The Bebop Shop : Changes: Post-Bop Modernists : Lumi: Rava, Vesala & Jazz In Europe
The AMC Trio band has been around for about twenty years and consists of pianist Peter Adamkovic, bassist Martin Marincak and drummer Stanislav Cvanciger. It has its musical foundations in mainstream jazz but over the years has managed to develop its very own musical sound and style. The band incorporates many self-experienced stories and emotions in their compositions. Although their music is influenced by Slovak music, it goes beyond the usual jazz progressions and touches on a number of diverse genres. For example, the wide range of melodies is inspired by popular and classical music, melodies from Eastern Slovak folk music, nature, literature and spirituality. (Proper Music) Price: £14.99
Now comes the first documentation of a new endeavour, with guitarist Kevin Seddiki, whose far-reaching musical imagination matches Matinier's own. Sedikki, who makes his ECM debut here, studied classical guitar with Pablo Márquez and has also worked with many improvisers across the idioms, from jazz to transcultural projects. The range of music addressed on Rivages runs from the traditional "Greensleeves" to Gabriel Fauré's "Les Berceaux" to compositions and improvisations by both of the protagonists. (Proper Music) Price: £14.99
Goykovich was influenced by his time playing with the band leader Maynard Ferguson, the grooving Kenny Clarke - Francy Boland Big Band and with the post-bop Woody Herman orchestra and the great Gil Evans. The eight-part suite that resulted was mostly informed by the harmonic colourings and melodic lines of his native Balkan music.
The suite is performed by the core quartet of Gokyovich on flugelhorn, Fritz Pauer on piano, Peter Trunk on bass (on one of his last recordings, this immensely important musician on the German Jazz scene was killed by car accident in NY 1973) and Tony Inzalaco on drums - all with added horns from the NDR Radio Orchestra, who work beautifully to flesh out the vision of the leader.
'Sketches Of Yugoslavia' is a gem from the archives from the days when German radio stations could afford the luxury of lavish large ensemble productions. (Proper Music) Price: £11.99
On 'Samba Do Mar', Goykovich shows a fresh and sparkling approach to Brazilian music. Ranging from one of Villa-Lobos' Baroque-influenced compositions and a pair of Antonio Carlos Jobim's legendary bossa nova tunes to some wonderful originals by Argentinian artist Sergio Mihanovich and trumpeter Dusko Goykovich himself, the program opens up new spaces for his and his band's ever-soulful imagination. This album displays a rare kind of Brazilness - natural and relaxed but at the same time sophisticated and original.
Goykovich's counterpart on this album is Hungarian guitar virtuoso Ferenc Snétberger who possesses one of the very few truly distinctive voices in the field of improvised classical guitar playing. Educated in jazz as well as classical music, Snétberger has integrated authentic Brazilian and Spanish techniques into his personal style. On this album he delivers great sounds and solos that radiate Brazilian moods touched by a free genius. Bassist Martin Gjakonovski is among Europe's best jazz bassists and previously recorded with such as Bob Berg and Michael Brecker. His dark and heavy tone brings a solid, earthy groove to this music. The youngster in the band, American drummer Jarrod Cagwin, is known for his extended studies in exotic drum languages. This time he mostly plays hand drums thus adding a taste of Afro-Brazilian heat. (Proper Music) Price: £11.99
In addition to Cæcilie Norby (vocals) and Lars Danielsson (bass, percussion), Egidijus Buozis has succeeded in gathering several other outstanding musicians around him: bassist Mattias Grönroos and drummer Tommy Holmgren from Sweden, Vytautas Sondeckis (cello) from Lithuania, German violinist Stefan Pintev, and by no means least, Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen.
