Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Kristina Barta: Endless Questions and Answers
Kristina Barta: Endless Questions and Answers
ByBartaa graduate from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and a finalist in the 2016 Euroradio Jazz Competition in the Netherlandskeeps the action chugging along. "The One Who Believes" is a full bore slice of Euro post-bop: airy, articulate, unfussy. Clean and propulsive. The trio of Urbánek, Korman, and Pukl hold the landscape to task allowing Barta to muse about the sweeping terrain's many highway and byways.
The almost-too-ballady ballad "No Time Ritual" echoes just enough of the other eighheen-million ballads out there to kind of halt the forward spread of motion the previous two tracks had given themselves to. The slow, unfolding, knotty structure of "Everything's Changed" breaks that spell. It is soon followed by "Without Anxiety" where Barta balances her melodic balladry and her instinct for jumpy improv with keen nuance.
The quartet revels in that jumpy bop energy on "Fictional Trips." Barta is all over the Cecil Taylor/Marilyn Crispell playbook and it is a pure rush to listen to. Pukl, his tone classic saxsharp but not strident, resonant with metro narrativepulls with and against Barta, busting space for Urbánek's muscle and Korman's insistence to rule the day. Despite the couple of originals that sound a tad over-studied, Endless Questions and Answers does not disappoint and delivers if not many answers, certainly many promises.
Track Listing
Break Through Some Border; The One Who Believes; No Time Ritual; Everything’S Changed; Without AnxietyFictional Trips.
Personnel
Album information
Title: Endless Questions and Answers | Year Released: 2023 | Record Label: Alessa Records Jazz & Art, Second Records
< Previous
New Releases Plus Birthday Shoutouts ...
Next >
Jazz Juniors 2023