The final wistful piece, “Even Now I Think Of Her” was composed by Gerard Rochford. Sebastian explains: “It’s a tune my dad had sung into his phone and sent me. I forwarded this to Kit. He listened, and then we started.”

Though Andy Sheppard has a long relationship with ECM via his work in Carla Bley's various bands, Surrounded by Sea marks only his third date as a leader for the label. On this album, Sheppard once again employs double bassist Michel Benita and drummer Sebastian Rochford from 2012's Trio Libero, and adds guitarist/electronicist Eivind Aarset, who played on the saxophonist's ECM debut, Movements in Colour, in 2009. The guitarist, who almost never plays conventionally, provides the additional atmospheric element Sheppard sought to express in these tunes. The album's centerpiece is a reading of the Gaelic "Aoid, Na Dean Cadal Idir." It was initially intended to be part of a collaborative album with Hebridean folk singer Julie Fowlis, but the project never came to fruition…

Andy Sheppard’s quartet extends the musical explorations begun on the 2015 release Surrounded By Sea, an album praised by Télérama for its “poignant serenity.” In this new programme of compositions by Sheppard (plus the title track by Brazilian singer-songwriter Ranato Teixeira), the drones and washes of Eivind Aarset’s guitar and electronics aided by the generous acoustics of Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI help to establish a climate in which improvisation can take place. There’s a highly atmospheric, ambient drift to the music which Sheppard clearly finds liberating, as do Michel Benita and Seb Rochford, free to move in and out of conventional rhythm section roles and to make impassioned statements of their own. Romaria was recorded in April 2017 and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Moondog - Sidewalk Dances - Joanna MacGregor & Britten Sinfonia (2006) {SoundCircus 2564 68437-4}
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© 2006 SoundCircus / Warner Classics & Jazz | 2564 68437-4
Classical / Jazz / Avant-Garde Music / International / Modern Composition / Vocal Music / Minimalism

The cult figure Moondog, who performed on the streets of New York for over 30 years, meshed jazz, classical, Native American rhythms and poetry. With a lifelong fascination for the strict rules of canon-writing, and dubbed the father of minimalism, he composed more than eighty symphonies, three hundred rounds, countless percussion, organ and piano pieces, scores for brass bands and string orchestras, and five books called The Art of the Canon. Joanna MacGregor's stunning new arrangements of fourteen of Moondog's most famous pieces are re-imaginings for larger forces, with a spectacular line-up of some of today's most cutting-edge jazz musicians, along with the brilliant Britten Sinfonia. Radically rewritten, each track retains Moondog's irresistible trademarks - short and snappy, of the street, melodic and joyful, and characterized by a pounding beat.