Alekos Vretos – Mediterranean Echoes
Greek oud player Alekos Vretos builds a drummerless chamber quartet: oud, clarinet, piano and bass crossing Arabic modes, Greek folk music and improvisation.
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.
Dwayne Dolphin – Let the Music Play
Pittsburgh bassist Dwayne Dolphin runs “Milestones”, “St. Thomas” and “Autumn Leaves” through Latin rhythms, with James Moore’s trumpet out front.
WDR Big Band – Jagged Edges & Elegant Lines
The WDR Big Band records a full programme of Ayn Inserto’s music, with a new twenty-two-minute suite for trumpeter Sean Jones in four movements.
Henry Grimes & Marzette Watts – The Call
“The Call”, Henry Grimes’s 1966 debut as a leader, returns with three tracks by Marzette Watts’s octet tacked on: two opposite ideas of free jazz.
Christy Doran – Disambiguation
Guitar and tabla, eight pieces and fifty-one minutes. The seventy-seven-year-old Irish guitarist lets Imran Khan’s rhythm take his phrases apart rather than decorate them.
Jon Hassell – Music Is Invisible (Pentimento Volume Three)
Forty-two minutes of the last concert Hassell’s band ever played, in London in May 2015. Four tracks, one of them sixteen minutes long, and a trio that sounds like an orchestra.
Ghost Funk Orchestra release “Yours In The Ranks Of Death”, their fifth album, on 4 December
Eleven tracks, two of which have been out since the summer. Karma Chief presents it as Seth Applebaum’s most pared-down and personal work.
The Comet Is Coming gather all of “Channel The Spirits” into a box set with four unreleased tracks
Out 20 November through The Leaf Label: the Mercury-shortlisted debut, both EPs and four songs never released, one of them from 2013.
Andrea Goretti & Sivan Arbel – Bazrima
Piano and voice and nothing else: ten pieces and thirty-four minutes taped near Udine by an Italian pianist and an Israeli singer who until recently had never met.
Caktus x Ojkos – Øyeblikk
Sixteen Danish and Norwegian musicians, six pieces of eight to twelve minutes and an hour and five of music written entirely by Maria Dybbroe. Taped at Oslo’s national jazz stage.
Confusion Project – Identity
The Polish trio put the mazurka inside contemporary jazz: five “Mazurek” out of eight tracks and fifty-five minutes. Their fifth studio album, and their first for Dot Time.
Jeremy Cunningham – Passing Fires
Twelve tracks dedicated to his father, opening with his son’s voice saying he does not want to go to school. The Chicago drummer gathers Jeff Parker and Makaya McCraven and barely solos.
Brandon Seabrook – Utility Modern
The New York guitarist returns with a trio, a banjo and two tracks whose titles are the same words in a different order. Eight pieces of jazz that is not asking you to come along.
Jay Matharu – Disillusion
Nine years after his first album, guitarist Jay Matharu returns with a guitar-and-tenor quartet recorded between Sweden and France, Indian music surfacing here and there.
Kamila Csenge – Behind the Universe
Czech guitarist Kamila Csenge’s debut: seven tunes, a quartet with two electric guitars, and a mix that doesn’t always make clear which of the two is soloing.
Skúli Sverrisson – For All Your Flowers
The Icelandic bassist’s second meeting with Bill Frisell, eight years after “Strata”: ten pieces, thirty-seven minutes and a single dynamic register held from end to end.
The record Dave Douglas, Marc Ribot and Susie Ibarra built one stave a month leaves the subscribers’ circle
Greenleaf Music has put the New Sanctuary Trio CD on general sale after years as a subscriber-only release. Twelve pieces named after the months of 2016.
Orchestre National de Jazz – With Carla
A double album from the Orchestre National de Jazz on Carla Bley, the first programme of Sylvaine Hélary’s tenure. Eighty-five minutes, a third of which isn’t hers.
Enrico Pieranunzi & Bebo Ferra – Evanscape
A piano and guitar duo with Bill Evans in the background: only three of the eleven tunes come from that repertoire and the rest are their own. Fifty-one minutes in a single register.
Tommaso Starace Organ Trio – Live At The Beaver Inn
An organ trio recorded in a pub on the Devon coast: Starace on tenor, Jenkins on organ and Harbon on drums, stretching seven standards out to fifty-seven minutes.
