Jazz Articles about Liudas Mockūnas

About Liudas Mockūnas

Album Review

Liudas Mockūnas / Samuel Blaser / Marc Ducret: Twisted Summer

Read "Twisted Summer" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
May 21, 2026

All of modern jazz and improvised music owes a debt to Jimmy Giuffre (1921--2008). A quiet revolutionary, Giuffre helped reshape the language of jazz in ways that many musicians now take for granted. His solo recordings anticipated those of Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell, while his early experiments without a rhythm section, common practice today, were once considered radical. Even his approach to free jazz set him apart. Where contemporaries like John Coltrane and Albert Ayler explored the music's most ...

Album Review

Arkady Gotesman: Music For An Imaginary Ballet

Read "Music For An Imaginary Ballet" reviewed by Ieva Pakalniškytė

by Ieva Pakalniškytė
December 6, 2025

Arkady Gotesman occupies a singular position in Lithuanian music scene, having performed across more than fifty international festivals and concerts as a percussionist, composer and interdisciplinary artist whose work spans jazz, contemporary classical repertoire, free improvisation, theatre, literature and film. Over four decades he has collaborated with an exceptional range of musicians--from Vyacheslav Ganelin, Petras Vysniauskas, Liudas Mockūnas, Anthony Coleman and Mats Gustafsson to Nate Wooley, Charles Gayle, Barry Guy and Dave Douglas, among many others--while also premiering works by Anatolijus Šenderovas, Osvaldas Balakauskas, ...

Album Review

Agustí Fernández: Aesthetic of Prisms

Read "Aesthetic of Prisms" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
June 23, 2025

Cofanetto di ben sette CD, edito per celebrare i settant'anni del pianista catalano, Aestethic of Prisms permette di ascoltare Agustí Fernández all'opera in numerose situazioni e con compagni diversi, sebbene sempre rigorosamente alle prese con l'improvvisazione libera e non idiomatica, di cui è uno dei grandi interpreti contemporanei. Apre la raccolta Blue Rose, un duo tra il pianista e lo straordinario contrabbassista Barry Guy, suo abituale partner (figura infatti in altri due CD del cofanetto), registrato in studio ...

Album Review

Hugo Carvalhais: Ascetica

Read "Ascetica" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
December 18, 2023

Venerable Portuguese bassist Hugo Carvalhais' “Ascetica" is a mesmerizing journey into the depths of progressive jazz, offering a soundscape which is vast and immersive, crafted with meticulous attention to detail. Carvalhais and his ensemble, create a polygonal musical environment through a blend of electronic manipulations, ambient soundscapes, springy synth riffs, and forceful sax soloing, often raising the temperature and broadening the scope. With blossoming jazz improvisations amid pulsating rock motifs, they occasionally generate fluctuating time signatures and slippery phrasings.

Album Review

Liudas Mockūnas / Arvydas Kazlauskas: Purvs

by Mark Corroto
July 27, 2021

If you need evidence that the very first musicians, our evolutionary ancestors, made sounds to imitate nature, Purvs may be the proof. The Latvian and Lithuanian saxophonists Arvydas Kazlauskas and Liudas Mockūnas made two recordings, one in an open air Latvian bog marsh which makes up the first LP of this release and the second LP in an amphitheater made of peat, called Saulgrieži (summer solstice), by the Latvian artist Janis Gutans-Grass. Mockūnas may be the better known ...

Album Review

Nate Wooley / Liudas Mockunas / Barry Guy / Arkadijus Gotesmanas: Nox

by John Sharpe
April 18, 2021

Nox presents a four-piece uniting two of Lithuania's finest improvisers, reedman Liudas Mockunas and drummer Arkadijus Gotesmanas, with two world class instrumentalists, trumpeter Nate Wooley and bassist Barry Guy. Recorded at the 2019 Improdimensions Festival in Vilnius, the limited edition LP (also available as a download) contains three collectively sculpted tracks, demonstrating a unity of purpose which belies their off-the-wall genesis. Gotesmanas' spare non-metric clatter and acute punctuation plays a defining role, enabling a transparent sound which ...

Album Review

Liudas Mockūnas & Arvydas Kazlauskas: Purvs

Read "Purvs" reviewed by Vitalijus Gailius

by Vitalijus Gailius
March 25, 2021

Purvs is a collaboration between two outstanding Lithuanian saxophone players, Liudas Mockūnas and Arvydas Kazlauskas. Despite being friends for a long time they have never played together before. The album was made in two parts. The first recording took place in the autumnal splendour of Latvian marshland, the second in an ampitheatre made of peat, named Saulgrieži (Solstice) and created by Latvian artist Janis Gutans-Grass. Two remarkable places to make a record, which is also special in that ...