Jazz Articles
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Jon Irabagon: It Takes All Kinds
by Eyal Hareuveni
It Takes All Kinds is the third recorded collaboration between prolific tenor saxophonist Jon Irabagon and a great drummer, Barry Altschul. The first, Irabagon's Foxy (Hot cup, 2010) featured double bassist Peter Brendler. The second, Altschul's The 3dom Factor (TUM, 2013) featured double bass player Joe Fonda. The most recent one features Altschul's longtime rhythm teammate, double bassist virtuoso Mark Helias. Irabagon, Altschul and Helias are each highly creative musicians with distinct, dominant voices nurtured by an extensive, diverse array ...
read moreJon Irabagon Trio: It Takes All Kinds
by Glenn Astarita
This trio radiated Olympian style heroics akin to an endurance race on Foxy (Hot Cup, 2010). It was an arousing exercise in energy and power. And while drummer Barry Altschul, and bassist Mark Helias are time-honored jazz warriors-- respectively appearing on many landmark albums--saxophonist Jon Irabagon is now firmly seated with the upper-echelon of modern saxophone heroes. His star has definitely risen. A first-call session ace and stalwart member of the cutting-edge, nouveau jazz ensemble Mostly Other People Do The ...
read moreJulie Sassoon: Land Of Shadows
by Bruce Lindsay
Land Of Shadows, the second album from British pianist Julie Sassoon, is a striking work. A mix of the simple and complex, gentle and strident, dark and light, it's powerful and affecting.After studying in the UK Sassoon moved to Germany in 2009. Recorded live in Cologne, Dessau and the Neue Synagoge Berlin during April 2012, this music explores Sassoon's German-Jewish roots. Clearly, this exploration is an extremely personal one but Sassoon's music has a universality that invites everyone ...
read moreJulie Sassoon: Land of Shadows
by Duncan Heining
Land of Shadows is British improvising pianist Julie Sassoon's second solo CD and her first for the German jazzwerkstatt label. Recorded live in Cologne and at the famed Bauhaus theatre in Dessau, the record marks both an consolidation and an advance on its predecessor, New Life (2006 Babel). Where New Life drew its energy from the joy of first motherhood, Land of Shadows explores a darker world of experience. Sassoon moved to Berlin a few years ago and ...
read morePeter Ehwald: Double Trouble
by Ian Patterson
It doesn't always follow that the teacher channels the direction a student takes. In separate stints in London and New York, German saxophonist Peter Ehwald has studied with bassist John Patitucci, saxophonists Julian Argüelles, Stan Sulzmann and Rich Perry, yet his style is not nearly as based in the tradition as might be expected. Ehwald displayed his quite contemporary idiom on the Italian outfit Monome's debut recording, Monome (Konnex, 2012), and explores Korean folk music with Shin Hyo-Jin and Bo-sung ...
read moreJoe Hertenstein - Achim Tang - Jon Irabagon: Future Drone
by Glenn Astarita
Now residing in New York City, Germany-reared drummer Joe Hertenstein employs musicians from Europe or the US and to some extent, merges the avant-garde strata and stylistic tendencies into an opportunistic creative forum. This trio outing is a prime example. Featuring Viennese bassist Achim Tang and American tenor saxophonist Jon Irabagon, the album pronounces a shrewd conglomeration of avant- garde minimalism, and excitable free-jazz with nervy sensibilities. Hertenstein is a master at complementing his band mates' gait via meticulously designed ...
read moreBoom Box: Jazz
by John Sharpe
Some might think there an element of presumption in titling a CD Jazz, but German saxophonist Thomas Borgmann gets right to the essence in this set by his Boom Box trio, with drummer Willi Kellers and bassist Akira Ando: spontaneous three-way conversations which swing. Borgmann has a back story that takes in iconoclasts such as saxophonists Peter Brotzmann and Charles Gayle, and pianist Borah Bergman, so the lyrical freedom which he purveys here may come as something of a surprise. ...
read moreBoom Box: Jazz
by Henry Smith
Free jazz can have some fairly antisocial connotations. Too often, the term raises an undeserved fear in the uninitiated, as freedom can be scary. That hardly necessitates that it lack beauty, lyricism or intimacy, however; it simply means that those traits are arrived at by organic means rather than controlled ones. Few artists understand the form's capability for such qualities as the three musicians comprising Boom Box. All veterans of the world, multi-reedist Thomas Borgmann, bassist Akira ...
read moreBoom Box: Jazz
by Raul d'Gama Rose
Inspired by the spirit of the great reeds and woodwinds player Eric Dolphy, Thomas Borgmann is not the only musician in Europe to become a Dolphy acolyte. Dolphy is, in fact, all but deified across the pond and it is not hard to understand why. In many ways he personifies not only the eternal, fluttering quality of the magic of music, but also its mysterious milieu, seeming to exist in each fleeting moment of its echo. It was also Dolphy, ...
read moreAugusto Pirodda: No Comment
by Dan McClenaghan
A standard comic-strip theme presents the wise man sitting cross-legged on a remote mountain top, contemplating life, the human condition, God. A searcher from the temporal world below climbs the mountain and asks the wise man a question of profound importance. The last frame of the strip is a joke, the wise man's answer that steers the potentially sublime into the depths of the ridiculous; a good laugh at our expense. But the universal quest for truth remains constant, and ...
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