Broken Blue is a modern jazz album. We understand modern jazz as an approach to jazz improvisation characterised by abstraction, lack of figuration, asymmetry, dominance of the subjective element in the management of musical images and constant and intense interaction between the soloist and the accompanying musicians. We could also say something that many musicians describe somewhat more generally, that modern jazz is an approach that seeks more and more freedom in the management of all the musical materials that jazz improvisation deals with, namely: melody, harmony, rhythm, phrasing, modes of narration and form.
Broken Blue is an exploration of different episodes, different possibilities or versions of such an approach. Each episode is an original composition, written to tell a unique story, to create a distinct musical place.
Rubicon (Spyros Manesis) explores the lyrical, impressionistic aspect through a prism of elastic rhythm, abstraction and chromaticism.
Hig (Anastasis Gouliaris) is characterised by timbral harmony serving a playing style permeated by nervousness, a tinge of angst, energy and extroversion.
Broken Blue (Spyros Manesis) is a fragmentary, extreme angular, dense and adventurous blues composition, with intense interaction between the members of the trio.
Once Upon a Summertime is the only non-original composition, written by Michel Legrand. It is the quietest moment for the trio on this album and is pervaded by lyricism, introspection and a tinge of nostalgia.
Bipolar (Spyros Manesis) – based on the harmony of the jazz standard Solar – is a quirky musical metaphor for an anthropological type, the old New York hipster of the 1940s who has been historically and culturally associated with the emergence of bebop. Characteristics of this type that we have tried to convey in a musical way are a twist, a looseness, a peculiarly incomprehensible way of speaking and perhaps a tone of irony and sarcasm.
Ding Dong (Arionas Gyftakis) explores the soloistic possibilities of double bass and piano in a condition of open form and harmony serving an angular, energetic and expressionistic, bordering on screaming at times, aesthetic approach.
Blue Flower (Arionas Gyftakis) is the application of an abstract expressionistic, fractured playing style in a tropical (modal) environment.
The album closes with Portrait in Yellow (Anastasis Gouliaris), a purely impressionistic composition, with timbral harmony and a performative approach characterised by introspection, an implicit inner pulse and a mood of melancholy and reminiscence.
Listen in Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0wIOfSD1FxqTXeoWVbP98f
