Festivals Talking
Martin Longley anticipates festival performances around the globe, tracking down artists to quiz them on their advance strategies, observing their set-list mulling processes, assisting them in their wardrobe decisions and suggesting ridiculous backstage rider requests...
Jazzkaar Interviews: Kirke Karja
by Martin Longley
Estonian pianist Kirke Karja has regularly appeared at the Jazzkaar festival in Tallinn, customarily performing in surprising settings, always delivering a fresh band combination, or a new set of music, or altering ratios between improvisation and composition, acoustic or electric palettes. During the last two years she has a.) been discovered by the rest of the European jazz circuit and b.) formed a touring trio with a stable line-up. This band also features the French bassist Etienne Renard and the ...
read moreMoers Festival Interviews: Kenny Garrett
by Martin Longley
The release of Kenny Garrett's Sounds From The Ancestors album (Mack Avenue, 2021) has reinvigorated his live performances, as the saxophonist tours heartily with an expanded band that's heavy on the Afro-Latin percussion. In recent times, multi-instrumentalist Garrett has been gigging with this dedicated Sounds From The Ancestors line-up, heavily devoted to the album, but not averse to making key tune selections from past decades. Garrett likes to pair up the instruments, with Melvis Santa and Rudy Bird playing percussion ...
read moreMoers Festival Interviews: Brandon Seabrook
by Martin Longley
Brandon Seabrook cultivates a forked assault on the guitar and the banjo, amplifying both of them, and negotiating their strings at high speeds, filling his playing with hyper-detailed improvisations, or constructing complex compositional strategies, frequently referred to as 'riffs.' Seabrook has long been a crucial presence on the New York City scene, whether leading his own bands, or collaborating with a variegated host of artists on the jazz, rock and improvisational scenes. Often within the same unit. He's ...
read moreEnjoy Jazz Interviews: Tania Giannouli
by Martin Longley
Along with fellow pianist Nik Bärtsch, the other Artist In Residence of this year's Enjoy Jazz festival is Tania Giannouli, from Athens. Like Bärtsch, she has also become a regular at the EJ concerts in Heidelberg, Mannheim and Ludwigshafen, although Giannouli has been appearing in more recent years. In 2020, your scribe caught her set at the Kunsthalle art gallery in Mannheim, during the lockdowns era. This was a physical space that was ideal for virus-avoidance spacing, as well as ...
read moreEnjoy Jazz Interviews: Nik Bärtsch
by Martin Longley
The Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch has become a virtual fixture of the Enjoy Jazz festival, which customarily inhabits at least three cities in southern Germany. It sprawls across all of October and half of November, presenting at least one performance each night in Heidelberg, Mannheim or Ludwigshafen. Sometimes there will be two or even three gigs on certain days, in different cities, and occasionally the town of Schwetzingen is used, famed for its Rococo Theatre. In 2020, Bärtsch ...
read moreMoers Festival Interviews: Sana Nagano
by Martin Longley
Right place, right time, your scribe caught Smashing Humans playing a late night set at the original Nublu club in NYC's Alphabet City, 19th April 2019. Intensity ensued, via a serrated prog-jazz extremity, sharply sculpted in its dynamic schizoid turning of sharp bends, its abrasive surface causing exciting distress. Smashing Humans were assembled by the Japanese violinist Sana Nagano, who's now been dwelling in NYC since 2010, and in the USA for two decades. At that 2019 gig she may ...
read moreMoers Festival Interviews: Max Johnson
by Martin Longley
New York bassist Max Johnson has embarked on a European tour with his trio, in the run-up to the release of their new album Orbit Of Sound (Unbroken Sounds, 2022). They are playing crucial venues such as Roskam in Brussels and The Loft in Cologne, doubtless climaxing at the Moers Festival, also in Germany (3rd-6th June). Prior to the tour, the trio hadn't played together since August 2021, when they recorded the album. Your scribe was roaming around ...
read moreMoers Festival Interviews: Chris Pitsiokos
by Martin Longley
Alto saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos has successfully made a deep impression on the improvising scene of NYC during what amounts to almost the last decade. Still youthful, his raging complexity and conceptual attitude have the backing of a dedication to finding gigs, or even promoting his own events, and of always seeking out unfamiliar players for adventurous encounters. Stylistically, it's virtually impossible to avoid mentioning John Zorn as an attitudinal and tonal precedent. Pitsiokos has already appeared on several ...
read moreMoers Festival Interviews: Spinifex
by Martin Longley
Spinifex will make an extremely welcome return to the Moers Festival in early June 2022. This heavily international group specialises in a collective meshing, combining the precision of composed themes with ample leeway for crashing over the barriers, splattering down onto a grassy field of wild improvisatory freedom. Heavy activity over a decade's span makes this stance so staunch with experience that any perversions of the agreed form can be confidently executed in the knowledge that Spinifex always knows where ...
read moreTallinn Music Week Interviews: Roomet Jakapi & Hum Of Tartu
by Martin Longley
The Estonian city of Tartu lies to the south-east of capital Tallinn, and is a relatively small second city, perhaps dominated by the presence of its renowned university. In 2024, Tartu is set to become a European Capital Of Culture. In anticipation, the Tallinn Music Week organisers have programmed an evening of music emanating from Tartu, and in particular, artists associated with Ö Stuudio (pronounced 'uhh'), that city's major recording hub. A highlight of the evening will be ...
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