Europe Jazz Media Chart - August 2023

This is, in many ways, a stellar example of how you don't need a big, commercial name to be one of the world's best guitarists (Tisziji Muñoz). And with Kresten Osgood and Bob Moses as "armors", they have made a "guitar album" that should make a large number of guitarists leave their guitar and let the professionals do the job. And here we meet one of the best and most unknown in superb interaction and "battle" with two of the world's most outstanding drummers.

Fuat Tuaç gives a Bee Gees atmosphere to jazz vocal, soft yet strong. As jazz has its roots in the music of the displaced, this album reflects the zeitgeist where most of us physically, mentally or emotionally migrate with or without our own will...

The concert recorded on this album in March 2022 was the kick off of a - still continuing - series of BIMhuis- commissions called REFLEX. The title collates musical reflection and action-intervention towards grains of social and individual realities. The challenge is to find intervening forms of music making that not only reflect realities but also open up undiscovered, unknown sides and views of it. Music as an art form does not talk about things or create symbolic imagery. It touches our souls, the flow and rapids of our moods, our feelings and own inner time by organised sounds, its energies and dynamics. All pieces on this album come from a wondrous place and indeed connect among each other in miraculous modes. Fascinatingly Kalfa crosses the realms between whispers, cries and deep canto (especially in the beauty of her dreamlike phrasing of Sait Maden’s poem Boslukta that gets a natural place here, and in her deeply touching a capella vocal duo with Fuensanta in “Wound”). Free improvisation, radical vocals, driving rhythmic vibrance and poignancy and balladeering emerge from a strong, elegant and passionate undercurrent unified in a remarkable way. That constitutes something almost non-graspable and just due to it a new enchanting form with its own attracting ether and its challenging secrets. Kalfa not only has an amazingly flexible expressive voice and truthful way of making use of it. Her spontaneous lively dramaturgy and her performance intensity lift it all to a higher airy level while it actualises effortlessly and organically with great surrender. The group comprises four female musicians of divers origin (Turkey, Poland, Korea, Mexico), key members (and bandleaders in their own right) of the new vibrant Amsterdam/Rotterdam scene plus two female artists from Istanbul: Sanem Kalfa (comp, vocals, vcl, electronics), Marta Warelis (p, vocals), Fuensanta Mendez (b, vocals), Sun-Mi Hong (dr, vocals), Kamucan Yalçin (cl, vocals), Ilgen Arzik (decor, costumes). As an incidental feature of this album you can also immerse into integral registration of the concert on BIMhuis TV. It’s a worthwhile extra rich pleasure. You can take the more condensed album as a stepping stone for that.

Pat Methenys latest record Dream Box features pianist Chris Fishman and drummer Joe Dyson and pushes the bandleaders boundaries of musical exploration once again. The goal for the soon 69-year-old guitarist has in recent years been to work with musicians from a younger generation with whom he nevertheless feels a kind of kinship -- similar to the role Metheny himself had when Gary Burton brought him into his band and let him develop there. The material is based on forgoten recordings, a discovery during a deep dive into his hardrive on his laptop. Once again, the guitar legend demonstrates his sophisticated and unfailing ability to make every note ring with great meaning.

Migrating Songs by Niclas Knudsen we recommend to guitar lovers of the finest class playing as in the primal spirit of Philip Catherine and Jim Hall. (Bernard Lefèvre)

Adam Larson is a bright representative of the American jazz generation in their thirties, one of the creators of the modern transoceanic jazz sound. The new album, which finishes a trilogy dedicated to the most important cities in Adam Larson’s life (Chicago, Kansas City, New York), proves that he is both a passionate tenor saxophonist and composer, and a delicate innovator who is not afraid to cruise into new jazz waters. The record dedicated to New York was played together with two representatives of the jazz scene of the Big Apple – Matt Clohesy, a creative bass player with a great vibe, and Obed Calvaire, a drummer with a right feeling for subtle jazz playing. Doing without the presence of a harmonic instrument, all three feel free to swing and groove, and the album never feels like something is missing. A brilliant modern jazz LP in 2023.