Europe Jazz Media Chart - April 2025

This is a stunning solo piano album.  By playing inside the piano as well on the keys Sophie Agnel - who recently also released a live trio album from Cafe Oto with bassist John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble -  creates an amazing range of sounds which she uses to generate a very satisfying narrative.

Precisely free and wide playing spaces characterize basist, composer John Patitucci's new release Spirit Fall, where he has reconnected with the versatile Chris Potter and continued his close collaboration with Brian Blade. The inspiration for the album was the classic New York-trios that Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson worked with to explore the possibilities of the format.

This quintet is at the top of its game. This record is indispensable. (Jacques Prouvost)

Latvians are passionate anglers and jazz musicians are no exception, so a funky fusion album dedicated to fish is not too unusual for vibraphonist Miķelis Dzenuška. Using the privileges of a composer, he has chosen five favorite fish representatives for his fifth album – perch, frost, zander, pike and trout. As every angler knows, we are talking about river fish. The entourage of Dzenuška and his octet Victory Boulevard also flows like a stream of a single mass of water, in which musical themes are repeated and create a work that can be considered a whole. And yet, the TOP 5 fish representatives of Miķelis are each with their own character, which is more or less manifested in the specific compositions. In the best traditions of vinyl label Jersika Records, the new album was recorded live direct to analog tape without any editing or overdubbing. Let’s go analog fishing.

Every note on this album carries a deeper musical meaning—nothing is left to chance; everything comes together to form a rich, multi-layered sound. Dynamics and timbre play just as vital a role as melody, harmony, and rhythm, which the musicians wield with remarkable freedom and spontaneity. The ongoing dialogue between composer and performers creates a vibrant, improvisational atmosphere. The synergy between conductor and orchestra speaks for itself—their interplay is intuitive and seamless. Despite its pauses, the carefully curated program forms a cohesive whole, almost like a continuous suite. Both the composition and its interpretation deserve the highest praise. Everything here simply falls into place. A truly outstanding album that leaves us completely inspired!

"Homage is a dedication to all the people in our lives that inspired us to be ourselves, without hesitation especially to Manfred Eicher…" writes Joe Lovano in a brief liner note on the record sleeve of his second outing with the illustrious Polish jazz trio. They first played together as a quartet in Poland back in 2006 and met in a studio many years later in France to record Artic Riff  (2019), which was presented as the Marcin Wasilewski Trio w/ Joe Lovano. They have since toured internationally several times. On this newest album the accent is shifted to the American saxophone giant but all the musicians get an equal individual billing. Homage was recorded in November 2023 in the legendary Rudy Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey on the final day of a week long residency at the Village Vanguard in New York (12 sets over 6 nights). Joe Lovano plays tenor, tárogató and gongs, Marcin Wasilewski is at the piano, Sławomir Kurkiewicz on bass, Michał Miśkiewicz on drums. The album comprises six compositions. The opening tune “Love in the Garden” was written by the Polish violin icon Zbigniew Seifert, and  first recorded on his famous LP Man of the Light (1976) in a duet with pianist Jasper van’t Hof. All the remaining pieces are Joe Lovano originals. The haunting Golden Horn was selected as the first single, the album release is planned on April 25 (CD, LP & digital). The album was, of course, produced by Manfred Eicher. The music is sublime, at times mysterious, deep, lyrical, based on chemistry and inspired interaction.

The Norwegian piano player, Jon Balke, is a big name on ECM. His earlier solo projects Book of Velocities (2006), Discourses (2020) and Warp (2022), have all been interesting travels into his art of piano playing. And the new one, Skifum, is, from my point of view, his most interesting until now. Balke becomes more and more of a minimalist in his playing, and he uses no more than exactly the notes needed to create extremely beautiful and exciting music. And his use of the piano together with the spectraphone merges into a separate unit, where the piano's simple tone paths are in the foreground, with the spectraphone as the perfect background. Less is more is the saying within large parts of creative activity and art. One should not load on too much, just for the sake of loading on. There should be a meaning behind it. And where a little too many pianists should show how good they are, and play as fast as they can with as many notes as possible, all over the piano, Balke goes the other way. Here the music is almost naked and transparent. Not a note  too much. It is extremely beautiful music all the way. Skrifum is the Icelandic word for handwriting, and as Balke writes in the cover text: “referring to the idea of letting the lines flow in acoustic space, in the same way handwriting manifests itself on paper”. And I think he really has achieved that on this extraordinarily beautiful release.

That double bassist Milo Fitzpatrick has gold in his hands with Vega Trails was already clear on the first album Tremors In The Static. On that album still clearly a duo collaboration with all-blower Jordan Smart with all its musical limitations, Fitzpatrick has broadened the instrumentation for the second Vega Trails album Sierra Tracks. The result is magical musical landscapes. Moving from busy city life in London to country life in the foothills of the Sierra de Guardarrama mountains northwest of Madrid about three and a half years ago gave Fitzpatrick quite a bit of inspiration. New music kept coming. Freely named after his new home, Sierra Tracks is everything you could have hoped for after Tremors In The Static.

GEN is a recent project by pianist Satoko Fujii, bringing together a string trio (Yuriko Mukoujima and Ayako Kato on violins and Atsuko Hatano on viola and electronics) plus Hiroshi Yoshino on double bass and Akira Horikoshi on drums. In ‘Altitude 1100 Meters’ the sextet brings Fujii's compositions to life in a lyrical approach, with the chordophones amplifying a more chamber-like sound. The piano dialogues with the strings and, despite the limits imposed by the lines of the composition, this music has ample room for inventiveness.