With this jazz album, pianist Egidijus Buozis, presents himself to a wider audience beyond his native Lithuania for the first time. The very atmospheric soundscapes gathered together here make repeated direct and indirect references to the rich culture and distinctive beauty of the Baltic region, for example Buozis' arrangement of the Danish folk song 'Jeg gik mig ud en sommerdag' ('I went out one summer's day'), or the composition 'Sutartine', named after a unique style of Lithuanian folksong which was recognised by UNESCO as 'intangible cultural heritage' in 2010. (Proper Music) Price: £13.99
Brilliant US trumpeter Tim Hagans displays masterful solos, stylistically between modern jazz and avant garde throughout. The album is mostly about heavily swinging groove with some musical surprises included. The album also features bassist Martin Wind, drummer Jonas Burgwinkel and special guest Ardie Walser, who reads the poem 'Invictus'. (Proper Music) Price: £13.99
In 2014 Jeroen van Vliet was awarded The Boy Edgar Prize; the most important recognition in The Neth-erlands for jazz and improvised music. The jury called him one of the few great poets of Dutch improvised music, faithful to the beauty of sound. (Proper Music) Price: £12.99
Bleckmann's intimate delivery, Hülsmann's sense for the bare-boned ballad, and the discreet arrangements put a well-deserved focus on the lyrics, including the very fine song texts of Langston Hughes, Ogden Nash, Maxwell Anderson, Ira Gershwin and Ann Ronnell - as well as Marc Blitzstein's brilliantly-vivid adaptation of Brecht, which gave Mack The Knife immortality. "The emphasis on slow tempos was made almost intuitively," says Hülsmann. "These wonderful lyrics seem to me to demand that you give them space - and give the listener time to really follow the words".
The project, which also adds Julia's settings of Walt Whitman, with whom Kurt Weill felt an affinity, came together at the instigation of the Kurt Weill Festival in Dessau in 2013. Since then it has gained new life on the road and been fine-tuned in this studio recording made in Oslo in June 2014 with Manfred Eicher as producer. It marks a musical advance for the Hülsmann group at a number of levels, and these recastings of Weill open up new imaginative possibilities for the players. (Proper Note) Price: £14.99
With this group, gentle but insistent rhythms can trigger seismic musical events. Although Vallon (recently nominated for the Swiss Music Prize) is the author of nine of the pieces here, the band members share equal responsibilities for the music's unfolding.
The gravitational pull of Patrice Moret's bass and the intense detail supplied by Julian Sartorius's drums and cymbals are crucial to the success of Vallon's artistic concept and the range of emotions the music can convey. (Proper Music) Price: £14.99
Recorded at Avatar Studios in New York and mixed at Rainbow Studios in Oslo, Hofseth’s playing and compositions reveal the influence of the time he spent as a member of Steps Ahead as well as that of his compatriot, the saxophonist Jan Garbarek. (Proper Music) Price: £13.99
Now we can finally hear them in two CD volumes. They show Martial Solal at his best, his incontestable talent, dazzling virtuosity and invention, but also his good taste and sense of humor in the execution. The originality of his conception, paired with his elegant control and technique, put him on a par with the great American pianists. (Fresh Sound Records) Price: £13.99
After studying music in Paris and Turin, Bonifazi embarked on professional career as a jazz musician in Europe. His trip to NYC in 2014 enabled him to establish a network of friends in New York jazz scene. Bonifazi returned to NYC the following year with host of compositions of his own to record. (Proper Music) Price: £16.99
“Awase”, a term from martial arts, means “moving together” in the sense of matching energies, a fitting metaphor for the dynamic precision, tessellated grooves and balletic minimalism of Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin. Six years have passed since the last release from the Swiss group. In the interim, trimmed from quintet to quartet size and with new bassist Thomy Jordi fully integrated, Ronin has become a subtly different band. Bärtsch speaks of a new-found freedom and flexibility in the approach to the material, with “greater transparency, more interaction, more joy in every performance”. The freedom here extends to revisiting early Bärtsch modules alongside new compositions including, for the first time on a Ronin record, a piece by reedman Sha. Awase was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in the south of France in October 2017 and produced by Manfred Eicher. (ECM Records) Price: £14.99