Fluidian – Windscapes
Fourteen miniatures from Romanian Emil Gherasim’s electronics with Nils Petter Molvær’s trumpet on six of them. Forty minutes you’ll only find on Bandcamp.
Chris Coull Quartet & Imogen Ryall – Songs From Porgy And Bess
The Brighton trumpeter’s quartet and Imogen Ryall’s voice work through twelve songs from “Porgy And Bess” with bop phrasing. The closing “Summertime” lasts one minute forty-four.
Hill Collective – Fire In Orbit
Eleven players from Brighton, four tracks and thirty-seven minutes of spiritual jazz with Sun Ra in the background. Their first album for a label, and the one that runs short of pieces.
Ricardo Formoso – Electric Rebound
A Galician fusion quartet with no bass player: the electric piano takes the low lines and Formoso’s flugelhorn carries the tune. Forty-four minutes you won’t find on any platform.
Digba Ogunbiyi – Stay Still
The Nigerian pianist sets Yoruba names and dirges next to bebop, with talking drum and voice. The meeting happens more at the album’s surface than in its harmony.
Tommy Muellner – Solitary Moon
Twenty-eight years after his first album, the Chicago pianist returns with fifteen tracks and ten dedications. The playing is impeccable; the thread holding them together is biographical, not musical.
Adam Bałdych European Quartet – Endless
Violin, bandoneon, piano and bass recorded without an audience in a Polish concert hall. Bałdych alternates a low-tuned Renaissance violin, and almost the whole album is duets.
Kent Carter, the double bassist who backed Steve Lacy for almost twenty years, dies at 87
He died on Wednesday 30 September in Juillaguet, in the Charente, where he had lived since 1991 and ran an artists’ residence with his wife, the dancer Michala Marcus.
Libor Šmoldas Quartet – Sorry, Miles!
The Czech guitarist plays the tunes Miles Davis put his name to without writing them, plus four originals. The premise reads better than it sounds, but “Richard’s Regret” earns it.
Hermetic Science – The Lost Jazz Tapes EP
Four standards cut in a single take in March 1996 by a marimba, bass and drums trio, forgotten for thirty years and found while remastering the band’s first album.
James Blood Ulmer’s memorial brings the “Tales Of Captain Black” rhythm section back together in New York
Vernon Reid was musical director of the 29 September service at Saint Peter’s, with David Murray, Marc Ribot, Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Denardo Coleman. Ulmer died on 3 June, aged 86.
Dave Bass – Trio Nuevo, Vol. 3
Third volume in three years from Dave Bass’s trio with Tyler Miles and Steve Helfand: a Bach toccata, a seldom-played Monk and three contrafacts.
Nite Bjuti – minwi
The second album by Candice Hoyes, Mimi Jones and Val Jeanty, cut live at NUBLU in New York in May 2023 and released three years later.
George Garzone – Themes for Good Friends
Cut at Van Gelder Studios with Randy Brecker, Luis Perdomo, Santi Debriano and Jeff “Tain” Watts, and closed with a tribute to Michael Brecker.
Juan Chiavassa cuts a piano trio with Kikoski and Kozlov to go back into Roy Haynes’s world
The Argentinian drummer opened pre-orders today for his second Whirlwind album. Both of his sidemen played in Roy Haynes’s trio.
Ross Margitza – Discovery
Eight of his own compositions for piano trio, with a string quartet on four tracks and Joel Frahm on the first: forty minutes of held pulse.
Dave Holland turns eighty with a catalogue that starts at ECM number 1009
The label looks back over fifty-five years of shared catalogue, from the 1971 debut to the 2025 duo with John Scofield. Holland is still recording and touring.
Michał Skwierczyński – Consistency
Debut from the Polish guitarist based in Basel: ten of his own compositions in a quartet, produced by Wolfgang Muthspiel, with the prologue parked at track five.
Christian Finger – Zeit Zirkel
The German drummer based in New York cuts a record in a single day, with Alessi and Monder, about the way grief bends time. It ends twice and turns to look back before it stops.
Association P.C.
Association P.C., a Dutch group formed in 1969 by drummer Pierre Courbois, Jasper van ’t Hof and the German Toto Blanke, one of the first jazz-rock groups in Europe.