Nino Sevilha

French accordion maestro Galliano brings this band to the London jazz festival on 17 November and the mix is certainly tempting – Nino Rota's timeless movie themes interpreted by an elite international jazz quintet featuring Dave Douglas on trumpet, John Surman on reeds, Boris Kozlov on bass and Clarence Penn on drums. Listeners attracted more by the lineup than the material should note that the jazz shades and subtly skews the compositions rather than taking them over, and that Surman in particular isn't much heard outside of his ensemble role.

Devendra Benhart - Niño Rojo (2004) [Young God Records]
EACRip | FLAC+CUE+LOG -> 243 MB | MP3 @320 -> 104 MB | Full HQ Artwork Scans -> 48.3 MB
© Young God Records | 25 | Freak Folk / Folk-Rock

Banhart covers Ella Jenkins' "Wake Up, Little Sparrow" as the opener to this album. The 80-year-old Jenkins has a made a career of creating children's folk music with an educational and inclusively moral bent, and perhaps lends Niño Rojo its best context: Over time, beyond cultural movement and sociological or musicological phenomenon, Banhart's record makes the most sense at the mercy of simple pleasures and the young at heart. You want truth? Beauty? They're here, in basic forms. Progress and relevance are very different concerns, and ones I'm willing to leave to historians with a better advantage. And as all Gira had to do was release the stuff, at the moment, I'm content to listen in turn.

Nino Rota was not only the man who wrote film scores for Fellini (La strada etc), René Clément and King Vidor. He was also a twentieth-century great composer. A child prodigy, he studied in America with Fritz Reiner, crossed paths with Toscanini, Igor Stravinsky and many others. Éric Le Sage, Emmanuel Pahud, Paul Meyer, Daishin Kashimoto, Aurélien Pascal and their partners from the Salon de Provence festival pay tribute to his music with the Piccola Offerta Musicale (Little Musical Offering), composed in 1943 at the age of twenty-two, alongside a Nonet and a Trio for flute, violin and piano, both written in the late 1950s. The Trio for clarinet, cello and piano (1973) comes from Rota’s last creative period and has all the characteristics of his mature works.

South African pianist Thandi Ntuli traveled to Los Angeles in 2019, where she recorded this album of bare, explorative piano and voice pieces at a Venice Beach studio with International Anthem artist Carlos Niño in the producer chair. An absolutely stunning, intimate listen, with Ntuli’s prowess as a pianist and singularity as a vocalist on vivid display as much as her fearlessness, vulnerability and adventurousness during occasional experiments with synthesizers and percussion. Niño colors open minimalist soundscapes with overdubbed percussion, cymbals and plants.

South African pianist Thandi Ntuli traveled to Los Angeles in 2019, where she recorded this album of bare, explorative piano and voice pieces at a Venice Beach studio with International Anthem artist Carlos Niño in the producer chair. An absolutely stunning, intimate listen, with Ntuli’s prowess as a pianist and singularity as a vocalist on vivid display as much as her fearlessness, vulnerability and adventurousness during occasional experiments with synthesizers and percussion. Niño colors open minimalist soundscapes with overdubbed percussion, cymbals and plants.

Nino Josele is the stage name of guitarist Juan Jose Heredia who was born in 1974 in Almeria, Spain. Although primarily a flamenco guitarist Josele is nothing if not versatile having worked in a variety of contexts ranging from flamenco through classical to jazz and even pop.