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Eve Beuvens: Lysis
by Ian Patterson
It is often said that music begins when poetry ends. But it might be more accurate to suggest that each expresses something the other cannot. For Belgian pianist Eve Beuvens the boundaries between poetry and music are amorphous--each inspiring the other. With Lysis--a biological term describing the breakdown of a cell membrane--music and words bleed into each other. Two poems by Robert Frost, and one each by Emily Dickinson, Dorothy Parker and Edna St. Vincent Millay, provide the starting points ...
Continue ReadingMichel Herr: Positive: Music For Sextet And String Quartet
by Ian Patterson
Although perhaps best known as a jazz pianist who has worked with the likes of Archie Shepp, Bill Frisell, Philip Catherine, Joe Lovano, Zbigniew Seifert and Toots Thielemans, Michel Herr has long enjoyed a parallel career as a conductor / musical director, and as an arranger for cinema, television and radio productions. It is in these latter, guiding roles, that Herr steers a sextet of some of Belgium's finest jazz musicians, plus a string quartet, through a programme of his ...
Continue ReadingLew Tabackin: L'Archiduc -- 'Round About Five
by Jack Bowers
Those who maintain that the elusive art of Jazz improvisation has fallen on hard times and point to Sonny Rollins as perhaps the last of the daring modern–day voices on saxophone may be overlooking someone. In other words, it could be rewarding to listen, for example, to Lew Tabackin who, like Rollins, has devised a singular Jazz vocabulary and loves to dance across the high–wire without a net. Tabackin’s mode of expression, although derived from and leaning heavily on Jazz ...
Continue ReadingF: Intensive Act
by Jack Bowers
Intensive Act, recorded in 1995–96, showcases the prominent Belgian drummer Félix Simtaine in a variety of settings from solo (“Leedy Babylass”) to trio, quartet, quintet and full–fledged orchestra (one of Belgium’s finest, the ACT Big Band). The quartet leads off with “All God’s Children,” “My Old Flame” and Bud Powell’s “Gettin’ There,” followed by the trio (“Happy Talking”), “Babylass,” and the quintet (“Olivia’s Arrival,” “Tonk”). The ACT Big Band completes the program with four numbers — “Walkin’ Tip Toe,” “Song ...
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