Nicki Adams & Michael Eaton – Arrival
A trio with no double bass: Nicki Adams’s piano covers the bass’s job and its own at the same time, and that leaves nine tracks with very little room to breathe.
Jazz
Jazz, en català: discos, concerts i figures del gènere, des dels segells històrics fins als projectes actuals que continuen ampliant el llenguatge de la improvisació. Tótum Revolútum Press hi dedica ressenyes i cobertura de concerts a Catalunya amb la mateixa atenció que al rock progressiu i el metal.
Rahsaan Barber – Eternal
Nine tracks cut in two days in Nashville, with a guitar inside the quintet and one single let-up: the only place the record eases off is a Marvin Gaye cover.
Brownswood repress “Arise” by Zara McFarlane on gold vinyl
The label brings its 2017 record back for its twentieth anniversary: produced by Moses Boyd, with Shabaka Hutchings, Binker Golding and Shirley Tetteh among the players.
Fernando Ferrarone – Beautifully Different
Alto saxophone on the first and last tracks, trumpet on everything in between and a quintet with three Argentinian players: the Florida multi-instrumentalist closes the record better than he fills it.
Bushman’s Revenge – Ah, Les Vaches!
The Norwegian trio announce a “pop” record and what they deliver is forty-four minutes with two interludes of a minute and a half and a “Purple Rain” that arrives by way of Sweden.
Jeffrey Lasky – Along the Midway Plaisance
Thirty-seven singles in four years and no album: the Chicago guitarist releases his first, and eight of the eleven tracks had already come out one at a time.
Ensemble neoN & Benedicte Maurseth – Always and Never the Same
Benedicte Maurseth’s Hardanger fiddle inside a contemporary music ensemble: eight pieces and forty-one minutes, out of a work premiered at Oslo’s Ultima festival in 2023.
Elin Forkelid – Plays For Trane, Vol. 2
The Swedish saxophonist goes back to the Coltrane of the final years with a piano-less quintet: five pieces in forty-two minutes, opened by a block of almost sixteen.
Gorm Askjær Trio – Microverse I
The Aarhus guitarist returns six years after his trio’s debut and adds clarinet and cello: twelve short pieces in thirty-nine minutes, between written chamber music and collective improvisation.
Kevin Haynes Grupo Elegua – Inner Outer Alignment Vol. 1
Hard bop, Cuban rhythms and Yoruba batá drums across five tracks: the alto player and ordained Ifá priest gathers Moses Boyd, Daniel Casimir and Deschanel Gordon around a very fast horn.
Punkt.Vrt.Plastik – Kompress
Draksler, Eldh and Lillinger take the piano trio apart for the fourth time: an interval from Ligeti, a Swedish hymn from 1589 and a club piano that judders like a mistracked record.
Ferg Ireland releases “Alive In London”, his chordless trio caught live
Recorded at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho with Nathaniel Facey on alto saxophone and James Maddren on drums, five years after the same trio’s first album.
David Bode – Live at the 2026 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
Twenty-two musicians in the WWOZ Jazz Tent, eight arrangements and five tracks that aren’t music. Bode brings Garrett, Buckley, Coltrane and Radiohead.
Sarah Pillow – Wanderer
Three Mingus pieces, one by Gismonti, one by Metheny and Mays, one by Corea. The repertoire is the strong decision on a record that has split the critics.
Kevin Fort & Andy Brown – Chiaroscuro
A Chicago piano and guitar duo that names its model outright: “Undercurrent”, by Bill Evans and Jim Hall. Four originals, four standards, forty-seven minutes.
Ivo Perelman, Elliott Sharp & Cyro Baptista – Triacontagon
Sixty-seven minutes of free improvisation for three, taped in Brooklyn in October 2024. Of the six pieces, only one starts with Perelman’s saxophone.
Brand X – Theory of Nothing: Recorded Live 1977
The tapes of the 1977 North American show came out of Robin Lumley’s attic and Percy Jones has remastered them. Two discs, ten pieces and the crowd in between.
Lau Noah and Michael League release “Come the Night”, six songs recorded in three days
The EP came out yesterday on GroundUP, Michael League’s label. It holds six songs moving between English and Spanish, with guitar, voice and little else.
Joshua Redman previews “God Bless the Child” from the album he dedicates to Sonny Rollins, who died in May
“If Ever You Would Leave Us (we play for Rollins)” comes out on 20 November on Blue Note. The first preview is a tune Rollins recorded in 1962.
