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A World of Piano Trios
The piano trio format is alive and well, judging by this disparate collection of piano trio albums (mostly: a couple of them feature a guest vocalist on a track or two). They come from Israel (recorded in Berlin), Slovenia (recorded in New York City), Greece (recorded in Hungary), Boston, and Asheville, North Carolina. Traditionally the pianist is also the leader, but this collection also includes one cooperative group and one led by the drummer. Anat Fort Trio ...
read moreAnat Fort Quartet at Cornelia Street Café
Anat Fort Quartet Cornelia Street Café New York, NY February 20, 2018 It's easy (and tempting) to think of a great musicians working together like cogs in a well-oiled machine, but when basking in the waves of pianist Anat Fort and her quartet with altoist Michaël Attias, bassist Gary Wang, and drummer Rudy Royston in the intimacy of the Cornelia Street Café, it was impossible to think of them as anything less than ...
read moreThe Anat Fort Trio with Gianluigi Trovesi at the Rubin Museum of Art
Anat Fort Trio with Gianluigi Trovesi Rubin Museum Of Art New York, NY July 8, 2016 Pianist/composer Anat Fort's trio last played at the Rubin Museum of Art in November, 2008, and it seemed like the packed house had collectively been waiting for its return. Applause, and even cheers washed over the stage as she was introduced; it felt like a homecoming. The concert was part of the CD release tour for her new album, Birdwatching, ...
read moreAnat Fort Trio with Gianluigi Trovesi at the Rubin Museum of Art
Anat Fort Trio with Gianluigi Trovesi Rubin Museum of Art New York, NY July 8, 2016 On July 8, 2016, Israeli pianist Anat Fort made a welcome return to her New York comfort zone. Having forged relationships with many of that city's greats over the years, not least of all drummer Paul Motian, reputation preceded reappearance at the Rubin Museum of Art, where her trio with bassist Gary Wang and drummer Roland Schneider, ...
read moreAnat Fort Trio with Gianluigi Trovesi: Birdwatching
Israeli pianist/composer Anat Fort augments her longstanding trio with bassist Gary Wang and drummer Roland Schneider by adding Italian reedman Gianluigi Trovesi (who plays alto clarinet throughout) for her third ECM album, following 2010's And If. The trio had long been based in New York City, but since Fort 's return to Israel and Schneier's return to Berlin the band is now spread between three countries--which only makes their reunions more joyful. Fort and Trovesi first played together as a ...
read moreAnat Fort: And If
That pianist Anat Fort is an intensely lyrical musician is apparent throughout And If; her poetic lyricism acts, in fact, as sort of a unifying theme for the entire work. A hauntingly beautiful and sublime musical opus, the disc opens with her modal composition; “Paul Motian," a tribute to her previous band-mate, where her minimalist improvisation is reminiscent of Bill Evans. The trio goes through ten of Fort's own pieces, ranging from the sonata-like “En If" and ...
read moreAnat Fort: And If
Working with legendary drummer Paul Motian on her first ECM release, A Long Story (2007), must have been a formative experience for pianist Anat Fort. On And If, her second release for the German label, she opens and closes the set with two readings of “Paul Motian." These are inward, time-standing-still tunes, showcasing Fort's spare and spacious approach to her instrument, with the abstractly nuanced accompaniment of her regular trio-mates, bassist Gary Wang and drummer Roland Schneider.By and ...
read moreAnat Fort: And If
Pianist Anat Fort's ECM debut, A Long Story (2007) may have featured her “dream team"--and was all the better for it--but there's something to be said for the comfort and chemistry of longtime collaborators. Bassist Gary Wang and drummer Roland Schneider may not have the cachet of Ed Schuller or Paul Motian, but having worked with the Israeli expat since 2004, they clearly get what she's about, making And If a fine follow-up to A Long Story that, in many ...
read moreAnat Fort: Swimming in a Sea of Motian
While her discography as a leader consisted, until this year, of only one self-released album (Peel, 1999), New York-based, Israeli-born composer/pianist Anat Fort has been working steadily for years. Few contemporary jazz pianists have as graceful and developed a playing style as Fort--her use of rests, her love of space, and her classically-imbued phrasing are, once you've encountered her, immediately recognizable. She's just as good a composer, however, and it's the songs on her 2007 ECM debut A Long Story ...
read moreAnat Fort: A Long Story
My first exposure to the ECM milieu--the singular look, the sharp sound, the hypnotic music--was with Keith Jarrett's 1975 opus The Köln Concert. After longtime immersion in my parents' West Coast-intensive record collection, this amazing work of crystalline beauty hit me like French New Wave hits an American movie buff. Some guy named Manfred Eicher was telling me, in effect, “We don't have to do this music the same old way! Free your ears and your mind will follow!
read moreAnat Fort: A Long Story
Notes twirl with thrilling beauty in Anat Fort's hands. Infused of the free jazz and 20th Century classical music aesthetics (especially the Second Viennese school), A Long Story, her first effort for ECM, successfully captures a talent of rare profundity and breadth. Her innate sense of textures, as well as her free-flowing lines and dramatic use of the sustain pedal, makes her a poetess of the ivories.
The peaceful solemnity of “Just Now, a recurrent theme of disarmingly ...
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