Representing the Free Jazz scene in North Macedonia (Part 2 of 2)

By Irena Stevanovska

Continued from part 1, here.

Macedonian Free Society – Macedonian Free Society (PMGJazz – 2024) 

Macedonian Free Society is a project that brings together many of the artists featured in the albums so far, along with other who have been part of the Mecedonia’s jazz scene for a long time. It’s a blend of young artists and jazz-veterans who have been playing since the early 2000’s. This new wave on young free jazz musicians opened up a big window for the older musicians as well, giving them freedom to express themselves in ways that weren’t as common when jazz wasn’t as widespread.

I chose this album because it’s a great example of free-form jazz. The collective allows every musician to express their individuality while coming together as an ensemble. It features a viriety of wind instruments: two saxophones (played by Ninoslav Spiroski and Vasko Bojadziski), a bass clarinet (Blagojce Tomevski), and trombone (Vladan Drobicki). These are complemented by string instruments including guitar (Filip Bukrshliev), bass (Deni Omeragic) and violin (Gligor Kondovski), with Dragan Teodosiev anchoring the rhythm on drums.

The result is a melting pot of ideas and styles, musicians following each-other in a fluid, avant-garde soundscape. This album is also tied with the city of Skopje, with titles, describing events in the city and moments that inspired the musicians to create this kind of music. The names of the album tracks lead me to believe that the album can be enjoyed during the everyday moments of life, especially if you’re a fan of upgrading your mundane daily obligations into a surreal exploration of your surroundings, with a great soundtrack playing in the background.

Roman Stoylar, Yordan Kostov, Nick DeCarlo, Dragan Teodosiev – Adventure of Doschnica’s eel (PMGJazz – 2024) 

This album is a little different than the rest that I’ve reviewed here. I typically chose more urban albums that are inspired by the streets of Skopje or the smaller towns in Macedonia. But this one, as the name implies, the Doshnica is a river in Macedonia hidden in a small part of the great mountains spread throughout the country. This one stands out with being one of the few albums featuring foreign musicians. On this album, there’s Nick DeCarlo from the US on tuba, Roman Stolyarov, a Russian composer and pianist, and of course Dragan Teodosiev and Yordan Kostov back on drums and accordion, accordingly.

I say this album feels different because it has this mystical vibe running through it. The bandcamp description captures it perfectly; just like the eel’s journey, the musicians magically came together one night in Skopje to play this. You can really hear it in the 40-minute track – parts where the instrument sounds like they’re chasing each other, pulling you into nature itself. The whole thing feels like a day out exploring. It starts with the energy of moving through concealed trails along the river, spotting plants, and feeling that rush of the unknown. Then, towards the end, it slows down, calming like the river as it flows into a different place.
The second, much shorter track feels like the walk back home after that long, spiritual day. It’s reflective, grounded, and just as meaningful in its simplicity.

Bukrshliev | Hadzi-Kocev | Spiroski – Transmarginal Beverly Hills (Live at JazZy) (Aksioma, 2024)

Transmarginal Beverly Hills is an album born from jam sessions at a bar in Skopje. It was played on a warm spring night, a place where random jam sessions often happened, sessions where musicians would unexpectedly find each other having the greatest time performing together. Some even formed bands (I know of at least one trio for sure), and great albums like this emerged from those nights. Two of the musicians on this album are already familiar from my previous reviews: Filip Bukrshliev returns on guitar and Ninoslav Spiroski is here again on alto saxophone and clarinet, joined by the pianist Konstantin Hadzi-Kocev.

This ambient album captures the calmness rarely found in the city, as a contrast to the chaos I’ve mentioned in my previous reviews. It begins with a drone-like ambient sound that sets a sorrowful tone, layered with mellow keys and a guitar that gently stretches over everything. The clarinet and saxophone drift in, carrying a weight of grief and serenity. The rawness of the recording only adds to the atmosphere, you can hear it wasn’t professionally recorded. Faint background noises slip here and there, grounding you in the exact place and moment where this happened, making it feel even more intimate.

I would place this album in the realm of 'Hauntology' – as described by Mark Fisher as “lost futures”. This album, together with its cover photo, evokes the feeling of a future that was supposed to happen but never did. That sentiment resonates deeply here, especially since this article focuses on a post-socialist country with a flourishing avant-garde jazz scene. Many of these musicians were born into a time when there was still hope that the country might become something livable, something more. That can be felt in many of these albums, and it’s present here too – the bittersweet inspiration drawn from a nation that shaped these artists. Allowing to pour their souls into every note they play.

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Representing the Free Jazz scene in North Macedonia (Part 1 of 2)

By Irena Stevanovska

The jazz scene is thriving among young people all over the world, with artists blending different genres, creating new styles, and leaving a legacy that feels alive and evolving. In Macedonia, a group of young people is doing the same. For a country with just 2 million people, it’s surprising how strong the jazz scene is. Skopje, the capital, is the heart of it – a place where you can find more than one improvised music gig per week. The unpredictability of a life in a post-socialist country somehow pushes the creativity of the people further, making the music deeply emotional. The country is seen through different perspectives by the musicians, some reflect the gray skies and cracked streets, while others catch the rare flashes of light and color. 

With so few people, there’s the challenge of not having enough musicians to dive fully into avant-garde styles, so you’ll notice many of them rotating through different ensembles.