Julian Lage releases “Aberdeen”, an outtake from “Scenes from Above”, and announces a trio record for 27 November
“Aberdeen” comes from the sessions for January’s album. And the single arrives with an announcement: “The Reservoir Sessions”, in a trio with Jorge Roeder and Joey Baron.
Justin Pierce – Sway
A Dallas quintet debuts with ten standards turned towards the Caribbean and New Orleans. Ashley Pierce sings seven of the ten and only three are instrumentals.
Supereon – Phase I
A Norwegian trio improvising out of a single rhythmic cell. The album opens with the first thing the three of them ever recorded together, bells worked with the left foot.
Masayo Koketsu & Nava Dunkelman – Veins of Rain
An alto-and-percussion duo recorded the first day the two players ever laid eyes on each other. Forty-six minutes under nine Japanese words for rain, frost and dew.
Simon Phillips releases the video for “Unstable Grounds”, the second from “Protocol 6”
Simon Phillips releases the whole track on video: he wrote it with guitarist Alex Sill, and Ernest Tibbs, Otmaro Ruiz and Phillip Whack play on it.
Azar Lawrence – Turn the Music Up
The 73-year-old tenor re-records the pieces from his first two albums with a septet and four guests. Fifty minutes, seven tracks and a density that costs him.
Christopher Lucas Wilson Trio – Wilson’s Way
Thirty-eight minutes of piano trio recorded in Chicago: five originals, two standards and a José Alfredo Jiménez ranchera played solo.
Madam Orange debut on 23 October with “Parallax”, eleven movements of bass clarinet, drums and electronics
The Chicago duo is Emily Rach Beisel on bass clarinet and Bill Harris on drums. Half the record was taped live at the Hungry Brain.
Sharp Little Bones – Step Up! Get Down!
Seventy minutes from the house trio at Nottingham’s Peggy’s Skylight with Tony Kofi on tenor: Rhodes, bass, drums and a very clear idea of how a groove should move.
Science Fair – Sugar in the Morning
Anna Ueland puts away the synths and the singing and sits at the piano with a Norwegian quintet of trombone and tenor sax. Nine tracks, and the first is a Mort Garson cover.
Møster! – Bolts
Five tracks and forty minutes cut in four days at Duper Studio: the Bergen quartet’s seventh album, with two members of Motorpsycho on guitar and drums.
Ran Blake – Voices
Nineteen pieces for solo piano, from Puccini to Al Green by way of “You Are My Sunshine”: the Springfield pianist, now ninety-one, records for Tzadik.
The sixth SGAE Tete Montoliu Jazz Prize is decided on 4 and 5 November at the Teatro Central in Seville
Four works out of the 56 entered are played at the Teatro Central on 4 and 5 November. The competition hands out €11,700 and has carried the Barcelona pianist’s name since 1999.
Krupka Trio – Hymns in a Jazz Mood Vol. 3
Twelve Norwegian hymns arranged for piano, saxophone and double bass, with no drums: the third volume of a series Ulf Krupka’s trio opened in 2014.
Gustavo Viríssimo – Reflexos
The Porto Alegre guitarist’s first album: eight pieces of frevo, baião and samba cut in two to six takes, with an unplanned acceleration left in.
Co Streiff – Russ Johnson Quartet – Oracle
Eleven days of a 2023 European tour edited down to six tracks: a quartet with no harmony instrument, Gerry Hemingway on drums and a sixteen-minute block at its centre.
Shuteen Erdenebaatar releases “Bright Folk” on 20 November, her first record with the new quartet
The Mongolian pianist plays with Nils Kugelmann, Simon Comté and Amir Bresler, with Jakob Manz guesting. The first track out is “Do You See the Stars I See?”.
Miles Okazaki is putting “The Monkathon” online for free, five hours of every Thelonious Monk tune on guitar
On 10 October, the day Monk would have turned 109, he opens a site with a permanent link. It is 66 songs in a row, no notation and not a word spoken.
The Lost Quintet’s 1969 Copenhagen concert comes out on double vinyl on 27 November
Columbia Legacy is putting it out for Record Store Day’s Black Friday, in a limited edition. The quintet is Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette.
Ray Lema & Ensemble Partage – Passion Congo
Ray Lema puts his piano in front of an Italian string quartet, a soprano saxophone and two percussionists: nine pieces that move from minimalism to ragtime without losing the pulse.
Vamze Wybrańczyk – Akvæn
Ten improvisations by drummer Patrycja Wybrańczyk and saxophonist Inga Vamze, with no harmonic instrument and the states of the North and Baltic seas as the programme.