Jazz Articles about Syntopia Quartet

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Syntopia Quartet: Mars

by Glenn Astarita
February 20, 2006

This quasi Third Stream/free jazz/chamber jazz offering is the inaugural release from Germany's NEMU Records. With superior sound engineering enhacing the project, the strings-reeds-rhythm unit pursues minimalism, tightly structured thematic forays and adroit improvisational exercises. Many of these works are fabricated upon multi-part time divisions and the band's excellent use of depth and space. The musicians generate sweet tones and diminutive phrasings to complement hearty injections of briskly enacted unison runs.

Violinist Albrecht Maurer's staccato lines atop the ...