Living Being IV (Time Reflections)
Yesterday, 2011: Vincent, Yoann, Tony, Julien... and one more. A group of pals, each one having left Nice independently and ended up in Paris. They adopt Émile, also from Southern France, but from further west. Today: natural affinities, a leader who calls the shots, and they use jazz to embrace a wide musical ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Lumen is the deeply personal and introspective new solo album by pianist and composer Bill Laurance. Recorded in the stillness of night inside an empty church, the album captures a rare and intimate moment of communion between artist, instrument, and space. Though not religious, Laurance describes the experience as almost spiritual—guided more by the music ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Pianist David Helbock, bassist and cellist Julia Hofer have things in common: a playful curiosity combined with the urge to try out new things and to have fun. Both of these Austrians are also perfectionists...and natural communicators...and that’s why their musical combination works so well. “I was looking for a new duo partner,” says ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
With “ok”, his new album and ACT debut, French trumpeter ‘daoud’ offers a quiet manifesto - a record shaped by contrast and contradiction, by collapse and the stubborn act of beginning again. Built around the idea of accepting what cannot be changed. He explains: “The whole record is built around the concept of reluctant acceptance of things that you can’t ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
“The more new discoveries you make, the more you go back to the beginning,” observes pianist Vincent Meissner. The music on his third album, ‘Eigengrau’, is characterized by an inward gaze, by his reflections on experiences and encounters that have been meaningful to him. Together with his working trio, Josef Zeimetz on bass and Henri Reichmann ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic XVI: Piano Night II
Four unique top-flight European jazz pianists, each with limitless freedom of expression. Limitless joy too for the audience in the completely full main hall of the Philharmonie Berlin. But perhaps there is also something even more im-portant here: music’s unique power to unite people. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Jazz, Middle Eastern traditions, metal, electronica, classical music...many of the different musical paths which Israeli pianist and keyboardist Sharon Mansur has followed since childhood have converged in her debut album for ACT, ‘Trigger’. At a time when the world is riven with tensions and contradictions, her fascinating, personal musical stories bring hope; her ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic XVII: Gnawa World Blues
Three continents, three musical world citizens. Morocco-born Majid Bekkas, Franco-Vietnamese Nguyên Lê and American Hamid Drake have combined their astonishing musicality, their origins and their global experiences to create a captivating live concert programme encompassing desert blues, Gnawa trance, Middle Eastern jazz, sixties rock and Far Eastern serenity. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
Wolfgang Haffner is one of the most in-demand musicians in European jazz and certainly its most successful drummer-bandleader. He has the kind of full-on schedule in which a series of concerts in Japan can segue straight into an extensive European tour... followed by a short stop-off for a meeting in Ingolstadt – where he’s now in his second ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Sandström: Sonnets of Darkness and Love
A powerful live recording of Sandström's final work, blending choral music with Nils Landgren's trombone and vocals. On October 18, 2018, Danish conductor and former trombonist Mogens Dahl reached out to Nils Landgren with a bold idea: a new choral composition by Swedish composer Sven-David Sandström, written specifically for mixed choir, trombone, and ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
"Two brothers, cello and voice, creating hauntingly beautiful music without borders. Their intimate jazz and world music fusion captures the transformative power of words, complementing the album’s themes of renewal and quiet beauty. Al alba, at dawn, that fleeting moment — hovering between night and day, between dreams and reality — everything starts afresh, and anything seems possible. ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
21st-century-jazz full of infectious grooves, catchy melodies and cinematic intensity. Nils Kugelmann likes telling stories. That much is clear from the titles of his compositions...from the way he talks when he introduces them at concerts...and – naturally – from the music itself. ‘For me, making the connection ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Pianist Johanna Summer will release her new jazz EP, "Upright," on April 18, 2025. This work, created during the recording of Malakoff Kowalski's album "Songs With Words," comprises a seven-part jazz suite that combines Summer's own compositions with jazz standards and an elegy by Richard Wagner. ...
Composer: Johanna Summer
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
In July 2004, when Leszek Możdżer, Lars Danielsson, and Zohar Fresco performed together for the first time in Warsaw, few could have predicted that this trio would evolve into one of jazz’s most enduring and celebrated ensembles. Now, 20 years later, they return with “Beamo” - an album that not only reaffirms their mastery but also opens a bold new chapter in ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
What began in 2005 as an experiment – just three concerts in Sweden bringing together a triumvirate of leading figures from European jazz – has developed in the past 20 years into one of the most distinctive line-ups now defining the ‘Sound of Europe’. Sardinian trumpeter Paolo Fresu, French accordionist Richard Galliano and Swedish pianist Jan Lundgren tell ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Crossover Jazz
The duo setting can be like a breath of fresh air, particularly for musicians who normally deal with the complexity and intricacy of much larger ventures. Saxophonist Emma Rawicz, whose star has been rising all over Europe since she joined the ACT label last year, runs and directs her own big band. Pianist Gwilym Simcock, whose ACT album “Good Days At ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic XV
For over a decade, ACT Music has been celebrating extraordinary moments of live jazz in one of the world's most famous concert halls with its Jazz at the Berlin Philharmonie series. Curated by ACT founder Siggi Loch, the renowned series brings together the best musicians for unique, often unexpected collaborations - and has delivered countless ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
One of the most acclaimed piano trios in contemporary jazz and beyond. And an album that makes a statement: complex, demanding and full of surprises. ‘The Michael Wollny Trio is a reminder that this is the 21st century – and not the 1960s,’ wrote the UK’s Jazzwise magazine as a reflection on the evolution of the jazz piano trio. And yet, in many respects, ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
A band like a five-piece orchestra. Breathtakingly multi-layered music, full of virtuosity and inexhaustible imagination. Cabaret: a song and dance or two, some jokes, hummable tunes, and perhaps some sparkles - right? OK, but know that this cabaret is informed by a breathtakingly wide-ranging musical imagination. Now you have a better idea ...
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Contemporary Jazz
Vocal virtuoso Andreas Schaerer and his pan-European quartet create a musical utopia of a world without borders. Swiss vocal phenomenon Andreas Schaerer has been described as 'the Germanic Bobby McFerrin with the flow of a Shakespearean actor’ (L’Alsace). His ‘charismatic and powerful stage presence’ (FAZ) mark ...
Composer: Andreas Schaerer (1976)
Genre: Jazz
Subgenre: Vocal
