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Blaer
Blaer: Pure
by Dan McClenaghan
Swiss pianist Maja Nydegger sounds like a musical first cousin to Nik Bartsch. With his groups Ronin and Mobile, pianist Bartsch create intriguing ritual groove music and Zen funk--descriptors Bartsch has used for his style--stirred up with modern classical sounds. Nydegger, with her group Blaer, crafts a similar mode of expression on her fourth album, Pure, on Bartsch's Ronin Rhythm Records. So, the comparison between Bartsch and Nydegger: Bartsch does not shy away from the explosive. He and ...
read moreBlaer: Yellow
by Mike Jurkovic
With a whispery shifting undertow, Swiss pianist-composer Maja Nydegger constructs her vivid, musical imaginings of Yellow on the memories of melodies perceived and experienced in other lifetimes, in other dimensions, in other states of humanness. Some, like the quietly sensual title track and its immediate successor, The Unknown," expand towards full consciousness slowly, methodically urging you into that headspace where time's fluidity isn't the insistent threat of mortality but a warm, welcome embrace. Others, like the feverish, fractal sawing of ...
read moreBlaer: Blaer
by Bruce Lindsay
Led by pianist and composer Maja Nydegger, Blaer is a jazz quintet from Switzerland. This self-titled album is the band's debut release--a collection that establishes the band as an ensemble of real promise, with early signs of a distinctive and individual sound emerging. Blaer operates on the calmer, more languid end of the jazz spectrum. It's capable of bursts of energy and Nydegger (also a member of Morpheus label-mates AKKU Quintet) isn't shy of composing more aggressive, dramatic, ...
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