Letter from Dieter Ilg (part one)
Dieter Ilg: „Dedication“, Forest Kill
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OTON (1) Joona Toivanen
Joona Toivanen Trio: „Both Only“, Direction
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B1 – Kit Downes – Petter Eldh – James Maddren: „Vermillion“ (Ingo J. Biermann)****
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B2 – Hendrika Entzians Reihe „Was hörst du“ (Kit Downes)
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Bill Carrothers – Vincent Courtois: „Firebirds“*, Circle Game
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Avishai Cohen – Yonathan Avishai – Barak Mori – Ziv Ravitz: „Naked Truth“, Part II
OTON (2) Ziv Ravitz
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Wadada Leo Smith – Henry Kaiser – Alex Varty: „Pacifica Koral Reef“***, excerpt
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B3 – Fazer: Plex (Niklas Wandt)**
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Letter from Dieter Ilg (part two)
Dieter Ilg:„Dedication“, Hamami (dedicated to Charlie Mariano)*****
the whole show:
Steve Tibbetts shares a memory on Henry Kaiser :
*This sublime session from pianist Bill Carrothers and cellist Vincent Courtois is the soundtrack for a quiet Sunday morning, when the electricity of the weekend is beginning to fade and the serenity of the morning sun splashes into the room. Melodies are offered up like colored balloons, which the duo then releases and sends drifting upward and away to the horizon.
(Dave Sumner, bandcamp)
**Formed by five musicians who originally met as jazz students in Munich, Fazer made a striking first impression with 2018’s Mara, a debut that somehow matched its Can-worthy polyrhythmic complexity and trumpeter Mattias Lindermayr’s forceful figures with a fluidity that evoked Ethiopian and Afro-Cuban jazz in equal measure. Their first for City Slang, Plex may be more restrained but still feels fresh thanks to Fazer’s savvy synthesis of normally disparate strains of jazz and to the players’ reverence for the spaces between the notes, a rather surprising quality for a group with two drummers and with plenty of firepower at their disposal.
(Jason Anderson, Uncut, March 2022)
***„Schnorcheln in der Salish Sea im Pazifischen Nordwesten ist ein täglicher Teil meiner eigenen Sommerroutine. Wie die Teilnahme an einer kollektiven Improvisation vermittelt es mir das Gefühl, Teil eines größeren Ganzen zu sein, und das Bewusstsein, dass uns unter jeder Oberfläche seltsame Schönheiten erwarten – zusammen mit der Präsenz von Risiken und dem Beweis für die Zerbrechlichkeit des Lebens.“(Alex Varty)
****Since signing with ECM Records a few years ago veteran British keyboardist Kit Downes has been showing off different sides of his musical profile, whether haunted solo pipe organ explorations or a moody electric chamber ensemble. His third album for the label offers yet another setting, but this one isn’t actually new. In the past his group with drummer James Maddren and bassist Petter Eldh released music as Enemy, but here the group is rebranded — perhaps to widen Downes’ portfolio — while pivoting from its old fusion-oriented sound for something more hushed. Still, it remains the work of a collective, as the bassist wrote as many of the tunes as the nominal leader, including the ravishing highlight, ‚Class Fails‘. It’s a delicate recording where the tactile cymbal play of Maddren is heightened and the percussive snap of Eldh is muted, so in some ways the name change makes sense. There’s an emphasis on balladry, with each part of the triumvirate pulling out subtle melodic threads from the written themes like a magician, only for them to seemingly vanish as quickly as they appeared
(Peter Margasak, The Quietus)
*****just think about some of the great albums Charlie Mariano was an essential part of – some other bass players’ works come to mind, f.e. Charles Mingus, The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady, or Eberhard Weber‘s Colours, Yellow Fields)
(m.e.)