There are three main labels for Jazz in Macedonia: SJF Records, the oldest, along with PMGJazz and Aksioma. Together, they release a surprising number of albums for such a small country. Here, I’ll focus on releases from Aksioma and PMGJazz because my aim is towards the free form of jazz – the improvised, and the completely free-jazz.

Yordan Kostov – Kichobal (Aksioma, 2024)

Yordan Kostov is one of the leading improvising musicians on the scene today. Known for his collaborations with artists from both the Balkans and around the world, he brings an avant-garde touch to the jazz genre. Playing the accordion—a rare instrument in jazz—Yordan has developed a unique style that sets him apart. With over 40 previous releases, this album sees him gather a group of exceptional musicians for an improvisational session. Later, Yordan reworked the recordings into a post-modern mashup, resulting in a dynamic and vibrant album.

The album opens with a slow and calm introduction, gently preparing you for the surreal mashup of sounds ahead. It features instruments rarely heard in free jazz, creating an abstract, post-modern experience for anyone willing to lose themselves in the music. The opening track combines accordion and taishigoto, producing a glitch-like effect on your mind. Meanwhile, the piano and guitar contribute to a dreamlike atmosphere, anchored by percussion that keeps you grounded. By the third track, a hint of melancholy begins to surface—foreshadowing the emotional depths explored in later pieces. However, before delving into this heaviness, the album shifts back to a groovier, more energetic vibe, complemented by the stunning vocals of Ayumi Saita.

Midway through the album comes its centerpiece, Rainy Season. This track captures the essence of Skopje during its rainy season—its damp, raw ambiance providing the perfect backdrop for introspection. A constant drone hums in the background, creating space for reflection, while a repetitive guitar riff and bagpipe melodies radiate emotional pain. The accordion offers a lightness that contrasts beautifully with the percussion, which gently pulls the listener back to reality. Despite the track's weighty emotions, it also conveys a sense of calm acceptance.

From there, the album shifts to playful, high-energy sounds, featuring heavy bass-lines and, at times, distorted drum patterns. The accordion, ever-present, shines with cheerful melodies, blending seamlessly with other unique instruments like the Vietnamese đàn bầu and the Japanese taishigoto, both played by Yordan Kostov.

 

Svetlost – Everything Was as It Had Been a Minute Ago (PMGJazz, 2024)

 

Svetlost is a trio that’s often seen playing live. They’ve also released music with an eleven-piece orchestra, which made it into Bandcamp’s top 15 jazz albums worldwide in 2019. Everything Was as It Had Been a Minute Ago is their first album in four years as the original trio. Their sound is usually built around heavy, repetitive bass lines by Deni Omeragić, energetic drumming from Kristijan Novkovski, and Ninoslav Spirovski’s unmistakable tenor saxophone.

This album is a bit different. All the members have experience playing in post-rock, psychedelic, and noise rock bands like Strog Post, Fighting Windmills, Palindrom, and Local Blue, those influences show here. The album starts with a melodic saxophone that quickly brings in the bass and drums. The bass and saxophone constantly follow each other, while the drums push a fast pace.  

The third track begins with a more melancholic saxophone, quieter drums, and a bass-line that holds the structure together until the drums speed things up later. The fourth and final track captures the feeling of city life. The saxophone gives it a vibe that feels like it could fit into a 90s animated crime series, maybe one based on a comic. This part of the album reflects the late-night walks through Skopje—through brutalism, pollution, and the haze of a fun night out. The saxophone mirrors this, while the drumsticks bring a Balkan rhythm. As the song progresses, the bass takes on a more traditional sound, and a clarinet, also played by Spirovski, unexpectedly joins in.

 

Taxi Consilium – Spiritual Car Wash (PMGJazz, 2022)

This is easily the best free-jazz combo on the Macedonian jazz-scene. The chemistry between the musicians is unmatched, and the atmosphere they create captures the country’s dynamics perfectly – a mix of movement and gloom. Each member brings something unique. Andrea Mircheska lays down an old-school bass line that holds the whole album together, while Dragan Teodosiev’s drumming breaks into post-modern rhythms that feel fresh and unpredictable. Blagojche Tomevski’s clarinet shifts between the sound of traditional Macedonian music and wild, stretched out tones that spiral into chaos. Filip Bukrshliev’s guitar is a fusion of post-rock and jazz, mind bending no matter how you hear it.

The track names are part of the experience, adding another layer to the surreal vibe of the album, combined with the abstract cover art, you know exactly where the music takes you. 'Consumer Hot-Line with Atilla the Hun' is one of those tracks that stays in your head long after listening, something your brain replays at 3 a.m. because it burned itself into your subconsciousness.

The album doesn’t stick to one mood, tracks like 'Nocturnal Flights' and 'Exposed Flesh' lean into noir, and dark jazz, creating a slower, shadowy atmosphere. Resembling their previous album The Essential Sunday Glooms, sharing the same mood and energy.

Listening to this album feels like watching a brilliant film. The last track is the credits, pulling you back into reality but leaving you with everything you felt during the journey – the ups, the downs, the whole experience. This album isn’t just music, it’s a trip you will remember for a long time after.

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Dave Rempis / Jason Adasiewicz / Joshua Abrams / Tyler Damon -Propulsion (Aerophonic Records, 2024)

By Martin Schray

I recently bought Ballister’s self-released debut Bastard String (from 2011), an album that is relatively rare. After listening to it for the first time, I was amazed at how much Dave Rempis still sounded like Peter Brötzmann back then. And it’s even more astonishing how varied his playing has become over the years. This can be recognised very well on his new album Propulsion. The band presents Rempis on saxophones (as usual), vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz, who is known for his work with the aforementioned Peter Brötzmann, bassist Joshua Abrams (of Natural Information Society fame) and Rempis’s long-term musical partner Tyler Damon on drums.

