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Dennis Mitcheltree and Johannes Wallmann: Holding Space
by Troy Dostert
Tenor saxophonist Dennis Mitcheltree and pianist Johannes Wallmann team up for a full program of enticing music on Holding Space. Encompassing a range of idioms and compositional parameters, the duo charts a lot of territory on the album's eighteen cuts, and it is terrain well worth exploring. Mitcheltree has been recording since the 1990s, with his debut release, Brooklyn (Dengor Music), released in 1996. He has a warm, ingratiating tone, amply demonstrated on the album's opener, “Annus Mirabilis," ...
Continue ReadingPrecarious Towers: Ten Stories
by Jack Bowers
Precarious Towers is a Midwestern-based quintet whose second recording, Ten Stories, is as bare-bones an album as one could imagine: a plain CD (without name or artwork) resting in a pale-blue jacket (no tray or protective sleeve) that includes a list of songs, composers and personnel plus recording details. That's it. From a reviewer's point of view, however, such cosmetic details are irrelevant, as the only component that matters is the music itself. Judged solely on that ...
Continue ReadingJohannes Wallmann: Precarious Towers
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Johannes Wallman set himself up with a hard act to follow when he released 2021's Elegy For an Undiscovered Species (Shifting Paradigm) an ambitious set of the leader's distinctive compositions played by an all-star quintet and string orchestra. It is a jazz with strings that leans to a spirited jazz side--cerebral and approachable at the same time. Precarious Towers, Wallmann's 2022 offering, finds the pianist bringing in a different quintet, one which proves itself as adept as ...
Continue ReadingJohannes Wallmann: Elegy for an Undiscovered Species
by Angelo Leonardi
Poco noto in Italia, Johannes Wallmann è un 47enne pianista e compositore nato in Germania ma cresciuto in Canada e formatosi musicalmente negli Stati Uniti (al Berklee College of Music di Boston e alla New York University). Vive a New York dal 1995 e ha pubblicato nove CD compreso il presente dove affianca un'orchestra d'archi a un quintetto jazz con la trombettista Ingrid Jensen e il sassofonista Dayna Stephens. È forse il suo lavoro più ambizioso, realizzato ...
Continue ReadingJohannes Wallmann: Elegy For An Undiscovered Species
by Friedrich Kunzmann
Supported by the Artemis supergroup members drummer Allison Miller and trumpeter Ingrid Jensen as well as by long-time collaborator Dayna Stephens and bassist Nick Moran, Johannes Wallmann can count himself lucky to have a celebrity packed core band behind him to present six new cuts fresh off the pianist's pen. In addition to the celebrity lineup, a sumptuous string orchestra (15-strong) adds harmonic depth and ornamental brushstrokes along the way, expanding crescendoing build-ups with further dynamic width and embellishing soloistic ...
Continue ReadingJohannes Wallmann: Elegy For An Undiscovered Species
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Johannes Wallmann's Elegy For An Undiscovered Species opens with the eleven minute title tune, a musical protest against the Anthropocene Extinction. That extinction is happening right now. Human activity—human predominance of the planet—is its cause. This opener does have an apocalyptic feel, with a dark piano trio intro and a dark strings backdrop seeping into the mix, followed by tenor sax (Dayna Stephens) and trumpet (Ingrid Jensen) solos. Of Dayna Stephens' sound: if Paul Desmond's ...
Continue ReadingJohannes Wallmann: Love Wins
by Dan Bilawsky
The depths to which some factions of “civil" society will sink in order to deny others their equal rights, respect, and acknowledgement is downright depressing. But the height to which love can rise and overcome is heartening, to say the least. Pianist Johannes Wallmann is better acquainted with both of those aforementioned truths than your average citizen. When he moved to Wisconsin in 2012, he had been in a legally-recognized same-sex marriage for five years. Neither Canada ...
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