A concert in 1995 at Cafe Amores, in Hofu, Yamaguchi of the duo of Japanese percussionist Midori Takada and alto saxophone Kang Tae Hwan, both using exceptional and unusual approaches to their music, applying their backgrounds in free jazz, theater and studies in traditional African and Asian percussion to create a unique hybrid, from hypnotic to frenetic; fascinating.
Saadet Türköz’s influences spread far and wide. Born in 1961, the singer grew up on the Bosporus where Europe and Asia meet. Her ancestors were nomads who migrated from Semey in Kazakhstan to East Turkestan from where they fled via India and Pakistan to Istanbul. But Istanbul, international city, modern metropolis and history-laden cultural crucible, is not the only place to have influenced her.
Electro-Acoustic Composer, Cornetist Rob Mazurek continues to focus on the Brazilian side of his musical production, and that’s good news. Even better when we notice that “Chants and Corners” is something else than a new São Paulo Underground enterprise – some of the contributors are the same, but the project has another confection and this signifies that it’s multiplying in different perspectives, like the flowers of a plant. Playing a modular synth, a sampler and a piano besides his cornet, Mazurek has as partners drummer Mauricio Takara and keyboardist Guilherme Granado (both involved in the two albums recorded live in Portugal by Pharoah & The Underground, the association with Pharoah Sanders of both the Chicago Underground and the São Paulo Underground bands), and also two musicians who preferred to live and work in Brazil, the Swiss rabeca and saxophone player Thomas Rohrer and the British-Chilean pianist Philip Somervell. Of course, the music has a modern psychotropic atmosphere all over it, in the confluence of a large plurality of influences, going from avant-jazz, free improvisation and post-rock to alternative hip-hop and new music. Yes, Mazurek’s imaginary Brazil of sounds is also a big country.
![Charles Mingus Sextet with Eric Dolphy - Cornell 1964 (1964) [2CDs] {Blue Note}](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/64/54/003f5464_medium.jpg)
This recently-discovered release is certainly the jazz find of the year so far in 2007. In much the way that John Coltrane/Thelonious Monk Live at Carnegie Hall and, to some extent, the live Coltrane document One Up, One Down, Cornell 1964 brings a major piece of jazz history into focus in the best way possible–with an actual recording that documents it.
Revisited and remastered, with additional takes, texts and photos, here is the very first ECM session, recorded in Ludwigsburg in November 1969, featuring the great American pianist Mal Waldron, whose resume included work with Coltrane, Mingus, Dolphy and Billie Holiday. In his original liner notes, Mal wrote: “This album represents my meeting with free jazz. Free jazz for me does not mean complete anarchy… You will hear me playing rhythmically instead of soloing on chord changes.” As Jazz Journal noted, “tough, two-handed modal blues” predominates, and the music sounds as fresh now as the day it was recorded. Indeed, the tersely-grooving “Boo” and “Rock My Soul” could be club hits half a century later.
Yves Rousseau is one of the leaders of the french and european jazz scene. Among his various activities, he has managed for more than ten years, as head of his quartet, a work of writing and improvisation at the outpost of jazz and new music styles. With an original orchestration that gives to this formation its so unsual sound. It unites 4 musicians with affirmed personnality in touch with various musics like jazz, of course, but also baroque music, song, without neglecting the major composers of the 20th centuary… The result is a wide variety of melodies, tempi, nuances, choices in the timbres and in the modes of play which have a single quality and aim to solicitate the publics imaginative.
Saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and pianist Aki Takase initially performed together at Jazzfest Berlin in 2016, and they turned that encounter into ongoing spirited dialogues three years later for theirs first duo disc. As with Takase`s recent solo album, Hokusai, and Laubrock's small group albums, they unravel a series of sudden twists throughout a set of brief compositions. Serious technique support that playfulness here, as does a warm mutual empathy.