From the very first note it’s remarkable how melodic and spiritual Propulsion is. This becomes particularly clear on “Egression“, the second track. Rempis begins with a minimalist solo, with Abrams lingering on a monotonous riff in the background (something he also likes to do with Natural Information Society), which remains dry as dust and thus forms a clear contrast to Rempis’s vibrato-laden sound and the extremely high registers the saxophonist uses here. In the second part, the rhythm section pushes Rempis up a mountain, from where his full sound then floods the land below in the most marvellous way. He sounds like Trane in his late phase, less gospel-like, more controlled instead, but just as passionate and heart-warming. The liner notes say that “this recording also catches the band at a moment of major emotional impact“, which might explain said emotionality. Propulsion also “documents the final concert of more than 900 shows that Rempis curated and produced as part of a weekly Thursday-night series of jazz and improvised music that stretched for more than twenty-one years from 2002-2023.“ This band therefore not only represents the four individual musicians, but is also representative of the state of the art of the Chicago scene. The music is not an “Ephemera“, as the third and final track is called, but a promise of what is yet to come. It’s the music of another America, not that of the neoliberal populists, but that of John Coltrane, Albert Ayler and Joe McPhee. We will need it. Perhaps more than we realize.

You can buy and listen to Propulsion here:

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Leap of Faith – Objections to Realism

It was, if memory serves, during the pandemic that Boston's David Peck, a/k/a PEK, began live-streaming his various ensemble's performances, including Leap of Faith, which has been around in evolving forms since the 1990s,  as well as his other groups like Simulcrum, Expanse and Metal Chaos Ensemble, to name a few. PEK has created a sprawling universe, regularly producing new music and holding performances since ending a several year musical hiatus in the start of the 2000s.

Here is the recording of Leap of Faith's (or is it called Turbulence?) Objections to Realism performance from January 4th:

PEK - clarinets, saxophones, double reeds, flutes, percussion
Glynis Lomon - cello, aquasonic, voice
John Fugarino - trumpets, trombone, French Horn
Tom Swafford - violin
Scott Samenfeld - bass

Joel Simches - Live to 2-track recording - real time signal processing
Paul Brennan - camera
Raffi - video mix

Leap of Faith and PEK on the Free Jazz Blog:

Revisit an interview by Nick Ostrum with PEK and much more ...

Blasting across the Alkali Flats with Evil Clown

Leap of Faith - Principles of an Open Future (Relative Pitch, 2020) ****

PEK Solo, A Quartet of PEKs - The Strange Theory of Light & Matter (Evil Clown, 2020) ****

Dancing in times of plague - the Corona Diaries (III)

The Continuing Adventures of Damon Smith

Leap of Faith Orchestra – Helix (Evil Clown, 2017) ****

Leap of Faith Orchestra - Supernovae (Evil Clown, 2016) ****

Leap of Faith Orchestra - Hyperbolic Spirals Vols 1 & 2 (EvilClown, 2015) ****

Leap of Faith w/Steve Swell - Live at New Revolution Arts,Brooklyn,8-15-15

Leap of Faith - Abstract Structures Vols 1 & 2 (EvilClown, 2015) ****½

Leap of Faith - Regenerations (Evil Clown, 2015) ****

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Nduduzo Makhathini – uNomkhubulwane (Blue Note Records, 2024)

By Matty Bannond

Music is potent stuff for Nduduzo Makhathini. The South African pianist’s compositions and improvisations are loaded with a force that he believes can heal people, connect to the spirit world and invite humanity to cultivate new ways of being. His eleventh studio album, uNomkhubulwane, is a three-part ritual that pays homage to a Zulu goddess. It’s powerful. And it sounds great too.

Makhathini is a Zulu healer, or Sangoma, and earned a PhD in 2023. His work is often described in terms of mystical messages or cerebral concepts. It seems important to mention, however, that he also has a prodigious gift for music’s rudiments—rhythmic feeling, melodic clarity, momentum. Beneath its metaphysical intent, his third Blue Note release showcases these gifts. He is joined by bassist Zwelakhe-Duma Bell le Pere, an American of South African descent. Francisco Mela plays drums.

The first track, “Libations: Omnyama”, opens with Makhathini speaking a low-tone prayer. A pulse from piano arrives, supported by a strong-but-simple bass figure and gently cajoling percussion. That foundation stays in place throughout, even when the vocals become more strident. Rhythmic and melodic shapes are the same thing here. Every sound is part of a steady, relentless musical engine.

In the second part, “Water Spirits”, the atmosphere is hectic. Two pieces in this section are panicky and heavily improvised. “Izinkonjana”, however, has a gospel-adjacent and blues-ballad mood. When the pianist creates a stirring passage of composition, he is often content to bathe deeply and let it wash around him for a while without any restless compulsion to change the water.

“Inner Attainment” is the third section and brings the record to a peaceful close. “Amanzi Ngobhoko” is the penultimate track and features another driving beat, this time more euphoric. The final tune is a solo piece called “Ithemba”. Makhathini’s training in classical and jazz traditions is spotlighted here. His patience, timing and communicative skills are in full focus too.

