On Viola and Piano Works, Alicia Calabuig (viola) and Jorge Blasco (piano) guide us through this beautiful and rarely recorded Romantic music, where lyricism reigns supreme. Hans Sitt is a highly neglected composer from late Romanticism, played a significant role in the transmission of the German tradition of Schumann and Brahms to the 20th Century. Born in Prague, he developed a brilliant career as a violinist and pedagogue, but was especially paramount in the development of the viola’s repertoire, for which he made valuable contributions, as portrayed in this album, which includes his main viola and piano works.
Incerto is the birth of an exciting new modern jazz ensemble featuring the remarkable trio from Suite for Piano (Brian Marsella, Jorge Roeder, Ches Smith) joined by the brilliant guitarist Julian Lage. A quartet capable of anything, this is the perfect group to realize Zorn’s quirky compositional twists and turns. The music is wildly varied—maddeningly complex, powerfully driving, heartbreakingly beautiful—and embraces complex meter changes, atonal melodies, unusual harmonies, and bizarre structural complexity. Inspired by Freud, Sartre, and the Uncertainty Principle, the music explores possibilities, probabilities, inevitabilities, and impossibilities.
This third CD from the dynamic piano trio of Brian Marsella, Jorge Roeder, and Ches Smith is a delightful surprise–and one of Zorn's greatest achievements. Exploring a wide variety of tempi, moods, and feelings the compositions dive deeply into the parameters of melody, harmony, hythm, and texture, stretching the ballade format to its limits and beyond. The trio, three essential members of Zorn's inner circle, performs with passion, imagination, virtuosity, and a telepathic improvisational interplay at the very highest level. A stunning collection of modern Ballades performed by three of the greatest young musicians in the Downtown scene. Essential!
At the finale of the "Musikfest Berlin" 2022, the musicians of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and their BigBand performed “Epitaph” as a tribute to the 100th birthday of Charles Mingus.
Featuring four of the most accomplished musicians in the rich firmament of modern jazz, Incerto is one of Zorn’s newest and most exciting projects—a chamber ensemble of striking virtuosity that is capable of covering the full range of Zorn’s deepest passions and wildest fantasies. Their fourth CD is a touching tribute to the magical surrealist painter Remedios Varo. Filled with exotic juxtapositions, lush harmonies, lyrical explorations, and fiery solos, this music is a soulful and quirky homage to one of the world’s greatest alchemical artists.
The newest CD by Zorn’s most recent quartet “Incerto” is a beautiful and moody suite of nocturnes inspired by the night imagery of Shakespeare. Heart wrenchingly beautiful, the music carries you to a lush romantic world of modern lyricism, blending elements of jazz balladry with classical atonality and minimalism into a vibrant new sound world. Featuring four of the most accomplished musical masters out of the Downtown scene—trusted members of Zorn’s inner circle— this is modern chamber music at its very best!