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Christy Doran & Stefan Banz: Aerosols
by Ian Patterson
Aerosols is Irish-born, Lucerne-based guitarist Christy Doran's fifth solo album in a career which began in the early '70s, and his first since Acoustic Isles (Creative Works Records, 2006). That CD/DVD was an intermedia collaboration with visual artist Susanne Dubs. In similar vein, Aerosols sees Doran respond musically to five paintings by Swiss multi-media artist Stefan Banz. In turn, vla his own medium, Banz answers to five pieces of music composed by Doran. The paintings--with accompanying text--adorn the CD booklet, ...
read moreBeady Beast: On The Go
by Ian Patterson
Guitarists Christy Doran and Franz Hellmüller, the duo known as Beady Beast, were once teacher and student. That was in the early 2000s, when Hellmüller studied with Doran at Lucerne's Musikhokschule. Since graduating summa cum laude in 2003, Hellmüller has established a reputation as an original electric guitarist, usually playing in the company of Patrick Sommer and Martin Perret, or with Luca Sisera and Tony Renold. Longer of tooth, Doran has blazed a singular trail since the early '70s with ...
read moreChristy Doran's Sound Fountain: Lift The Bar
by Ian Patterson
With four records in as many years Christy Doran's Sound Fountain seems in 2020 to have eclipsed New Bag as the guitarist's going concern. However, just because New Bag hasn't recorded since Elsewhere (Double Moon, 2015) doesn't mean that the band, founded in 1997, won't still make a comeback. After all, who could have foreseen the 2016 return to the road of OM, thirty-four years after Doran, Fredy Studer, Urs Leimgruber and Bobby Burri called time on the seminal Swiss ...
read moreChristy Doran's Sound Fountain: For The Kick Of It
by Ian Patterson
Released shortly before turning seventy, Christy Doran's third outing with Sound Fountain finds the Irish-born, Lucerne-based guitarist playing as well as at any time during his fifty-year career. It marks a blistering return for Doran to electric trio terrain, following the experimentation of 144 Strings for a Broken Chord (Between the Lines, 2018)—compositions for twenty electric guitars, four basses and drums—and the uncategorizable, and sonically challenging, Âme Sèche (Leo Records, 2018). The template here is broadly the same as that ...
read moreChristy Doran: 144 Strings For A Broken Chord
by Ian Patterson
In a long and distinguished career, Christy Doran has fronted or been a founding member of a number of important jazz-fusion / jazz-rock groups, from the seminal Swiss band OM in the early 1970s, to current outfits New Bag and Sound Fountain. His collaborations with some of the most important jazz artists on both sides of the Atlantic, spanning some forty years, are too numerous to mention. A lesser-known facet of the Ireland-born, Lucerne-based guitarist has been his composing for ...
read moreGebhard Ullmann/Basement Research: Hat And Shoes (Gebhard Ullmann/Basement Research)
by Budd Kopman
Multi-reed player Gebhard Ullmann celebrated his fiftieth birthday in 2007 with the release of New Basement Research, a powerful recording which had personnel changed from the earlier releases of this project. For those new to Ullmann, see this retrospective. Hat And Shoes celebrates a number of milestones: Ullmann's fiftieth release as a leader or co-leader and the twentieth year of the Basement Research project itself, which started with the eponymous Soul Note release from 1995.
read moreGebhard Ullmann/Basement Research: Hat And Shoes
by Glenn Astarita
Without a doubt, German multi-woodwind ace Gebhard Ullmann is one of the busiest artists within the global jazz network. Hat & Shoes celebrates his Basement Research band's 20th anniversary and the artist's 50th CD as a co-leader and leader, including his other ensembles --Conference Call and the Clarinet Trio. The all-star quintet ups the ante via its intensely wrought force-field and crafty deportment, compiled with spirited group evolvements. The three-man horn section's deterministic mode of operations, offer rousing ...
read moreGebhard Ullmann/Basement Research: Hat And Shoes
by Mark Corroto
Saxophonist Gebhard Ullmann might be the German equivalent of Chicago's Ken Vandermark. Both players are influential composers and both maintain multiple creative ensembles in Europe and the United States. Like Vandermark, Ullmann's catalog is vast. Hat And Shoes is his 50th release as a leader or co- leader, and this band Basement Research have put out seven titles.Similar to the now defunct Vandermark 5, Basement Research's quintet features a smart balance between composed and improvised music. Ullman's choice ...
read moreDouble Trio De Clarinettes: Itineraire Bis
by Glenn Astarita
Prominent European purveyors of jazz clarinet fare--The Clarinet Trio and Le Trio De Clarinettes--align for a joint mission on this set that covers a wide spectrum of applications, ideas and surprises. They induce the sounds of nature and render highly melodic song forms while including doses of humor amid punchy motifs and hordes of delicate contrasts. At times the sextet operates within quiet and hauntingly introspective settings and launches circular ostinatos, used for sounding boards and assorted improvisational activities.
read moreYitzhak Yedid: Arabic Violin Bass Trio: Suite In Four Movements
by Eyal Hareuveni
Australia-based, Israeli composer and pianist Yitzhak Yedid continues his noble endeavor to integrate classical Arabic music, Arabic-influenced Jewish music and contemporary Western classical music, all performed with enough room for improvisation, into a new tradition. Yedid began to work on this inclusive, universal musical concept previously with the extended suite Oud Bass Piano Trio (Between the Lines, 2005). Arabic Violin Bass Trio: Suite In Four Movements does not focus on musical aspects alone, but attempts to reflect and contain the ...
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