There are spiritual forces and big ideas at play in uNomkhubulwane. Nduduzo Makhathini is a deep-thinker and compelling talker. He is a spellbinding composer and improviser too. Possibly, his music can heal people and connect to the ancestral realm. Certainly, it sounds great.

The album is available on CD, vinyl and digital download here .

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Rich Pellegrin (featuring Neil Welch) - Topography (Slow and Steady Records, 2024)

By Gregg Miller

Sax/piano duo. Breathe. This is the record you want on when you need a meditative stretch, immersion into a total atmosphere, cleansing, transfixing, liberating, nothing to harsh your buzz.

It’s Rich Pellegrin’s record, yet Neil Welch is the leading light, saxophone (soprano & tenor) playing the lead vocal. Pellegrin lays the foundation from which Welch soars and dips, in the clouds, in the valleys, with the winds.

So many gorgeous moments on this record, where extended technique meets the lush, reverberant piano in the room. Although the allusions of the track titles are to space-time out in nature (ravine, canyon, bluff, cave), I find myself mostly tuned into the richness of the actual instruments, the deep respect of the piano’s depths, the singingness of the horns, keys opening and closing, an interiority reflected back in the reverb. I asked Pellegrin over email about the reverb:

“I spent an incredible amount of time with the engineer working on the reverb in particular. Each track has its own individual reverb profile that attempts to match the type of landscape I had in mind. The canyon tracks have tremendous amounts of added reverb, for example. In addition, the reverb envelope was often adjusted throughout each track to create various effects. ... Sculpting the sound of wind, birds flying overhead, etc. All those effects you hear on the album were meticulously crafted in the studio. Not overdubs or anything like that, but just sculpting the original recorded sounds.”

If you’re used to hearing the angular, whiplash turns of phrase and muscularity powered by Chris Icasiano’s relentless drumming on Welch’s Bad Luck recordings, you’ll catch here a different phase of Welch’s sound palette, one we in Seattle have been exposed to over the last many years in his live performances where he often foregrounds pitchless, engagingly expressive air.

The record opens with a leaping, breathy soprano sax solo line as characteristically rich as anything Welch has recorded. In general the saxophone is very closely mic’ed, catching the percussiveness of the keywork, the fluctuations of breath and tone. “Cave” is particularly good on this, where a breathing body meets and makes resonant the resistance of cane and brass. “Ravine” is a bit bluesy. “Field (day)” adds the element of paper in the prepared piano, adding a percussive buzzing like an African morning. “Canyon (day)” and “Canyon (night)” are highlights, with Welch warping and varying his tone.

Pellegrin’s delicate hammering marks out space; Welch’s saxophone traverses it. A lovely pairing.

Q. I hear Bill Evans' “Peace Piece” here (plus strains of Jan Garbarek in Neil’s playing).

Does Bill Evans have a place in your mental map of sound, and the sound you want to make?

Yes, I've listened to “Peace piece” many times. I do like Bill Evans a lot, but he has not been a primary influence on me. What you might be hearing is a lot of influence from early 20th-century classical music that Evans and I both share. And to that point, let me say that Messiaen's music has influenced me a lot, and I hear a lot of Messiaen's influence in "Peace Piece" as well. One of the overriding features of Messiaen's music is the depiction of birdsong; Evans depicts birdsong in that piece. Topography also depicts birds quite a bit, both in the saxophone and the piano, for example, the rising piano motif in "Stream" depicts the Swainson's Thrush. I'm not surprised that you hear strains of Jan Garbarek in Neil's playing. I was absolutely going for an ECM type of sound with this project, so that steered Neil a little more into Garbarek's orbit.

Q. How much on this recording is written out composition, how much improvisation? Is the written part notes, chords, graphic images, text?

I had sketches for almost all of the pieces. Some of the sketches were very loose, and without any musical notation, but I still had a strong vision for each of them. Some of the tracks were purely improvised, but still came from a place of exploring the themes of the album. For pieces like "Stream," "Canyon (night)," and "Marsh," I had specific motives or pitches written down for myself to play exclusively, because those pieces are meant pretty literally as depictions of the sounds in certain types of natural areas. Those sketches gave pitch material only for the piano; they did not dictate what Neil was to play. He was the "respondent" in terms of the creative dynamic. Neil responded to my overall vision for the project, as well as specific ideas or instructions I gave him for individual pieces.

Q. What’s your next project?

The album I'm recording next week [December, 2024] is with my regular Seattle quintet-- Neil Welch (Bad Luck), R. Scott Morning (Polyrhythmics), Evan Flory-Barnes (Macklemore, Industrial Revelatoin), and Chris Icasiano (Fleet Foxes, Bad Luck). It is going to be fairly radical in that I will be treating the piano like a percussion instrument most of the time. ... Many of the pieces will have a minimalist, ECM-type vibe. We recorded a cover of Steve Reich's "Piano Phase" on my first album, Three-Part Odyssey. This new album will be very much in that vein.

There’s a (gorgeous) 3 minute video trailer of Topography here:

 

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John Butcher / Florian Stoffner / Chris Corsano-The Glass Changes Shape (Relative Pitch, 2024)

By Martin Schray

Within the last year, this is already the second release by this trio, which at first glance appears to be rather contradictory. John Butcher, the eternally young, great stylist of British improvised music (he recently turned 70 ) , once again creates unwieldy little melodies and licks in which he knows how to make generous use of the entire spectrum of his instrument. Here he is more reminiscent than ever of the other great British free improv saxophonist, Evan Parker. Chris Corsano, the drummer, knows how to push a band forward loud and hard, and guitarist Flo Stoffner, a sound explorer of the strings par excellence, on the other hand, are responsible for the atonal elements of the pieces in very different ways.

