It’s truly music without barriers and one of the most breathtaking musical experiences in contemporary music. I don’t know what genius is but Kalmuk will do until a decent definition comes along. -Jazzwise.
An incredible tribute to German pianist Jutta Hipp – one of the few female players in the postwar European jazz scene, and one of the few who managed to make a splash on this side of the Atlantic too! Jutta's best known to American audiences for a handful of records she cut for Blue Note – and this set takes those records, and moves way way past them – to including a huge range of material that really opens up our understanding of Hipp's music in her all-too-short career! The CDs feature early German recordings – in a number of sessions with small groups that include a quintet with Emil Mangelsdorff on alto and Joki Freeund on tenor, a number of performances in the New Jazz Stars group of tenorist Hans Koller, work in a quintet with Attila Zoller on guitar, another sextet with Albert Mangelsdorff on trombone, and a group co-led with baritone saxoponist Lars Gullin.
Antony Hegarty has no apparent interest in being an ordinary pop star, and it stands to reason he wouldn't be interested in making an ordinary live album, either. In 2006, Hegarty collaborated with artist and filmmaker Charles Atlas on a performance piece called Turning, in which Atlas created carefully detourned video projections of a handful of women ("beauties," as they were identified by Hegarty and Atlas) whose difficult life experiences often belied their appearance, while Hegarty's band Antony and the Johnsons performed a set of their powerfully emotional and atmospheric songs. Atlas directed a documentary about the tour, also called Turning, while Antony and the Johnsons have released a soundtrack album that documents the London date on the tour.
Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind is an outstanding DVD of the Canadian folk singer who discovered life in art, and kept on dreaming of better times. Producers Susan Levy and Stephanie Bennett leave room for us to make our own sense of Mitchell’s narrative. Through a highly creative blend of concert footage, paintings and retrospect, viewers cannot help but be arrested into self-assessment. “It’s hard peeling the layers off your own onion,” says Mitchell. That is exactly what this documentary does: undress popular perceptions with multiple grains of truth.
Cult-Group BIRTH CONTROL releases live-recording Live Harmonie Bonn on DVD/CD - Gig recorded on April 7th, 2018 After their 50th anniversary, the Kraut- and Prog-Rock cult-group Birth Control released 2016 a new album, which came out on double-vinyl on the occasion of the 2018 Record Store Day…