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Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens: American Railroad: A Musical Journey of Reclamation
by Katchie Cartwright
Rhiannon Giddens is not afraid of big projects. American Railroad, the album, is part of a larger work, subtitled A Musical Journey of Reclamation, which Giddens initiated with the widely acclaimed Silkroad Ensemble, a diverse international collective of performers, improvisers and composers created by Yo Yo Ma. American Railroad digs into the building of America's transcontinental railway system, focusing on voices that have been missing from public narratives: voices of the laborers on whose backs the hard work fell, of ...
Continue ReadingRhiannon Giddens: You're The One
by Katchie Cartwright
Rhiannon Giddens has a voracious musical appetite and a big talent that uses everything to fuel her many creative activities. With a MacArthur, a Pulitzer, and multiple Grammys on her shelf, this has not gone unnoticed. In a body of work that includes musicological projects along with different types of art, You're The One focuses on Giddens as a songwriter, in a variety of idioms. “I hope that people just hear American music," she says. “Blues, jazz, Cajun, country, gospel, ...
Continue ReadingFrancesco Turrisi: Northern Migrations
by Ian Patterson
For his fifth album as leader Dublin-based Italian pianist Francesco Turrisi strikes out on his own with his first solo piano recording--a format he's well used to in a live setting. These thirteen compositions/improvisations were inspired by his family's migration north from Sicily to Turin, and subsequently by his own northern migrations--first to The Netherlands where he graduated in jazz and baroque music and then to Ireland where he has made his home. As with Turrisi's outstanding debut Si Dolce ...
Continue ReadingDublin Jazz Book Vol. 1
by Ian Patterson
Dublin Jazz Book Vol. 1 Sam Kavanagh Pages: 80 ISBN: 979-0-9002321-0-6 Self Published 2014 Original, adventurous and visually striking, the Dublin Jazz Book may be the first jazz Real Book in the world to celebrate the original compositions of a single city. Conceived of by saxophonist Sam Kavanagh and designed by Steven McNamara, the DJB seeks an alternative path to gigs dominated by American jazz standards and a move towards the type ...
Continue ReadingFrancesco Turrisi: Grigio
by Alberto Bazzurro
Album composito, sporto su diversi crinali, quello che ci propone il pianista e compositore torinese Francesco Turrisi, in realtà espatriato ormai da diciassette anni, prima all'Aja e poi a Dublino, dove si è ottimamente inserito in un tessuto in cui la componente jazzistica si mischia felicemente con svariate altre. In questo Grigio, per esempio, Turrisi affianca due pagine interamente proprie ad arrangiamenti firmati a due mani con Róisín Elsafty di temi tradizionali, appunto, irlandesi, non senza una ...
Continue ReadingFrancesco Turrisi: Grigio
by Ian Patterson
For pianist Francesco Turrisi 'old' music is a redundant term. In the Dublin-based Italian's world all music exists in a continuum. Turrisi's debut, Si Dolce e il Tormento (Diatribe Records, 2009) may be the only example of the mediaeval theorbo--a long-necked lute-- in a jazz setting. Fotografia (Diatribe Records, 2011)--a series of piano trio improvisations--veered between free-jazz abstraction and Mediterranean and Brazilian blues lyricism. For Songs of Experience (Taquin Records, 2013), Turrisi eschewed bass in favor of Fulvio Sigurtà's trumpet ...
Continue ReadingFrancesco Turrisi: Songs of Experience
by Ian Patterson
Pianist Francesco Turrisi's first two albums as leader, the classically influenced jazz of Si Dolce e il Tormento (Diatribe Recordings, 2009) and the more brooding, improvised Fotografia (Diatribe Recordings, 2011) were united by Turrisi's mostly spare voice as much as they were by the folk, classical and jazz threads from which he draws inspiration. Here, Turrisi plots a strikingly minimalist course, playing seemingly fewer notes than on his first two releases combined. With trumpeter/flugelhorn player Fulvio Sigurtà the dominant voice, ...
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