On the occasion of the first album Braids, I wrote that this was “rather music for concentrated listening and not for tapping your feet or even head banging“ and that it was “much more about precise musicality, crystal-clear interjections and a certain gentle thoughtfulness, but of course also about sound exploration and creation.“ The same still applies here. “Quiet is the new loud“ can still be regarded as the trio’s motto, because the music differs from the boisterous, powerful free jazz in a way that they refrain from playing their instruments in a rather brutal manner. “Terminal Buzz“, the third track on the album, serves as an example. It begins with a whistling and hissing, then the guitar gurgles from the background. The trio slowly comes to life, even if Corsano is still largely holding back. Stoffner, however, is already firing small salvos into the room, while Butcher chirps calmly to himself. With Stoffner’s feedback and Corsano’s trills on the cymbals, the piece unfolds more and more, like a bird stretching after waking up, yawning, then pumping, breathing and taking a run-up before taking off and gliding away in the final minute of the piece.

The Glass Changes Shape is actually a musical personification of life, a microcosm of what makes up our everyday existence. We try to make the best of it, but surprises and challenges lurk everywhere. They come unexpectedly out of the blue, they frighten and delight us, some we jump at immediately, others we have to deal with for longer. But that is precisely what makes them so exciting. The album is a lesson in philosophy, communication and poetry.

Highly recommended.

The Glass Changes Shape is available as a CD and as a download. You can listen to it here:

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Caroline Davis – Portals, Vol. 2: Returning (Intakt Records, 2024)

By Matty Bannond

Threads of song are tied in knots on this release. It’s the second installment of Caroline Davis’ Portals series. In 2021, Vol. 1 meditated on the alto saxophonist’s grief and trauma following the sudden death of her father. The muse for Vol. 2 is her grandmother, the English poet Joan Anson-Weber, who passed away in 2010. Dialog is at the heart of the composed content and free playing.

That dialog involves Davis and trumpeter Marquis Hilland, as well as pianist Julian Shore, bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Allan Mednard. The same quintet featured on the first record alongside a string quartet. This time there are guest vocalists and spoken word artists, plus contributions from visiting synthesizers, organ and Rhodes. Nicole Mitchell’s flute takes a star turn on one track.

A seesawing call from saxophone and trumpet starts things off on “Gate of the Year”. The two horns are fractionally out of sync as they enunciate the written content together. That creates a disconcerting atmosphere that Davis fleshes out via a three-minute solo punctuated by intervallic leaps. Her upper register has a violin-like texture. There’s a bebop-adjacent feel to her phrasing.

Poetry by Joan Anson-Weber is incorporated into several tracks. The group improvised a response to audio samples lifted from family videos for “Back Again”. It’s a short and gorgeously intimate piece. Davis’ grandmother is encouraging her to swim. But we hear, in hushed asides, her concern about whether young Caroline is too far out of her depth. The free playing is sweet and tender.

There’s pain on this album too. Beneath ominous drip-drops from piano on “Only the Names Are Changed, Part 1”, something is wounded and weakened. An agonized vocal moan slips out between the fluttery techniques, high-pitched squeaks and thumped bass strings on “Oblivion”.

Portals Vol. 2: Returning deftly transposes the many-sided experience of bereavement and its subsequent sense of absence. Its twelve tracks are tangled around a common conceptual thread but tied in an inventive variety of knots. Instruments call to each other in familiar voices across vast, untraversable space. Will they get together again? Only Caroline Davis knows.

The album is available on CD and as a digital download here.

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Zoe Efstathiou – Edge of Chaos (Alkekung Records, 2024)

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

Starting with the first, 'Dodone,' of the album’s five tracks (all taking ancient Greek names) Zoe Efstathiou’s playing is unexpectedly aggressive, propelled by some kind of inner energy, I guess. As I always try to make the connections between the title of the recording and the music itself, the word chaos (imagine standing at the edge of it) can come to mind, while listening.

Eftathiou utilizes the keyboard as a weapon of anger or sorrow, leaving small silences in between to ease the tension. This is a solo piano recording indeed but one that doesn’t bring only the keyboard on the forefront. The acoustics of the studio, how the pedals of the piano are being used, and the willingness of its creator -of course- resolve into building, right from the start, a cinematic feeling, some kind of otherworldly ambience. Like molecules that travel into space before they vanish into it’s vast, chaotic, openness.

The music on Edge of Chaos, clocking just over half an hour, provoke the listener to leave the notion of solo piano playing totally behind. Is it an experiment? It is. Could it be an ambient recording? Definitely. It is also a “heavy” listening, one that takes over the space where you are right at the moment you press play. Impressive in creating spaces, where the album can stand on its own, without the listener thinking of trivial things like time. Ranging from the margins of pop up to Cagean piano experiments, the recording of Edge of Chaos is a timeless listen, one of those you will want to experience again many years after the first time, without wondering when was this.

