Label: Impulse Jazz 2024

This project is the result of a meeting with the violinist Johan Renard during concerts organized in tribute to my brother Didier Lockwood, but also a nod to the group Surya set up in 1979 by my late brother and the drummer Jean My Truong where in the group successively at the time were bassists Josquin Turenne Des Prés, Bunny Brunel and Sylvin Marc. I played keyboards there with Luc Pluton and of course Didier Lockwood on violin and Jean My Truong on drums.

Channeling new age and spiritual jazz, the multidisciplinary artist’s debut solo album creates its own thoughtful and potent world with the help of many guests and many flutes.

In 2020, the release of a late-era Thelonious Monk live show recorded at a high school by a custodian may seem like, at best, a historical curio or, at worst, the very epitome of barrel-scraping. But from the first moments of this 45-minute set, it's clear that this unique recording has far more going for it than its provenance or its rarity. But, to be sure, both the provenance and rarity of the recording are worth noting: In the heightened, revolution-ready atmosphere of 1968, a senior at an affluent and predominantly white high school bringing a jazz legend to campus seems like an absurd idea, but this senior was Danny Scher, and this wasn't even the first jazz gig he booked at Palo Alto High (he brought in Cal Tjader during his junior year and would book Duke Ellington a few months after this Monk show). Scher would go on to work for more than two decades with concert promoter Bill Graham, but in 1968, he was a driven and passionate young jazz fan who didn't take no for an answer.

Brandee Younger is known for sharing the stage with Jazz Royalty Jack Dejohnette & Ravi Coltrane, laying down tracks with Grammy-Winning Rapper Common and Artist/Producer Ryan Leslie, as well as bringing to life the Classic Impressionistic work of Maurice Ravel. Her ability to feature the Harp in genres of music where the instrument is often absent demonstrates her cross-reaching ability as a musician. This new collection features 6 tracks of meditative and reflective tracks from the Harpist.

With his distinctive, personal sound, Karl Ivar Refseth delights fans of jazz and Neo-Classical, minimal and groove music – whether as soloist, bandleader or sideman with The Notwist, Gisbert zu Knyphausen, and Tied & Tickled Trio. The albums his trio with Christian Weidner (alto saxophone) and Matthias Pichler (double bass) has released so far – most recently Devotion in February 2022 – have received highest acclaim from audiences and media. Jazz’n’More magazine stated, “Here music is whispered or danced on tiptoes and continuously evolves in new variations.” Jazzthetik praised, “Exquisit, compact, precise pieces, with plenty of space for the musicians.” Positive reviews also appeared internationally, like in Poland’s Stacja Islandia; and the Austrian Concerto asserted, “Sparsely arranged, yet not austere chamber jazz with many beautiful details.” And Jazz Thing wrote: “Refseth is a poet, not an orator, holding sounds together rather than firing bursts of notes.”

Jazz from The Pacific Northwest combines two previously unissued concert recordings from one of the greatest jazz drummers of all-time, Shelly Manne. The first recording features Monty Budwig on bass, Russ Freeman on piano, Stu Williamson on trumpet, and Herb Geller on flute and alto saxophone recorded at the Monterey Jazz Festival on October 4, 1958. The second recording features Hampton Hawes on piano, Frank Strozier on flute and alto saxophone, Conte Condoli on trumpet and guest vocalist Ruth Price on two tracks recorded at the Penthouse jazz club in Seattle on September 7 and 15, 1966.

Alice Coltrane’s 1971 concert at Carnegie Hall will be released in full for the first time, via Impulse! Out March 22, the live album presents Coltrane’s first Carnegie Hall performance as a leader, joined by an all-star band comprising Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Jimmy Garrison, Cecil McBee, Ed Blackwell, Clifford Jarvis, Kumar Kramer, and Tulsi Reynolds. They played four songs: “Journey in Satchidananda” and “Shiva-Loka” (from Journey in Satchidananda) and versions of John Coltrane’s “Africa,” and “Leo.” Listen to “Shiva-Loka” below.

Pharoah Sanders' third Impulse! album, 1969's Karma, is a milestone of the Spiritual Jazz movement and a natural progression in the sonic exploration that Sanders, along with John and Alice Coltrane, had spearheaded over the previous five years. "The Creator Has a Master Plan" is as close as Spiritual Jazz comes to having its own anthem. Verve's Acoustic Sounds Series features transfers from analog tapes and remastered 180-gram vinyl in deluxe gatefold packaging.

Spiritual Jazz 16is a focus on Riverside and its associated sister labels. Riverside itself was founded in 1953 by Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer, and became an important purveyor in that decade and beyond of what would be marketed as of modern jazz. That coinage was itself an amorphous, umbrella term that essentially created a demarcation from the vocabulary of pre-war classic jazz and inter-war big band swing, thus recognizing that improvising artists were breaking new creative ground that would subsequently give rise to a flurry of sub-genres, for example bebop, hard bop, cool, modal and Latin jazz. And it's from this multiplicity of sub-genres that we choose the deepest, most vibrant selections that the vast, pan-generational catalogue of Keepnews & Grauer has to offer.

This ensemble's first project, "The Waves", borrows its words from Virginia Woolf to tell sensual stories filled with images of the natural world. Double bass, cello, viola, violin and voice enter in dialogue to paint a poetic fresco that is at once fragile,melancholic, poignant, and luminous.