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Lena Circus with Itaru Oki: Zanshin
by Karl Ackermann
Guitarist Antoine Letellier and guitarist/reed player Nicolas Moulin formed Lena Circus as a duo in 1999 and the pair produced nine recordings that were marketed primarily in France. Expanding to a trio formation with percussionist Guillaume Arbonville in 2003 they released a prolific ten albums by 2012. Mid-way through that decade, the group began to add one-off guests to the lineup, often in non-conventional roles such as “amplified voice," zither and ukulele. On Zanshin the trio is joined by Japanese ...
read moreSonny Simmons: Leaving Knowledge, Wisdom and Brilliance / Chasing the Bird?
by Eyal Hareuveni
American alto sax and English horn (Cor Anglais) player Sonny Simmons needs no introduction. Now 81 years old, Simmons was a key player in America's free jazz eruption in the 1960s. He released his first solo albums on ESP- Disk, the exponent label of free jazz and recorded or played with legendary musicians like Eric Dolphy, Albert Ayler, Charles Mingus and Don Cherry. Since the seventies his musical career went through some turbulent phases. Fortunately, in ...
read moreJean-Luc Petit: Matière des Souffles
by Eyal Hareuveni
French reed player Jean-Luc Petit mastered his art through extensive, mostly free improvised, solo work with actor and poet Daniel Crumb (including the staging of Charles Bukowski poems) and various duets with double bassist Benjamin Duboc, percussionist Didier Lasserre and sax players Daunik Lazro and Sylvain Guérineau among many other forward-thinking local improvisers. Petit's five solo improvisations may be considered as reed abstractions of Duboc's masterful improvisations on double bass. The latter three pieces were recorded ...
read moreFrançois Tusques / Alexandra Grimal / Sylvain Guérineau: La Jungle du Douanier Rousseau
by Eyal Hareuveni
This ad-hoc French trio brings tenor saxophone players and free improvisers--Sylvain Guérineau, who is also a gifted painter, and Alexandra Grimal to the musical universe of veteran pianist Francois Tusques, who began to play jazz in post-war France and was a close associate of expatriate Americans like Don Cherry and The Art Ensemble of Chicago during the late 1960's. La Jungle du Douanier Rousseau--its title refers to the naïve paintings of post-impressionist Henri Rousseau--was recorded live and carries the exploratory ...
read moreItaru Oki: Chorui Zukan
by Eyal Hareuveni
Japanese trumpeter Itaru Oki is one of the forefathers of the free jazz scene in Japan; he was a member of the seminal, experimental Japanese trio ESSG, with pianist Satoh Masahiko, and drummer Togashi Masahiko, an improviser who was a role model for many Japanese musicians. Among them was pianist Satoko Fujii, and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, who collaborated and recorded with Oki. Oki moved to France in 1974 and since then collaborated with innovative free jazz musicians and free improvisers ...
read moreBenjamin Duboc: St. James Infirmary
by Eyal Hareuveni
French double bassist Benjamin Duboc belongs to the elite of the European free improvisation scene. He is a musician with a unique command of the bull fiddle, employing a wide array of inventive and original extended techniques. But he is also an improviser that charges each of his solo performances with captivating emotional power. His latest solo album was recorded in the church building Eglise Saint- Martin in Bignac in the western part of France in ...
read moreNoah Rosen / Alan Siva: O.I.L. (Orchestrated Improvised Lives)
by Eyal Hareuveni
Alan Silva is one of the last true heroes of free jazz and improvised music. He was at the right place, at the right time with his own powerful sound. He played, while still playing the double bass, on some of the formative recordings of the forefathers of the sixties free jazz as Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon, {[Andrew Hill}} and many others. Later on his own Celestrial Communication Orchestra and Sound Visions Orchestra, when he began ...
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