This album is part of the ECM TOUCHSTONES series: Great music and full-dimensional sound at download price, in cardboard covers with original artwork. (ECM Records) Price: £11.99
Recorded live at Rome’s Auditorium Parco della Musica last November, this album documents the meeting of the doyen of Italian jazz, Enrico Rava, with Joe Lovano, masterful US tenorist of Sicilian heritage. Rava and Lovano front a spirited quintet that includes lyrical pianist Giovanni Guidi, dynamic drummer Gerald Cleaver and rising star bassist Dezron Douglas (who makes his ECM debut here). Well-loved tunes by the two bandleaders form the core of the programme, including Enrico’s intricate “Interiors” and “Secrets” and Joe’s vigorous Texas blues “Forth Worth”, which recalls the energies of Ornette and Dewey Redman. The programme concludes with an extended and powerful medley that roams across the history of modern jazz as it gathers together Lovano’s “Drum Song”, John Coltrane’s “Spiritual” and the standard tune “Over The Rainbow”. (ECM Records) Price: £14.99
180g vinyl pressing. Price: £28.99
On 'Our Songs', Alex Riel brings together two musical playmates: The legendary bassist Bo Stief, who like Riel, belongs to the generation of Danish musicians who started their professional careers at Montmartre in the 60s, and Carsten Dahl, one of Europe's most innovative piano players. (Proper Music) Price: £13.99
The quartet had never played together, before they gathered at the scene of the historic jazz club Montmartre in Copenhagen and played the music of the moment at three sold out evenings in August 2021. After these concerts, where musical sparks flew in abundance, the four musicians went directly in the studio for a 6 hours spontaneous recording session. The result is a once in a lifetime jazz voyage. (Proper Music) Price: £13.99
180g vinyl with a free download code included. Price: £28.99
When 'Masqualero' was released in the autumn of 1983, the album was received with unanimous critical acclaim, and won the Spellemannspris (Norwegian Grammy) for best jazz record of the year. (Proper Music)
180g Vinyl Pressing. Price: £19.99
The second ECM album from this Polish-Swedish-British edition of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet follows the critically-heralded Matka Joanna. As Jazz Journal wrote, "Trumpeter Stanko's vibrant breadth of tone and poetic feeling for cross-rhythmic drama are second to none." Leosia marks a further progression, incorporating six first-rate Stanko compositions in his brooding "Slavic" style, darker than the darkest Miles (and incorporating a tribute to Lautréamont, literature's Count of Darkness), as well as bracing and exploratory duo and trio improvisations, and solos of the higherst calibre by all concerned. The group has an unusual claim on idiomatic completeness; it seems to summarize, in highly original manner, many of the important developments of jazz of the last 30 years. Stanko, however, distances himself from the general drift toward reinterpretation of standards in the 1990s. His bent notes, slurs, smears and violent fanfares are put to the service of a new group music. (ECM Records)
A BEBOP SHOP MILESTONE- An essential recording for your jazz CD shelf Price: £14.99
December Avenue was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in June 2016 and produced by Manfred Eicher.(ECM Records) Price: £14.99
“Plays Bach Volumes 1, 2 & 3”; “Jacques Loussier Joue Kurt Weill”.
Following in the footsteps of the renowned guitarist Django Reinhardt who had experimented with putting the swing into classical music before the war, here we present the French pianist and arranger Jacques Loussier with three volumes of his celebrated series, “Play Bach”. Accompanied as ever by Christian Garros on drums and Pierre Michelot on bass, Loussier shows us just how suited to the jazz idiom the music of the great classical composer was! Alongside the three “Play Bach” volumes we present the hard to find album “Jacques Loussier joue Kurt Weill” an album only released in France and up to now unavailable on CD! All four albums have been digitally re-mastered. (AVID Entertainment) Price: £8.99
Price: £8.99
Organized as a purely jazz session, the date here prominently features a young Joanne Brackeen on piano. It is perhaps Brackeen's presence that makes this set so interesting. As an avant-garde player she provides the vehicle for Thielemas to explore more advanced ideas. The album covers a wide range of material, including two originals by Brackeen, alongside standards by Coltrane, Ellington, Mercer and Mancini. (Proper Music) Price: £13.99
'One of the quietist and most contemplative records you could ever hope to encounter'. (The Penguin Guide To Jazz On CD) Price: £14.99
