Jazz Articles

Antoine Pierre: Suspended (Live at Flagey)

by Mario Calvitti
January 16, 2021

Although the Belgian music scene is rich and varied, it is much neglected outside its national borders, as evidenced by the case of Aka Moon, an extraordinary trio that has celebrated 25 years of activity, but is still practically ignored by the foreign media. Let's hope the same does not happen with this new young talent, the drummer Antoine Pierre, and his group Urbex, already among the main protagonists of the 2020 edition of the Brussels Jazz Festival.

LABtrio: Nature City

by Henning Bolte
March 23, 2017

When you consider the ages of the musicians of this trio from Belgium (26, 28 and 30 years) you notice it is a young group. When you take into account the decade these three musicians, bassist Anneleen Boehme, drummer Lander Gyselinck and pianist Bram de Looze, have been working together, you can only come to the conclusion that it is a thoroughly matured unit. On its appearance at the 2014 edition of the European 12 Points Festival in Umeå, Sweden, ...

Dave Liebman/Richie Beirach: Unspoken

by John Kelman
December 7, 2011

Dave Liebman / Richie Beirach Unspoken OutNote Records 2011 It's one thing for individual artists' voices to be instantly recognizable, another thing entirely when a readily identifiable language evolves amongst them, one that's absent when they're apart. There's no mistaking the bop-rooted expressionism that saxophonist Dave Liebman imbues with oblique lyricism, whether with his longstanding group on Turnaround: The Music of Ornette Coleman (Jazzwerkstatt, 2010) or in a new collection of largely old friends on ...

Lee Konitz / Dave Liebman / Richie Beirach: KnowingLee

by John Kelman
May 30, 2011

While there is some truth in the old adage “if it ain't broke don't fix it," it's not always bad to mess with a good thing. Saxophonist Dave Liebman and pianist Richie Beirach have been playing together for over 40 years, in ensembles ranging from the big band of Quest for Freedom (Sunnyside, 2010) and smaller ensemble of Quest and Re-Dial: Live in Hamburg (OutNote, 2010) to duo records like 1985's Double Edge, recently reissued with two early Quest albums ...

Quest: Re-Dial: Live in Hamburg

by John Kelman
December 20, 2010

The new millennium seems to be a time when groups are reuniting, sometimes to even greater acclaim than they achieved the first time around. It's also a time when aging jazz musicians are lighting a fire under their own careers, ramping up their output and broadening their reach. Saxophonist Dave Liebman's activity in the past year has been almost beyond belief, closing in on a dozen as a leader and co-leader, as well as a couple of important reissues. One ...

Joachim Gies: Different Distances

by Robert Spencer
April 1, 1999

Joachim Gies plays soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones, as well as bass clarinet. This is a disc of 23 brief duos (the longest is four-and-a-half minutes; there's also a solo Gies piece that's just over seven minutes) played by Gies with, variously, mezzo-soprano Ute Döring; Alex Nowitz (male voice, live electronics); Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (alto sax); Thomas Wiedermann (trombone); and Thomas Böhm-Christi (cello).

Gies has a chameleon's ability on his various reeds. On “Arizona" with the wailing (and electronically transmuting) Nowitz ...