A selection of the hot new music surfacing across the continent this month by the top European jazz magazines and websites
If Bird lives, this is the album! 3 of the best mainstream saxophonists backed by a stellar rhythm section for Bird's tunes, standards as well as originals.
Swedish pianist Sebastian Bergström in a spirit rejoice. Joyful and brilliant executed, he and his band bring new life to the songs of South Africans like Dudu Pukwana, Chris McGregor and Louis Moholo.
A strong contender for the Danish Release of 2019. The YouTube video is from one of their first public performances (if not the first). Great compositions and great soloists pointing towards a bright future without dropping the jazz tradition.
We can take the problem in any direction, we must recognize that the Danish alto saxophonist and composer Signe Emmeluth is a great musician who has a strong sense of collective, narrative and whose energetic colors are generous. This second record contains all that. Well, it contains... let's say it explodes instead!
A fascinating new album by the young Polish pianist and visionary composer Piotr Orzechowski “Pianohooligan”. A musical re-imagining of the second part of the messianic drama „Forefathers” (an ancient feast summoning the ghosts) by the great Polish romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798 - 1855). It is a sort of suite, in which jazzy parts of the High Definition Quartet (Mateusz Śliwa - ts, ss; Piotr Orzechowski - p, Alan Wykpisz - b, Grzegorz Pałka - dr) are juxtaposed with electronic sets offered by ambient masters William Basinski and Robert Rich (USA), Christian Fennesz (Austria) and Poland’s own Krzysztof Knittel and Igor Boxx (from the duet Skalpel). A spiritual journey into the human soul.
Lumen Drones is doing the Norwegian folk music accessible to all the people of the world, and something better and more modern than what this trio is doing to further develop Norwegian folk music, is almost impossible to do. And they not even play the traditional songs - everything is written by the trio! A gem of a recording!