Listen here:

@koultouranafigo

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Terrence McManus - Music for Chamber Trio (Rowhouse Music, 2024)

By Eyal Hareuveni

American, Brooklyn-based guitarist-luthier-sound artist Terrence McManus began to work with master-drummer composer Gerry Hemingway in 2007, recording a duo with Hemingway (Below The Surface Of, Auricle, 2010), a trio with Hemingway and double bass player Mark Helias (Transcendental Numbers, NoBusiness, 2011) and as a member of Hemingway American Quintet (Riptide, Clean Feed, 2011, with tenor sax player Ellery Eskelin), and performing with Hemingway's WHO trio + 2 ensemble. The trio of McManus with veteran Eskelin and Hemingway, who have been working together since the late nineties in Hemingway Quartet and Quintet, and as a duo, Inbetween Spaces, Auricle, 2010), reconvened for the recording of Music for Chamber Trio, released by McManus’ label, Rowhouse Music.

The reserved and intimate, minimalist spirit of Music for Chamber Trio is inspired by free jazz and contemporary music but does not subscribe to any genre or style conventions, but creates its own, nuanced and conversational sonic universe. McManus composed seven notated and semi-notated untitled pieces about fifteen years ago especially for Eskelin and Hemingway, the opening, a 26-minute one and the following, six shorter ones, more urgent and open for sonic experiments with folksy, ambient and drone textures, and plays a home-built, stereo nylon string guitar.

The unique kind of guitar allows McManus to suggest elusive, dream-like and almost abstract textures where he investigates the resonant timbres of the guitar while complementing the delicate and precise percussive touches of Hemingway. or solidifying the gentle, breathy melodic threads of Eskelin, and patiently daring more and pushes the spacious and understated interplay into a more dense and intense one. The album radiates an unhurried, calm and natural flow of introspective and thoughtful, chamber music, relying on rich musical chemistry and exceptional deep listening of these gifted improvisers. Here, less means much more.

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Brandon Lopez & Steve Baczkowski @ MAAS 11-7-24

We're pressing pause on the Sunday Interview - we want to give it a chance to catch its breath and maybe switch up some of the questions. In the meantime, we offer you the Sunday Video, which will feature a video of something creative - a recent concert, a new recording, an old concert, etc. 

Today, we raid the YouTube channel of Relative Pitch label head Kevin Reilly for something to start us off right, Brandon Lopez & Steve Baczkowski @ MAAS from November. Both Lopez and Baczkowski have been well-reviewed by the writers at the Free Jazz Collective over the year - enjoy!

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Piotr Damasiewicz and the Into the Roots - Switanie (L.A.S., 2024)

By Sammy Stein

Polish artist Piotr Damasiewicz has released 'Świtanie' with the 'Into the Roots' band.

To appreciate this music, it helps to understand Piotr’s background and view on things temporal and ethereal. He is a composer, trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, educator, traveler, and curator of international music platforms. He studied double bass, piano, and classical singing – including Gregorian chant – choral and chamber conducting, arrangement and composition as well as trumpet. His travels have led him to take influences from the many places he has visited.

Damasiewicz has represented Poland on four international music platforms: Take Five Europe, Jazz Plays Europe Laboratory, Art Meetings, and Melting Pot Laboratory (Jazztopad). In the last two, as a leader, composer, and instrumentalist, he developed the idea of open improvisation in contact with other fields of art. His works include ‘Hadrons’ for string quintet and jazz band commissioned by the Jazztopad festival, ‘Suite 29’ written for the World Jazz Days for Polish Radio Program Two, ‘Composition’ for 27 improvisers as part of the final Melting Pot (Jazztopad) platform in Wrocław and the composition ‘Some Kind Of Greek Story’ based on Delphic maxims, commissioned by Casa de Musica in Porto. He also creates theatre and film music.

The list of collaborators Damasiewicz has worked with includes saxophonists David Murray, Lotte Anker, and Jason Carter, pianist Jason Moran, trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, vocalist Phil Minton, drummer Paal Nilsen Love, and many more.

The Into The Roots Band comprise Piotr Damasiewicz on trumpet, organ, voice and percussion, Zbigniew Kozera on bass and guimbri (similar to a bass lute), Pawet Szpura on drums, Michat Zat on shawm (wooden double-reeded baritone instrument), wooden transverse flute and hammered dulcimer, Katarzyna Karpowica on Koto (a Japanese zither-like instrument), Alicja and Kamila Krzeszowiak on voice, Pauline Kazmierczak on voice and violin, Krzysztof Ryt on five-string viola and Marek Ryt on bagpipes, fife and French horn. The sound that the band creates is as multicultural as the instrumentation promises.

‘Nasa Krowka’ is a wonderful escapade of enchanting music that manages to fuse an Irish timbre with Eastern vocals and a gentle leaning of the melody that leans towards European folk music.

‘Swit’ is fuller in its arrangement with the constant presence of the strung and percussive elements. It is a track that builds like a storm until the music falls as a torrent of sound across the listener, enveloping them in sonic waves, relentless in its insistence – topped by the entry of the reeds and voice. The ensemble embarks on an improvised section, the voice adding musical elements just as an instrument and the reeds and percussion driving forceful rhythm patterns into the listener’s ears, willing or not.

‘W. ogrodzie rozo’ (Rose Garden) is a gentle, multi-layered number with duality in the vocal lines and the accompaniment, while the atmospheric ‘Kumiko’ opens with gentle, almost tentative lines before a glorious fanfare of trumpet and occasional insertion of calling voice, which rises and falls, the eeriness created reminiscent of Eastern religious mysteries. Across the top comes the trumpet again in glorious voice, its melody reflected and passed back changed in vocal tones.

