Europe Jazz Media chart - February 2022

The first sounds of the harp and an intimately blown flute reminds of ancient minnesong. They exhale calm and comfort, freedom from danger. But security often precedes the unforeseen. As the song develops first strange flexions disturb the equilibrium and invoke contrast. Such dialectics of harmony and aberration are the constant that unite the songs of the Levitation Orchestra. The album is built around two centers: „Listen to her“, the second track in the list, is the musical interpretation of a poem by Dilara Aydin-Corbett dealing with the systemic abuse of women in modern western society impressively culminating in the shouted phrase „spit it out!“ The four part suite „Child“ which 20 minutes fill an entire side of the double LP builds on a subtly grooving intro pierced by a first solo by the violin thereby opening brief passages of quiet for verbal text. This music is dealing with difficult subjects which are approached beautifully in a very transparent and merciless fashion.

Recorded in November 2019 in Hilversum, Netherlands, Just Ignore It is the fifth album by an international trio of Leszek Możdżer (Poland), Lars Danielsson (Sweden) and Zohar Fresco (Israel). Możdżer plays piano and keyboards, Danielsson plays acoustic and electric bass, and cello; Zohar on percussion and vocals. They have first met in 2004 and instantly called „a dream team” – for their masterful and inspired playing, musical invention, uncanny improvisations, and telepathic communication. They toured widely with enthusiastic reception wherever they performed. All of their five albums have been released on Leszek’s Outside Music label: The Time (2005), Between Us And The Light (2006), Live (2007), and Polska (2013). On this most recent adventure they are joined by Holland Baroque, a Dutch chamber orchestra specializing in old music (with which Leszek recorded the album “Earth Particles”). Not unexpectedly, “Just Ignore It” takes us into the world of music which is hard to describe or pinpoint, full of delicate melodies, sophisticated harmonic textures, solutions bringing to mind associations with classical music, old and new, and ethnic inspirations, avoiding traditional categories of jazz as we know it. There are nine tracks, composed mostly by either Lars or Leszek. The standout track is Peter Gabriel’s magical hit “Don’t Give Up.” The closing piece, “Tineketta,” features Sopot Music Theatre’s boys choir. It’s a lovely album, do not ignore it.

The newest album of ubiquitous pianist Alexander Hawkins (1981) from UK has a lot to offer. Titles as “Faint Making Stones” (coming from the poem “Sound” of great poet Robert Creeley) and “Chaplin in Slow Motion” (coming from Eduardo Galeano’s book “Football in Sun and Shadow” and referring to ultimate soccer magician Manuel dos Santos aka Garrincha) appeal already strongly to the imagination. It is Hawkin’s sixth album on Intakt since 2017 and a follow-up to his duo-album Soul in Plain Sight with German saxophonista Angelika Niescier (1970). Break A Vase is a fully joyful affair brought into reality by a great line-up comprising two percussionists, Stephen Davis on drum set and Richard Olátúndé Baker on African percussion, Neil Charles on double bass and acoustic bass guitar, Otto Fischer on electric guitar and Shabaka Hutchings, reeds and flute - a sextet with a programmatic name and, next to the literary references, Bach+Braxton as a deep source of inspiration. Listeners fond of variate high dynamics with exhilarating turns as and well as listeners fond of sophisticated tricky rhythmical patterns and great flow will fully and satisfactorily be served. The music is an expedition into a wonderland of sophisticatedly layered, crossing and offset rhythms, an expedition into dragging, limping, waddling, lurching, jerking, sauntering, hovering, roaming ways of motion - a great range of gaits. Admittedly absent: the parading on the catwalk, the changing of the guards and the drunken sailors’ loops of stumbling. But, of course it is not a catalogue but a musically motivated route in ten pieces taken here by means of rich and colorful orchestrations in fully flourishing flow based on, triggered by well-structured molds and unfolding along a clearly lighted line where rhythm and melody intertwine. It shows dynamic alternation of high flying and crumbling down, moments of thrilling overturning and sudden hazing, playful combination of clocking exactness, crossfading flurrying parts and destabilizing escapes into equilibrium. It is Hawkins’ passionate game with the interlocking combinatorics of canons that generates evocative resonants beyond and above the lines played so vividly rushing by the musicians here. As an outstanding characteristic of this work counts that it is a well thought-out distillate from the experiences a vast number of different live performances during the recent over-regulated irregular period. In this many-sided process for example piece 10 “Even the Birds Stop to Listen” is based on a commission by Nadin Deventer (Jazzfest Berlin) devised as “Sunnosphere” by Hawkins and Siska, Matthew Wright and Shabaka Hutchins, and ultimately realized live by Siska, Nick Dunston and Lina Allemano in Berlin. It also turns out that Hawkins is able to skillfully apply means when those are demanded, make sense and fit in as the subliminal electronics in the striking “Stamped Down, or Shovelled”. To answer the big question if and how Bach-architecture and lush Braxtonian labyrinthine sprouting can cross-fertilize through these musicians, you should immerse into the music - on your headphones or even better, hopefully live soon at a vibrant site. 

Norweigan bassicon and composer Arild Andersen assembled this distinguished line-up with Alphonse Mouzon, Bill Frisell and John Taylor for a dynamic one-off concert at the 1981 Molde Jazz Festival, originally released in October 1982. This long awaited reissue adds more than 20 minutes of previously unreleased material, and the original dramaturgy of the performance has also been restored.

We search, we dig & one day we find a nugget. (Pierre Dulieu)