Five years after the release of his album “Joys and Solitudes” on ECM, pianist Yonathan Avishai is back on jazz&people, the label that discovered him. Celebrating a decade of fertile collaboration with his trio, with Yoni Zelnik on double bass and Donald Kontomanou on drums, the musician releases “Shapes and Sounds” an album in which he magnifies everything ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
After tackling the sonatas for violin and piano of Bach, Busoni and Beethoven in 2017 – a “thoughtfully determined and subtly interconnected programme” according to Strad magazine –, the duo of Yuuko Shiokawa and András Schiff returns with striking renditions of Brahms’s Violin Sonata No. 1 and Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 2. When the ....
Composer: Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), Robert Schumann (1840-1856)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Instrumental
In blazing form, the trumpeter from Tel Aviv responds to the turbulent spirit of a troubled time, leading his dedicated band through a five-part suite that runs the gamut of emotions, by turns hopeful, despairing, outraged and profoundly melancholic. The melodic directness of the concluding “The Seventh”, composed by ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
With Seeing, Tord Gustavsen begins an intricate new chapter in his series of acclaimed trio recordings, initiated in 2003 with Changing Places – an album that is today considered a classic. The new recording with its compact, concentrated song forms „reflects my personal development as I get older, going for the essentials in life and music“, says the Norwegian pianist. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Four years after releasing their last album, Pericopes+1 return with an inventive new concept album of futuristic reflections on the present: “Good Morning World”. The 2024 release celebrates ten years of touring for this acclaimed Italian sax/piano/drums project whose style would best be described as “crossover jazz” by the international press ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Having previously joined forces on several Louis Sclavis recordings for ECM, including the clarinettist’s last acclaimed album Characters On A Wall, more recently pianist Benjamin Moussay and Sclavis have increasingly shifted their focus onto two-way communication, playing expansive and well-received duo sets throughout Europe. Deutschlandfunk reported on one of ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Collected on our travels and taught to us by our friends, these are songs we have learnt and loved together. Gathered from Argentina, France, Venezuela, Poland and the deep well of Sephardic culture, these folk tales speak to the moon, the mountains, the rain, the madness of humans and the prophecies of birds. – Alice, Fred and Misha ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Idiosyncratic, large-scale and in its fundamental disposition one of a kind, Florian Weber’s Imaginary Cycle, conceived for the unique instrumentation of brass ensemble and piano, is a hybrid of multiple musical languages that seamlessly blends the harmonious with the oblique. Here Weber presents a cycle in four parts, bookended by an ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
On Our Time saxophonist Trygve Seim and accordionist Frode Haltli rekindle their longstanding partnership (the duo will have played together a quarter century in 2025) in a programme of thought-provoking improvised and composed material, the Ukrainian lullaby “Oy Khodyt’ Son, Kolo Vikon” and North-Indian traditional “Shyama Sundara Madena ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
The Danish String Quartet’s new album is a “retracing of musical pathways across the North Sea, a journey through the sounds of traditional music from Northern Europe, taking us from Denmark and Norway to the Faroe Islands, and to Ireland and England.” It follows on from Last Leaf, the Danish String Quartet’s much-loved 2017 release, which was Classical Album of the Year at NPR ...
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Chamber Music
On their second ECM duo album Romanian pianist Lucian Ban and US violist Mat Maneri find fresh inspiration as they follow the trail of Béla Bartók, revisiting the folk music that spurred the imagination of the great Hungarian composer who, in the early 20th century, collected and transcribed numerous pieces from Transylvania. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
On their new album "Kammin Jaaretti," the renowned jazz trio Hot Heros craft mesmerizing forest jazz. Saxophonist Sami Sippola and double bassist Ville Rauhala have been navigating the depths of jazz together for over two decades. Originally part of the wild and unpredictable Black Motor, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Rekindling the familiarly flowing interplay with fellow travellers Thomas Morgan and João Lobo – the trio’s musical partnership goes back over a decade at this point –, on A New Day Italian pianist Giovanni Guidi moreover expands the group’s instrumental grasp with the introduction of American saxophonist James Brandon ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
This concert recording from Munich’s Schwere Reiter performance space features improvisation with an expanded palette of possibilities. “To work with these colours is a great challenge and joy!” says bassist Barry Guy of the glowing and ever-changing tints, timbres and tones radiating ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Outpost of Dreams introduces a new duo. Norma Winstone, as always quietly innovative as jazz singer and lyricist, brings her vocal subtlety and poetic sensibility to new pieces by Kit Downes, and to compositions by Carla Bley, Ralph Towner, and John Taylor. The programme is completed with fresh ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Vocal
Recorded at Munich’s Muffathalle in September 2004, this previously-unreleased live album of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet is a fascinating document, capturing a developmental chapter in the group’s music: between the song forms of the Suspended Night repertoire and the improvised areas that the Polish players would explore on Lontano. The Munich show was a highlight in a ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Named after a lyric from the first piece in Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben song cycle, the Delian Quartett’s programme of Im wachen Traume combines said cycle – in a new arrangement for soprano and string quartet by the late Aribert Reimann – with music by Renaissance composer William Byrd and Baroque composer Henry Purcell. ...
Composer: William Byrd (1543–1623), Robert Schumann (1810-1856), Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Vocal
Paul Hindemith – Alfred Schnittke
In a programme that combines Alfred Schnittke’s Concert for piano and string orchestra with Paul Hindemith’s Symphony Mathis der Maler and the composer’s The Four Temperaments, pianist Anna Gourari together with the Lugano-based Orchestra della Svizzera italiana under Markus Poschner shines in powerful ...
Composer: Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998)
Genre: Classical
Subgenre: Concertos
There’s a cunning intensity that inhabits this freshly etched programme of five extensive pieces plus an introductory miniature, presenting saxophonist Oded Tzur in a light that balances the extremes: bright inflections of fiery refrains go hand in hand with long passages of ruminative and deeply felt interplay. In the process, the saxophonist exhibits some of ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