‘Kolisecko mojo’ (My Wheelchair) opens with organ and vocals, the gorgeous harshness of the vocal harshness contrasting beautifully with the organ lines before strings set up a walking gait, across which the vocals and other instruments perform intricate patterns that change and seemingly stalk the vocal lines, passing across notes just after the vocalist delivers them. The trumpet adds an airy flourish and voices its brassy tones before the vocal storyteller finishes gently – the meaning felt in the music even if the listener cannot understand the language.

‘Nagare’ opens with a keening trumpet and percussive element under vocal intonations and trumpet insertions. Possibly the freest track on the album in terms of expressive improvisation. At times the vocalist sounds like a Sumo wrestler as he calls and shouts. Under the melodic at times, and not-so-melodic at others, the trumpet, the percussion, and strings offer gentle contrast in tone, lines, and rhythm. A wonderful number that works its way into a full-throated harmonic structure in the final third.

‘Now’ finishes the album and is a beautiful slow burner of a track, building from a gentle introduction to a well-filled and textured number with interesting rhythm patterns, gapped and held rhythms, which keep the interest, and devilishly delicious trumpet insertions.

This album is a revelation. The music draws on many roots – from Latin to Eastern, Celtic, European, and traditional jazz. Each listen reveals a new thread or line found by purposeful and intent listening. There is a sense of composition in terms of patterns and styling but also a good dose of free playing. Not a word I use often but this is attractive music – in the way it draws on many elements and develops them simultaneously, cohesively, and intriguingly. The band members listen to each other and respond incredibly intuitively. The trumpet lines are breathtaking at times in their intensity and the language used here calls to different ethnicities. In this music, there is natural expression alongside composed and cleverly arranged episodes. It feels like it comes together easily but arranging for the different keys, tones, and subtleties of such an array of instruments must be a challenge – but here it works in beautiful ways.

Many of Piotr’s musical ideas originate in places he has travelled to, but also from his journeys, as he puts it ‘into himself and into sound’. He has travelled a great deal. Here the music reflects that, it is as if the many places he has found inspiration have each contributed a part to the music. So the combination of different languages – from jazz, ethnic music, and modern music to improvised and experimental elements comes together in a conversation that makes sense. Absolutely music for the curious listener.

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Tarbaby – You Think This America (Giant Step Arts, 2024)

By Nick Ostrum

From the first stilted notes of the first track, 'Dee Dee,' I was hooked. Actually, those notes also had me scratching my head. Somehow, despite the faithful rendition of the melody, it took me a minute to link it to Ornette Coleman, whose version Live at the Gold Circle Volume 1 is a classic. (After all, it is his composition.) This version is a bit slacker, but just as slyly disjointed. Eric Revis lays a nice solo about three minutes in. The oddity, however, is in the instrumentation. Ornette Coleman famously avoided piano in most cases. Here, Orrin Evans takes lead, turning Ornette’s bent phrasings into something more direct, as Nasheet Waits holds steady in the back.

You Think This America is the latest release from Tarbaby, Evans, Revis and Waits’ long-standing trio, captured live for the first time at Hunter College in 2022. The album consists of ten cuts, two ('Dee Dee' and 'Comme Il Faut') Ornette compositions, one (a beautiful and methodical realization of 'Reconciliation') by Andrew Hill, a Stylistics slow-dance groove ('Betcha By Golly Wow'), a hey-day classic ('Nobody Knows When You’re Down and Out'), and compositions by free jazz luminaries David Murray ('Mirror of Youth' and Sunny Murray ('Treetops'), as well as a couple from Evans ('Red Door' and 'Blues [When it Comes]') and Waits (Kush) themselves.

Tarbaby has been around for a decade and a half, and it shows. Their single-minded interplay, their responsiveness, the space they leave each other (again, Revis lays a fat, seamless solo about three minutes into Red Door, and Waits peppers the end of it perfectly leading to his own solo that evokes Andrew Cyrille), their tight bass-piano doubling, their controlled but baroque excursions, all speak to that. Tarbaby also occupies an interesting space on the musical spectrum. It is contemporary jazz, with a surfeit of references to the relevant tradition. It also veers toward the free, as the admittedly polished versions of Treetops, Mirror of Youth and the Coleman pieces attest. The balance, however, is convincing. This is neither free jazzers trying to swing nor fresh departures from the stage at Lincoln Center dabbling in more open compositions. Tarbaby has claimed their ground slightly toward the more structured end of this spectrum and duly earned their reputation as real force. (Just listen to the affecting and almost defiantly confident versions of Reconciliation, Betcha By Golly Wow, and Treetops, or Evans’ own Red Door, which is dangerously infectious.) And they continue to straddle these and various other tendrils of the jazz stem with immaculate musicianship and relentless creativity. In You Think This America,that all comes through and makes a convincing argument that the future of the music might not just be in deviant branches of extended techniques, stylistic collisions, and the extremes of noise and quiet. It might also lie closer to the trunk.

