Europe Jazz Media Chart - March 2019

A selection of the hot new music surfacing across the continent this month by the top European jazz magazines and websites

Paweł Brodowski, Jazz Forum (Poland)

ADAM BAŁDYCH QUARTET Sacrum Profanum (ACT)

Following his previous projects with Israeli pianist Yaron Herman and the Helge Lien Trio from Norway, it is Adam Bałdych’s first album recorded for ACT Music with a group of Polish musicians. “Sacrum Profanum” is the violin virtuoso’s perhaps most ambitious endeavor. Featuring his reworkings of classical composers from different epochs (Thomas Tallis, Hildegarda von Bingen, Sofia Gubajdulina, Gregorio Allegri), the Polish mediaeval hymn “Bogurodzica”, as well as his own compositions, it is in his own words “a multidimensional effort which defies classication”. Adam Bałdych is playing violin and Renaissance violin, with Krzysztof Dys on piano, Michał Baranski on bass and Dawid Fortuna on drums.

Mike Flynn, Jazzwise (UK)

BRANFORD MARSALIS QUARTET The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul (OKeh/Marsalis Music)

Anna Filipieva, Jazz.ru (Russia)

MASHA ART AND LRK TRIO Anesthesia (Losen Records)

Label's website

| Youtube

Jan Granlie, salt-peanuts.eu (Pan-Scandinavian)

JEANNE LEE / RAN BLAKE The Newest Sound You Never Heard (A-SIDE RECORDS)

The Newest Sound You Never Heard has become a wonderfully beautiful record from two musicians who held together until one of them (Jeanne Lee) died on October 25, 2000. And it has become a fantastic document on what these two excellent musicians created together over the years. Highly recommended!

Christine Stephan, JAZZTHETIK (Germany)

THEON CROSS Fyah (Gearbox)

Youtube

Viktor Bensusan, jazzdergisi.com (Turkey)

HOFF ENSEMBLE Polarity (2L)

Youtube

If you want to feel the culture, tradition and attitude of the North of Norway in a music of sophistication, Jan Gunnar Hoff will be your quintessential host. His romanticism and well hidden swing melt into the melodies inspired by his Arctic surroundings and lifestyle. Hoff likes happy endings in his music and Polarity is the beginning of all the ends that justify the means...

Henning Bolte, Written in Music (Netherlands)

SIMON TOLDAM TRIO feat. NILS DAVIDSEN, KNUT FINSRUD Omhu (ILK)

Label's website

For new work musicians can play different notes OR they can play notes differently, with a different attitude, a different approach. That’s what happens in this new recording of the renowned trio of pianist Simon Toldam, bassist Nils Davidsen and drummer Knut Finsrud from Copenhagen. <<Omhu>> is played in slow pace, circumspect, moulded with utter care and a lot of spaciousness, seemingly discontinuously. Notes are falling as raindrops amid prowling textures, shuffling timbres and reptilian mood shifts. It all happens the way sounds occur and rise in nature and provides a distinguishing listening experience.

Patrik Sandberg, OrkesterJournalen (Sweden)

GORAN KAJFES TROPIQUES Into the Wild (Headspin Records)

Label's website

With his group Tropiques, Goran Kajfes controls a music that slowly builds up repetitive motifs, at the same time as the rhythm and improvisations are in constant motion. Once introspective and as well as traveling feeling.improvisions constantly in motion, and reminds that the music is created pace for pace. At the same time there are clear connections to the music Kajfes creates on his own X / Y disc and with Subtropic Arkestra

Cim Meyer, Jazz Special (Denmark)

FRED HERSCH TRIO ’97 @ The Village Vanguard (Palmetto Records)

Tight, focused and swinging in the standard tradition of trio jazz. These selections paved the way for Hersch’ recurrent well attended engagements at The Village Vanguard.