Sebastian Gille

Biography
Articles

Simon Nabatov Quartet featuring Ralph Alessi: Lovely Music

Read "Lovely Music" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
December 3, 2024

An alternative title for Lovely Music by Russian-born, German -based pianist Simon Nabatov might be Greatest Hits. He has selected some of his most tuneful works from across his career for interpretation by a quintet which includes American trumpeter Ralph Alessi in a one-off performance. Completing the lineup of this 2021 live date from Nabatov's home from home, Loft in Cologne, are more regular colleagues saxophonist Sebastian Gille, bassist David Helm and drummer Leif Berger. However, it presents not as ...

Album Review

Florian Ross: Architexture

Read "Architexture" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
March 16, 2021

Writing about music has been compared to dancing about architecture, in that it is a supposedly useless task. Writing music about architecture is a worthwhile proposition, though, as shown by this release from German pianist Florian Ross, composing music for his quartet and the Event Wind Ensemble which is inspired by famous architects and buildings he has encountered in his travels. This music plays like an updating of the Third Stream genre, combining classical formality and jazz fluidity. ...

Album Review

Florian Ross: Reason & Temptation

Read "Reason & Temptation" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 27, 2020

Midsummer 2019 was quite a busy time for Florian Ross. Apparently, the German-born pianist recorded the quartet date Reason & Temptation from June 29-July 2, then returned the following day to the same studio in Koln and added a wind ensemble to record Architexture for another label (Naxos). Reason & Temptation was self-produced on Ross's own label, Toy Piano Records. In each case the core group consists of the pianist's working quartet—saxophonist Sebastian Gille, bassist David Helm, ...

Album Review

Sebastian Gille: Anthem

by Dan Bilawsky
April 19, 2012

Given that a picture can be worth a thousand words and that saxophonist Sebastian Gille only uses one to define this album, the album artwork may be the better descriptor here. The icy peaks that adorn the cover of Anthem can be seen as a visual representation of the wide open vistas that Gille explores and creates. He paints slow snow drifts and rides through exhilarating gusts of wind balancing beauty and danger, a sense of uncertainty holding them both ...

Album Review

Sebastian Gille: Anthem

Read "Anthem" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
April 15, 2012

The most famous and venerable German record label is ECM Records, Manfred Eicher's brainchild, founded in 1969 and still going strong with now more than twelve hundred recordings in its catalog. But there is a German upstart, Pirouet Records, which has been in the business of offering up its own musical vision since the early 2000s, with a multinational stable of artists including American pianists Marc Copland, Bill Carrothers and Kevin Hays, British-born saxophonist Loren Stillman and Belgian bassist Nicolas ...