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Gergo Borlai: The Missing Song
by Jim Worsley
The Missing Song has been heralded as a tribute to Gergo Borlai's nine most influential drummers still alive and performing today. This is much more than just listing them and perhaps covering one of their songs. Borlai composed eight of the nine new songs on this album. He plays them all in the manner, or mindset, of each drummer. The thought process, and level of preparation was meticulous for every drummer and every song. The drum kit, cymbals, sticks, pedals, ...
Continue ReadingNguyen Le: Overseas
by Don Phipps
Robust and compelling, guitarist and composer Nguyen Le's Overseas continues his explorations of hybrid jazz--a jazz which combines traditional Vietnamese music with a personal style of jazzy soulful funk. Ancient instruments and urban rhythms collide, creating a kaleidoscopic musical mix that is at times hopping, like a busy Ho Chi Minh City avenue, and at times peaceful, like a morning sunrise over the ocean on an deserted tropical beach. Le composed the music as part of a performance ...
Continue ReadingELBJAZZ 2017
by Ian Patterson
ELBJAZZ 2017 Blohm and Voss/various venues Hamburg, Germany June 2-3, 2017 Although Gregory Porter was the marquee name at the sixth edition of Elbjazz, with a strong supporting cast including Joshua Redman, Jan Garbarek, Hildegard Lernt Fliegen and Youn Sun Nah, the real star of the show was the spectacular festival setting. The Blohm and Voss shipyard, where most of the concerts were held in four different venues, provided a dramatic industrial backdrop to the ...
Continue ReadingNguyen Le & Ngo Hong Quang: Ha Noi Duo
by Ian Patterson
After exploring the pop culture of the 1960s/1970s in Songs of Freedom (ACT Music, 2011) and paying big-band tribute to Pink Floyd's iconic album on Celebrating The Dark Side of the Moon (ACT Music, 2014), French guitarist/producer Nguyên Lê returns to explore his Vietnamese ancestry on Hà Nôi Duo, with vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Ngô Hồng Quang and several of Le's trusted collaborators. It's Lê's sixth album to take Vietnamese music as a launching pad, and whilst the traditional elements are deeply etched, ...
Continue ReadingNguyen Le With Michael Gibbs & NDR Bigband: Celebrating The Dark Side Of The Moon
by Ian Patterson
It's a bold concept; take Pink Floyd's iconic Dark Side of the Moon (Harvest, 1973) and reinterpret it in a big band jazz setting. With upwards of forty million copies sold, every note, every nuance of Floyd's eighth album is so firmly entrenched in the minds of the band's legion devotees that to tamper with the work in any way is to leave oneself open to facile criticism. French-Vietnamese guitarist Nguyên Lê, however, is nothing if not adventurous. ...
Continue ReadingQuoc Trung / Nguyen Le / Dhafer Youssef / Thanh Lam / Rhani Krija / Kieu Anh: Hanoi, Vietnam, September, 1, 2012
by Ian Patterson
Quốc Trung / Nguyên Lê / Dhafer Youssef / Thanh Lam / Rhani Krija / Kiều Anh Hanoi Opera HouseHanoi, VietnamSeptember 1, 2012The Hanoi Opera House celebrated its centenary in 2011, and for most of those first hundred years, Vietnamese traditional and European classical music reverberated within the walls of this elegant venue. However, as the Opera House enters its second century, there are signs--as in Vietnam itself--of gradual openness to more modern tides. This concert--billed as ...
Continue ReadingNguyen Le: Songs of Freedom
by John Kelman
For over twenty years, Nguyên Lê has collaborated with a growing cadre of like-minded musicians--mostly Paris-based, where the guitarist of Vietnamese origins resides--building a body of work that is, in the truest sense of the word, “world music." From the Afro-centric band Ultramarine, and exploration of his own roots on the seminal Tales from Vietnam (ACT, 1996), to recent explorations of a nexus where programming and spontaneity meet on Homescape (ACT, 2006), Lê has carved out a unique space--often fusion-like ...
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