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Oddgeir Berg Trio: While We Wait For A Brand New Day
by Dan McClenaghan
Writing about Norway's Oddgier Berg trio and discussing the group's terrific debut album Before Dawn (Ozella Music, 2018), one reviewer said that Berg and his mates were “A group to keep an eye and both ears on." That writer was spot on. The trio followed up that auspicious first effort with In the End Of The Night (Ozella Music, 2019), maintaining the same atmospheric, often gloomy introspection, bringing the long, cold Scandinavian winter darkness to mind with deliberative ...
read moreOddgeir Berg Trio: Christmas Came Early
by Dan McClenaghan
The late Paul Bley (1932-2016) once said of his ECM Records release Open, To Love (1972), that the sound he created there was his attempt to prove he was the slowest pianist in the world. He was a man with a sense of humor, and his tongue had surely wormed its way into his cheek with that observation. And the mention of Bley in a review of an Oddgeir Berg Trio album comes about for a couple of reasons. One: ...
read moreKari Ikonen: Impressions, Improvisations and Compositions
by Rob Garratt
Twentieth century artists were often known to power their creative process with a jazz soundtrack—Jackson Pollack's frenzied brushstrokes supposedly sparked by bebop horn spurts—while further back loftily enlightened Romantic composers often hoped to distill the essence of other mediums in their work—perhaps most famously with Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Jazz musicians taking sonic inspiration from the fruit of visual art may not be entirely uncommon, but for Kari Ikonen it's painterly methods, not products, which ...
read moreBenny Lackner Trio: Drake
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Benny Lackner was born in Germany, but moved to the United States at thirteen years of age. He spent his formative years in California, and received his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Studies with pianist Brad Mehldau followed. Then, at thirty years of age, Lackner returned to Berlin from his adopted New York base. From Germany, the albums—with a superb trio—started coming. Drake is the Benny Lackner Trio's sixth offering. Stylistically, Lackner doesn't sound ...
read moreOddgeir Berg Trio: In The End Of The Night
by Dan McClenaghan
Oddgeir Berg Trio, out of Norway, came in with a compelling and fully-formed voice from the very beginning, with a particularly fine debut, Before Dawn (Ozella Music, 2018). Headed by pianist Berg, the group has wasted no time in releasing their sophomore effort, In The End of the Night. There is something to be said for the art of being prolific, an album or two a year--something the current state of the music/recording business and diminishing CD sales seems to ...
read moreRain Sultanov & Isfar Sarabski: Cycle
by Ian Patterson
The church organ has been a bit player in jazz history, impacting about as much as an Alfred Hitchcock cameo—blink and you'd miss it. Jan Garbarek and Kjell Johnsen's meditative duo album Aftenland (ECM, 2000) and a trio of gothic jazz recordings by Asaf Sirkis and the Inner Noise spring to mind, but after that you'd really have to dig. Cycle sees Azerbaijan's leading jazz musicians, soprano saxophonist Rain Sultanov and pianist/organist Isfar Sarabski embrace the solemnity of church organ ...
read moreOddgeir Berg: Before Dawn
by Dan McClenaghan
The evolution of the piano trio has taken us from Art Tatum to Erroll Garner to Oscar Peterson to Bud Powell to Bill Evans--with Thelonious Monk in there veering off from Ellington and the stride tradition on his own separate branch. The newest piano trio offshoot is that of groups who add electronic embellishments to their sounds, either live or sprinkled on via post recording spicings--the Swedish group the Esbjorn Svensson Trio (e.s.t.) is perhaps the highest profile example of ...
read moreRain Sultanov: Inspired by Nature
by Ian Patterson
Azerbaijani saxophonist/composer Rain Sultanov has long drawn inspiration from his country's rich culture and stunning landscapes. On Inspired by Nature--Sultanov's eighth release as leader--the saxophonist toggles between lyrical balladry and passionate exposition as he takes Azerbaijan's nature as his muse. And it has been an epic venture. With a band of trusted musicians, Sultanov led an expedition around Azerbaijan, recording the natural sounds they encountered in the great mountains, by the Caspian Sea and on the flat plains. These recordings ...
read moreVarious Artists: The Magic & The Mystery Of The Piano Trio: Ballads & Lullabies
by John Ephland
It's rare that a collection of songs that stay the course with a theme from track to track can hold interest. Especially when the tunes are so spare in execution, essentially simple love songs, performed by a collection of trios who maintain distinct musical personalities. Such is the case with The Magic And The Mystery.Across thirteen tracks we hear 12 originals by performing members, the only cover being a wistfully surprising one of David Bowie's “Life On Mars." ...
read moreVarious Artists: The Magic & The Mystery Of The Piano Trio: Ballads & Lullabies
by John Ephland
It's rare that a collection of songs that stay the course with a theme from track to track can hold interest. Especially when the tunes are so spare in execution, essentially simple love songs, performed by a collection of trios who maintain distinct musical personalities. Such is the case with The Magic And The Mystery.Across thirteen tracks we hear 12 originals by performing members, the only cover being a wistfully surprising one of David Bowie's “Life On Mars." ...
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