Act Music

“Bruckner’s music is in the Gewandhausorchester’s DNA,” says Andris Nelsons, the orchestra’s Music Director since 2018. Now their celebrated Bruckner symphony cycle in its unique combination with instrumental pieces from Wagner’s operas is complete.

Nguyên Lê's collaborates with vocalist Ngô Hồng Quang on Hà Nội Duo, an apparent study in contrasts as the two Vietnamese artists could not have had more different upbringings and musical education. And yet they found they had common goals, to express and share the soul of Vietnam with the wider world, bringing together the roots and the future of Vietnamese music. They each contribute three original songs to the album, rounded out by four traditional numbers. The duo is joined on various tracks by trumpeter Paolo Fresu, koto player Mieko Miyazaki and tabla player Prabhu Edouard.

“An insightful and versatile guitarist.” (All About Jazz). “He has found a sound that is his own - and it is always imbued with both beauty and excitement” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). The responses to Munich-based guitarist Philipp Schiepek’s 2019 debut album marked him out as a musician of real sensitivity and one to watch.

“The best new thing that has happened in European jazz for a long time” (Le Monde), Emile Parisien has formed a top-flight American-European sextet for this album, his seventh as leader or co-leader on ACT. The band will be touring in 2022, the year which also marks the tenth anniversary of Parisien’s first appearance on an ACT album.

Sasha Keable Announces New ‘act right’ EP. Sasha Keable will release new EP ‘act right’ this month.
The incoming project is her first in four year, and finds the British / Colombian star channelling the emotions of a painful break-up. A true case of music-as-therapy, Sasha’s message is resonating loud and clear with fans. Recent single ‘move it along’ saw the singer combine with Stateside R&B phenomenon Leon Thomas, who continually reps Sasha during interviews. The full EP features seven songs – Leon Thomas is the only feature – and will be available from August 8th. “I felt like if I didn’t make this music I might lose my mind,” she says. “I made this project for myself, it’s exactly what I needed.” It’s quite a summer for Sasha, who appeared at Meltdown – at the personal invitation of Little Simz – and caused a roadblock at Glastonbury.

On Broadway: Act One – October 28th, 1987 is a three-CD live album by the Jerry Garcia Band and the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, two music groups led by Grateful Dead guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia.

There is a great succession of musical discoveries coming out of Sweden, and it never ceases to amaze. The three women and two men forming "Dearest Sister", the newest member of the ACT Family of Artists, combine jazz skills with songwriting sensibility.

Along with iconic American musicians - Big Ron Hunter, Alabama Slim, Leyla McCalla, Sarah Quintana… and young French artists, mostly from Compagnie Nine Spirit, the saxophonist suddenly evolves into an ethno-musicologist, taking us on a journey to the American “Deep South”. With his unique understanding of groove, he takes us to the heart of Creole and the current state of our ever- evolving oral cultures. He also considers our links with blues, jazz and our roots in a playful and original adventure. He expresses personal experience and musical contacts in tune with this fertile musical ground. That is the full meaning of the improvised musical welcome brought up to date here in Music is My Home.

Trance, ritual, mysticism, psychedelia, magic…however one chooses to describe the way that gnawa music affects people, there can be no denying the fascination for it which reaches right across the world. And Majid Bekkas, one of the most dazzling exponents of modern gnawa is also probably the musician who has managed to find the most varied and interesting ways to make this music interact with other genres. Now, with Magic Spirit Quartet, he has had taken the boldly imaginative step of building a bridge to connect North Africa and Scandinavia, to align the ancestral with the ambient. It is an inspired move which seems to catch the very spirit of 21st century jazz.

Iiro Rantala plays the piano with “emotional magnetism and musical intelligence”; he has a “virtuosic prowess as an improviser capable of enormous idiomatic and emotional range.” (Downbeat) This praise from the American magazine’s review of the Finnish pianist’s third and recent studio-recorded solo album for ACT, “My Finnish Calendar” (2019) sums up the astonishing variety which people who know his playing well might almost start to take for granted.