Tag: Free Jazz Blog
Today, something a little different. Carina Khorkhordina is a trumpeter and photographer from Russia, now living and working in Berlin. Some of her recent works are sound/site-specific videos that she has created showcasing some of the quickly disappearing ‘verlassene Orte’ (abandoned places) in the rapidly gentrifying city.The first is set in a de…
Jon Irabagon – Bird with Streams (Irabbagast, 2021) ****½
Ahh, COVID-19. How much has been written about it and how much has been lost to it? At the same
time, how many new possibilities appeared along with the global mayhem? For NYC
based saxophonist and composer Jon Irabagon, the pandemic took him and his
family on a journey westward t…
We are excited to have had a chance to touch base with Ken Vandermark and Brock Stuessi of the Catalytic Sound co-operative about the Catalytic Sound Festival. The second edition of the festivalwill be taking place in October, in Vienna, Haarlem, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Chicago, NYC, Trondheim, and Washington D.C. – and mostly viewable online. Paul A…
On September 30th, if you happen to be in the Albany, NY area around 10 a.m., tune in to 90.7 WGXC-FM. The Free Jazz Blog’s Paul Acquaro and Stef Gijssels join Tyran Grillo, author of the ECM dedicated blog and book Between Sound and Space: ECM Records and Beyond on radio host Cheryl K.’s show Situation Fluxus. Cheryl deftly leads the three in a co…
Angelika Niescier – Alexander Hawkins – Soul In Plain Sight (Intakt, 2021) ****½Germany based saxophonist Angelika Niescier and British pianist Alexander Hawkins share an intimate and explosive 52 minutes together on Soul in Plain Sight. The album, which was recorded after a series of concert dates last year in Europe was committed to tape (o…
Irene Schweizer, in concert in 2015. Photo by Peter Gannushkin.This year the Swiss pianist Irene Schweizer celebrated her 80th birthday. The writers at the Free Jazz Blog have covered the influential pianist’s work over the years and we thought it would be an appropriate celebration of her milestone year by reviewing not only her most recent releas…
When I first put on the drum and piano duo of John Blum and Jackson Krall, I felt a familiar sensation. It was that same, immediate and visceral reaction that I felt the day I stuck Cecil Taylor’s Conquistadorinto my car’s CD player, driving away from Jack’s Music Shoppe in Red Bank, NJ, where I had just bought a used copy of it, oh so many years a…
First off, this is one of the more creatively packaged CDs that I’ve opened in a long time. Inside a white cardboard shell with stark simple lettering and black and white images of wood or maybe cut stones, the CD itself is wrapped in a folded plastic envelope. Demanding delicacy in just its appearance, pulling at the corners of the wrapper then re…
A few weeks ago I wrote about several duo recordings featuring the guitar. Guitar and guitar, guitar and bass, guitar and flute, and several other combos. Now, I am moving into trio configurations and the definition of what makes this list gets even trickier. At first, I thought my basic approach is that the guitarist is the group’s organizer, but …
I still rather vividly recall first hearing woodwind’s Anna Webber’s compositions sometime ago and looking back at a review of the Simple Trio from 2014, I realized that all I wrote then still applied. All of the notes on her music’s concentrated intricate interconnecting pieces and edgy improvisation still apply, and if anything, her powers have o…
Today, I took a walk to one of Lisbon’s botanical gardens — there are actually a number of places that could serve as such, but this one is the Jardim Botânico de Lisboa, a part of the University of Lisbon — perched on the hillside near the old, winding streets of Bario Alto. The entrance was unexpectedly free, and as I began descending into the…
Photo by Juliane SchützThe 9th A L’ARME! Festival kicked off Wednesday night at Zenner in Berlin’s Treptower Park. An open air event with DJs and drums, the event is a nod to normal, helping to welcome live events back, which tepidly have begun popping up throughout the city (and will hopefully continue… Daumen sind gedrückt.)After the opening …
