Europe Jazz Media Chart - January 2026

This is one of the most important re-releases of the last year. Zbigniew Namysłowski’s debut album, recorded for Decca in 1964, is one of the best in the entire discography of the late Polish jazz giant. Its first printing was quickly sold out and vanished from the market, eventually becoming one of the most sought after collector’s items. Considering the fact that the original master tapes were assumed to have perished, its reappearance, on vinyl as well as CD, is a miracle. Lola was the first album recorded by a Polish jazz group in the West, predating the arrival of Polskie Nagrania’s renowned Polish Jazz series (which was launched less than a year later). Following their sensational appearance at Jazz Jamboree 1963 in Warsaw, the Zbigniew Namysłowski Quartet was invited for a tour of Great Britain, creating a stir with performances around the country and a week-long stint at Ronnie Scott’s. The highlight of the tour was the record session at Decca Studio in London. The Zbigniew Namysłowski Modern Jazz Quartet (as it was called on the cover) included the leader on alto saxophone, Włodzimierz Gulgowski on piano, Tadeusz Wójcik on bass and  Czesław “Mały” Bartkowski on drums. Four young musicians (Namysłowski the oldest at 25) made an impression with their distinct style and innovative approach, blending the sound of John Coltrane with the elements of Polish folklore. With the exception of one standard (the fast-paced “Ol’ Man River”), it presented only original compositions, most notably Namysłowski’s opening tune “Piękna Lola, kwiat północy (Beautiful Lola, Flower of the North)” and “Piątawka” (in 5/4), which was based on the motifs of highlanders music. The original liner notes, written in English by Roman Waschko, are now complemented by a contemporaty essay offered by the British critic Tony Higgins, printed in an insert with the LP release. Namysłowski became a leading force and an iconic figure not just in Polish jazz. He died in 2022 at age 82.

This has become an absolutely beautiful album that, as far as I know, is currently only available digitally. And if it will eventually be available, I'm sure that the album will become a  «hit» with lyrical and absolute beautiful music from start to finish. And Kristin Skaare (piano) and Andreas Amundsen have selected songs that most of us (in Norway) have a good relationship with, and everything are performed very beautifully. Another brilliant release from Kristin Skaare!

Henri Texier is one of the singular gentlemen of the double bass in France. The songs in the album are healing, reminiscing, and funk-opating as in Chebika Courage. The Texier compositional anthology is worth listening especially with such a dynamic and eclectic band.

It’s maybe the album with the longest title released in 2025. For sure it is extraordinary with respect to its musical gems and the experiential journey it has to offer. It is a solo album of this Amsterdam vocalist/cellist that opens secret doors to hidden realms, to secrets behind the taken for granted and takes you to forms of compelling simple purity mostly submerged in the noisy and the tempestuous of our world. The album is a conjunction of nine pieces, songs in zooming-in mode and macro quality with interstices making that you can clearly hear and sense the different sound elements and layers in its execution like the raspy sliding cello sounds and the smouldering electronics moving around each other, a conjunction where each song naturally emerges from the preceding, where each song provides the context for the following. They are independent units and at the same time not imaginable without the sounds surrounding them. This interlace with its open interstices, evokes an extraordinary sphere of a slowly growing authentic acoustic space of intimate sound and sounding out on a magic wandering, a very own, close-by entity that confides in its listeners. Nothing is smoothed out or levelled. All is proffered in the momentaneous nature of its very generation. The sound has not been enhanced but has been preserved in its fragile sides and its full perceptive beauties. Kalfa’s cello playing in and through this is highly economical and fitting, and when she uses the ukulele, she turns out as welcome kindred spirit of Tom Zé. The collection and sequencing of the pieces, songs on this album reveal an intelligent mind and a highly-developed, matured musicality constituting a unique voice extracted from an in-depth living and exploring various cultural surroundings released on a Norwegian label. The album consists of a combination of Turkish-speaking and English-speaking songs, own compositions, Turkish poetry of Sait Maden set to Kalfa’s music, a piece by Ambrose Akinmusire, a collaborator of Kalfa, and a deeply moving interpretation of the “Lament of Aldana” sung by her in Armenian. It refers to the historical tragedy that happened about 100 years ago in the city of Aldana in the Southeast of Anatolia. The tissue-like quality applies to the conjunction and spectrality of different vocal qualities that richly conjoin in the song-lines. In it and through it, the beauty of the Turkish language with its vowel harmony reveals in extraordinary radiance. It is a truly vocal album across the entire vocal spectrum with full vocal carrying power in a quite intimate, boldly open and appealing way. Very high vocal registers cross paths with low ones, are brought together in beautiful and strong expressive modes. Kalfa’s secret and strength lies in the effortless, livedness and elegance her voice rises into ethereal layers, makes those shimmer,  speaks to the imagination and takes up the soul of the beholder. To touch upon and get into those zones of experience and feelings, vocalist and beholder enter a complicity of immersion and surmounting. In La Kalfa’s case it is un chose not only of voice artistry but of expression with and of the whole body with the sensitivity of the skin, which can fully be sensed in live performance and has its impact on the recording too. In whichever key she sings, she goes for it, exposes herself, without ifs, ands, or buts. To keep it short: it is just beautiful music and beautiful singing to be compared only with herself. And in case of being seized, gripped, ignited: she beneficially covers a broader colorful field. She has just released an album of her group Televizyon (w/Marta Warelis, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Sun-Mi Hong) - “Mom! I’m Growing Up” Sauajazz Say 005.

Once again, a positive outcome of the Covid lockdown when most tours were cancelled. Some jazz musicians took the opportunity to check the phonebook for old acquaintances and form new constellations. THE JAZZ GALLERY from 2021 is such an endeavor. They knew each other from gigs years ago, but they had never made it into the studio together, until now. Danish drummer Anders Mogensen is no stranger to forming combos of international reputation. This time he reunites with German saxophonist Ben Kraef, born and raised in Berlin, and Danish bass player Andreas Lang also well-known from the vibrant Berlin jazz scene. The trio share the composing and arranging duties and have added a couple of lesser-known classics: Upper Manhattan Medical Group, made famous by Duke Ellington, and Tit er jeg glad (In English: Often I’m Happy) by the Danish classical composer Carl Nielsen. Although this is a Northern European trio the relationship with America is firmly intact as titles like Kraft’s Three For Elvin and Billy Strayhorn’s UMMG indicate. And also Kraef’s tenor playing has reminisces of John Coltrane as well as more recent American greats. The three musicians pull together their collective influences and experiences into an inventive and creative excursion saturated in jazz history from both sides of the Atlantic. The music covers a spectrum from the sensitive and introspective to the hard-swinging and grooving.

Organisers, invite this quintet to your festivals and clubs!

Legendary Latvian composer Raimonds Pauls has dedicated part of his creative work to jazz, although he is better known as a traditional pop composer. However, he himself has always emphasized his love of jazz. In January of this year, he gave himself a great gift for his 90th birthday – a new jazz suite Acumirkļi / Moments for highly professional Latvian Radio Big Band, dedicated to the trumpeter and former colleague Gunārs Rozenbergs, who now plays jazz not in this world. The new suite is appropriately released on vinyl, arranged in the Latvian jazz style of the sixties, and includes compositions of various nature and intensity. It is always a pleasure to see that new and exciting music is created by composers even at such a respectable age.