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Julie Sassoon
British pianist/composer Julie Sassoon is classically trained on piano and violin. She graduated in music and fine art in 1988, winning prizes for her classical piano performances and later completed postgraduate studies in jazz piano and Indian violin.
She came to the attention of critics and audiences in 2000, when she formed the remarkable ‘Azilut!’ trio with drummer Bart van Helsdingen and reeds player Lothar Ohlmeier, praised as ‘capable of miracles’ by the Guardian.
Whether touring with Max Richter’s ’Piano Circus’, opening Berlin’s prestigious contemporary music festival, Maerzmusik with Julius Eastman’s 4-piano works or playing solo at the Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, the London Jazz Festival, the Royal Festival Hall with the legendary band Oregon or with Enrico Pieranunci, collaborating with Israeli singer Efrat Alony, trumpeter Tom Arthurs and drummer, master of free improvisation Willi Kellers, Julie Sassoon’s musical versatility takes her world-wide.
In 2006 Julie released her first solo album ‘New Life’ on Babel Records (London) and has since performed solo internationally. On the Berlin Jazzwerkstatt Label, her second piano album ‘Land of Shadows’ explores her German-Jewish identity – a theme that has become a prominent part of her musical output since relocating from London to Berlin in 2009. RBB Kulturradio recorded and broadcast her concerts at the Neue Synagoge, Berlin and Bauhaus Theatre, Dessau amongst others. The result is a highly emotive and unique album.
John Fordham of the Guardian describes this album as “… An unclassifiable venture… Julie consistently makes the piano, her voice and her deepest emotions sound awesomely and naturally inseparable…’
In lockdown she released her 3rd solo album - ‘If You Can’t Go Outside… Go Inside’ described as ‘an album which can be counted as one of 2021's top solo piano outings…’ in allaboutjazz and took her to New York where she performed solo in the Roulette Jazz festival.
In 2015 she formed the ‘Julie Sassoon Quartet’ with Lothar Ohlmeier (tenor sax/bass clarinet), Meinrad Kneer (bass) and Rudi Fischerlehner (drums). Their first album ‘Fourtune’, recorded at RBB Kultur Radio Studios in Berlin was voted the CD choice of Bayerischer Rundfunk. Since then they have toured extensively, playing jazz festivals and venues throughout Europe and the UK, highlights of which include 2 sell-out performances at the Elbphilharmonie Concert hall in Hamburg. Their latest album ‘Voyages’ was released in November 2021 and was nominated for the prestigious German Record Critic’s Award.
Other projects include ‘Inside Colours’ Duo with Lothar Ohlmeier, founded in 1998 and featured many times with live concert recordings for Bayerischer Rundfunk. In 2024 they released a double album - ‘Inside Colours Live’ - including these radio recordings as well as a recording of the unforgettable double bill concert they played with the Marc Ribot Trio at the Kammermusiksaal of the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, Berlin in April 2023. Here they were joined by their then 18 year old daughter Mia Ohlmeier on drums - forming the ‘Inside Colours’ Trio.
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Julie Sassoon, Lothar Ohlmeier, Mia Ohlmeier: Inside Colours Duo/Trio Live
by Alberto Bazzurro
La pianista inglese Julie Sassoon è la principale artefice di questo doppio album, che riunisce i riflessi di due diverse esibizioni live rispettivamente al Bayerischer Rundfunk e alla Berliner Philharmonie datate maggio 2022 e aprile 2023 (col recupero di materiale del luglio 2016: i tre brani finali del primo CD): sue tutte le composizioni in scaletta, in effetti in possesso di un'estrema unitarietà strutturale e climatica, messe in campo nel primo caso in duo con le ance del marito Lothar ...
Continue ReadingJulie Sassoon, Roy Hargrove, Sam Anning, Bill Laurance
by Ludovico Granvassu
The live magnetism of Roy Hargrove and Julie Sassoon enrich a playlist which is bookended by the lush new project by British pianist Bill Laurance with the The Untold Orchestra and the latest, ambitious album by Australian bassist Sam Anning.Happy listening!Playlist Ben Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" 0:00 Bill Laurance, The Untold Orchestra “Bloom" Bloom (ACT Music) 0:16 Host talks 6:37 Roy Hargrove “The Love Suite: In Mahogany--Young Daydreams (Beauteous Visions) ...
Continue ReadingJulie Sassoon: Inside Colours Live
by Mike Jurkovic
Shedding warm illuminations on all our fragile, secretive, sensuous moments, is the underlying axiom behind British pianist/composer Julie Sassoon 's vulnerable and telling music. A classicist at heart who, whether she is aware of it or not, comes at her music in much the manner as Marilyn Crispell--visceral, personal, labyrinthine, yet ultimately accessible--Sassoon's sense of the improbable and the possible doesn't so much dominate the live performances that comprise Inside Colours Live as they green-light both to occur simultaneously.
Continue ReadingJulie Sassoon Quartet: Voyages
by Mike Jurkovic
As on a high speed, downhill slalom chase, listeners are suddenly, nakedly and without poles hurled into “Missed Calls"; the opening burst of sublime energy and groupthink cracks Voyages wide open, sets the mad, determined pace and tone for a craftily organic, six-song, free-jazz adventure which never lets up. It is breakneck rhythm churning, keening, into whiplash waves, a wake up call of massive proportions. “Missed Calls" busts Berlin-based, British pianist Julie Sassoon and her henchmen from isolation and double ...
Continue ReadingJulie Sassoon Quartet: Voyages
by Dan McClenaghan
Not all voyages involve smooth sailing. Indeed, pianist Julie Sassoon's Voyages opens on a blustery note. It is a quartet outing--as opposed to Sassoon's 2021 solo set, When You Can't go Outside...Go Inside (Jazzwerkstatt), with the pianist joined by reedman Lothar Ohlmeier, bassist Meirad Kneer and drummer Rudi Fischerlehner. The opener, “Missed Calls," sounds like a prelude to battening down the hatches in its blustery beginning section, before Sassoon take an introverted solo during a lull in the squall.
Continue ReadingJulie Sassoon: If You Can't Go Outside...Go Inside
by Mike Jurkovic
As we've learned time and time again throughout this sick year, 2021, not many humans are ready to completely surrender themselves for the good of their fellow kind. So it's truly a beautiful thing when Berlin based pianist Julie Sassoon surrenders so completely to her instrument and the moment that, like a medium, reveals mysteries to us in ways both intimate and oceanic. When woman and piano meet, If You Can't Go Outside. . .Go Inide may, for ...
Continue ReadingJulie Sassoon: If You Can't Go Outside...Go Inside
by Dan McClenaghan
American novelist and short story writer Stephen King has said that he thinks his stories are “found things, like fossils in the ground...relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world." He goes on to say that, as a writer, it is his job to reveal as much of this fossil as he can. Interesting, and maybe true. If it is, that can be transferred to music. Sounds as found things, not in the ground but in the air, waiting to be ...
Continue ReadingPress Quotes for Solo
“... An unclassifiable venture... Julie consistently makes the piano, her voice and her deepest emotions sound awesomely and naturally inseparable.”
****John Fordham – The Guardian
