Jazz Articles
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Julia Eckhardt: Blanca
by John Eyles
Julia Eckhardt was born in 1985 in Berlin, Germany, but later became Belgium-based. She is a renowned classical and orchestral musician who plays viola and has made a name for herself in the music industry. An organiser in the field of the sonic arts, she is artistic co-director of Q-O2 workspace for experimental music and sound art, as well as of the Oscillation festival in Brussels. She has performed and released internationally, and has been engaged in a number of ...
Continue ReadingEden Lonsdale: Dawnings
by John Eyles
British/German composer Eden Lonsdale was born in 1996. When he was nine, he started making music with his cousin of the same age. When he was 12, he started enjoying playing the cello which he had been learning since he was 9. From then on, he spent weekends listening to Bach while following along with the score. Soon after that, he started composing a lot. It was not long until Lonsdale was studying composition at the Guildhall School of Music ...
Continue ReadingMagnus Granberg: Holde Traume, kehret wieder!
by John Eyles
When Swedish musician and composer Magnus Granberg's first album on Another Timbre, Ist Gefallen In Den Schnee, was released in 2012, it was credited to Skogen, the nine-(or seven-or ten-) member ensemble in which he played piano (prepared or not) and/or clarinet. It was not until his fifth release on the label, How Deep is the Ocean, How High is the Sky (2015) that Granberg was credited by name. As those album titles suggest, Granberg has often been inspired by ...
Continue ReadingPaul Newland: Things That Happen Again
by John Eyles
Born in 1966, British composer and musician Paul Newland studied composition at the Royal Northern College of Music, at the Royal Academy of Music, in London, and at Royal Holloway, University of London, receiving his doctorate in 2006. He has taught composition at Guildhall School of Music since 2006 and is currently a Professor of Composition there and is also a Professor at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Greenwich. Despite such an illustrious academic career, Newland ...
Continue ReadingMarco Baldini: Maniera
by John Eyles
When Marco Baldini's first ever album, Vesperi (reviewed here), was released by Another Timbre in 2023, its arrival was not exactly awaited with bated breath. Born in 1986, near Florence, Italy, Baldini had no degree in music or composition and had not studied with an established composer. He had attended university, where he studied Roman archaeology, specialising in the iconography of early Christian sarcophagi. He worked as a public librarian in a village in the hills surrounding Florence. His only ...
Continue ReadingFrank Denyer: Screens
by John Eyles
Composer Frank Denyer was born in London, in April 1943. Screens, recorded at the Menuhin School in Surrey, England, in September 2022, serves to mark the milestone of Denyer's eightieth birthday. It is his sixth album on Another Timbre, his first having been the label's third release, Music for Shakuhachi (2007); that featured four Denyer compositions for solo shakuhachi or shakuhachi plus percussion, performed by shakuhachi master Yoshikazu Iwamoto at a time when the newly-formed label seemed more interested in ...
Continue ReadingMarco Baldini: Maniera
by Marat Ingeldeev
It was February 2023 when the world got to know the Florence-based composer Marco Baldini a little better, thanks to Another Timbre and their first feature of Baldini's music, an inaugural album, Vesperi. His second offering, Maniera, captivatingly performed by Apartment House, comprises a collection of seven pieces for various combinations of string instruments. Interestingly, the name alludes to both Italian Mannerism of the 16th century--one of Baldini's favourite styles in fine arts, critiqued for its perceived lack of originality--and ...
Continue ReadingMartin Arnold: Flax
by John Eyles
In 2020, near the dawn of the COVID-19 lockdown, in a benevolent act, the Another Timbre label commissioned a number of selected composers to write pieces that would be recorded for the label. One such commission was for one of the label's esteemed Canadian composers, Martin Arnold, to write a CD-length piece for renowned pianist Philip Thomas who had recently recorded the much acclaimed five-CD box set of Morton Feldman compositions. Remembering discussions he had had with Thomas and having ...
Continue ReadingJürg Frey: String Trio
by John Eyles
2023 was always going to be a landmark year for the esteemed Swiss clarinetist and composer Jürg Frey. His 70th birthday was in May and, to celebrate it, the renowned Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival allocated three slots to Frey's music on the festival's second Saturday. In addition, String Trio became the third Frei album released in 2023, following in the footsteps of Continuité, fragilité, resonance (Elsewhere), recorded in August 2022 by a string quartet plus four saxophones, and Circular Music ...
Continue ReadingSeamus Cater: A History of Musical Pitch
by John Eyles
Seamus Cater is a British-born musician whose parents were active folk revivalists in London in the '60s, meaning that folk and singing permeated his early music experiences. He learned to play harmonica when he was 19. It was only when he was 23 that he attended an Access course for mature students, playing improvised music and jazz. After a jazz degree at Salford University, he moved to Holland where he has lived ever since. After the Millenium he moved towards ...
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