You Think This America is available as a download from Bandcamp:

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Brötzmann in Focus

Brötzmann / Nilssen-Love - Butterfly Mushroom (Trost, 2024)

By Eyal Hareuveni

Butterfly Mushroom is the second volume of the two-day studio recording at Zuiderpershuis in Antwerp from August 2015 of the great Peter Brötzmann, who passed away in Wuppertal on June 22, 2023, with favorite drummer, Norwegian Paal Nilssen-Love, following Chicken Shit Bingo (“Butterfly Mushroom” was the opening piece of that first volume), released earlier this year. Brötzmann and Nilsssen-Love played together for the first time when Brötzmann joined Frode Gjerstad Trio in 2001 (Sharp Knives Cut Deeper, Splasc(H), 2023), and continued their collaborative work for 18 years when Nilssen-Love joined the Chicago Tentet in 2004. They continued to work as a duo, different trios (with Mats Gustafsson, Steve Swell, Michiyo Yagi, Massimo Pupillo., and Fred Lonbeg-Holm) and the Hairy Bones quartet (with Toshinori Kondo and Pupillo).

Brötzmann told sound and visual artist Lasse Marhaug (who designed the cover) that throughout most of his career, he could not afford studio recordings due to their cost, but also because he wanted to document the development of the music. It was not possible in a limited studio time. But lately, he began to think that working in the studio is like “painting and graphics… In the studio, you go with a certain number of ideas and try to realize them. If you like them it’s fine. If you don’t, you throw it away. We all know I can play loud, I can play with some power and strength, and Paal is good at pushing things too. But what we learned, and Paal is about half my age, is that we agree in that the studio work can be different. It was very good.”

In Chicken Shit Bingo and Butterfly Mushroom, Brötzmann wanted to play on a new contra-alto clarinet he bought and Nilssen-Love wanted to play on new Korean gongs he had not tried yet, and, obviously, their deep rapport was as strong and stimulating as ever. The music, as Brötzmann described it, has a definite contemplative and reflexive approach and is less aggressive, but the titles of the eight pieces are typical ones of Brötzmann.

Brötzmann and Nilssen-Love open this second volume with “Boot licking, Boots kickin” and “Ride the Bar”, familiar, fierce attacks with Brötzmann on the bass saxophone, but both pieces also suggest the vulnerable side of Brötzmann. “Frozen Nose, Melting Toes”, with the new contra-alto clarinet, allows Brötzmann to sketch a sparse, openly emotional and melancholic ballad, accompanied by a quiet, hypnotic pulse of Nilseen-Love. “Bubble Butt Trouble” feeds on that melancholic vibe, now with on the trusted tarogato, and Nilssen-Love building powerful, ritualist patterns around him. Nilssen-Love knows how to frame Brötzmann’s introspective but still angry voice in an unpredictable but propulsive, rhythmic drive on “Spill The Beans And Tell The Truth”. “Strain my Taters”, with Brötzmann, again, on the contra-alto clarinet, is a dark blues, but the following “Chicken Shit Bingo” offers a playful, raw but brighter side of him. This album ends “Ye Gods and Little Fishes”, a powerful, mournful dance with Brötzmann touching cries on the new contra-alto clarinet, that concludes with a most beautiful, quiet and fragile coda.


Few drummers have kept such a long, friendly and productive relationship with Brötzmann. No doubt, Nilssen-Love had one of the most profound relationships with the great master and Butterfly Mushroom, like Chicken Shit Bingo, is a great testament to their unique connection.

Žiga Koritnik - Brötzmann In My Focus (PEGA, 2024)

 

The photo of great Slovenian photographer Žiga Koritnik, capturing Brötzmann and Nilssen-Love playing in a studio, at a close distance, is in the inner sleeve of Butterfly Mushroom. Koritnik devoted his second book of photographs (following Cloud Arrangers, 2019) to Brötzmann and more intimate and generous perspectives of the late master, including a few photos of Brötzmann and Nilssen-Love, mainly with the Chicago Tentet. Brötzmann compliments Koritnik’s art. “For sure Žiga loves the music, you have to come so close to the musicians, you hear them talk, you smell sweat, cigar smoke, fruity wine, bourbon or whiskey - whatever. And there we have the connection - we need all our senses for whatever we are doing - our WORK - LOVE - LIFE”.

Nilssen-Love contributed a beautiful, touching text about Brötzmann, his close friend who always had a camera with him, and with whom he kept sharing “experiences and memories through photos”. One of the most emotional photos in this book is of Brötzmann hugging Nilssen-Love after a duo set in Wleń, Poland. “In this book, Žiga has managed to capture Peter in many different situations. Not only on stage. And that’s the beauty of this book”, Nilssen-Love writes. “After performing for five decades there are thousands of photos of Peter on stage, full on, playing his ass off. Žiga’s photos capture another side of him that is more personal and intimate. I’m glad these photos exist, that Žiga paid attention and captured these moments. We can look back and be reminded of the energy Peter gave and shared - on stage, off stage, on camera”.

Koritnik concludes this book by saying how much he admired Brötzmann since he first experienced Die Like A Dog at the Konfrontationen festival in Nickelsdorf in 1994. “Peter was undeniably the gateway to my understanding of the world of free improvised music”, he writes. Later on, their connection became closer, and Brötzmann asked Koritnik to arrange an exhibition of his artwork in Ljubljana, and the work on this book began in 2021. “I am genuinely grateful for having heard so many of his incredible concerts, seen his art firsthand, had the opportunity to know him, be occasionally near him, and learn so much from him. And that he allowed me to fulfill my mission-photography.”

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Album of the Year 2024

We are happy to announce the Free Jazz Collective's top album of 2024. Last week, we presented the top 10 recordings of the year, culled from the top 10 lists of all the Free Jazz Collective reviewers and then held an internal vote for the top album of the year.

And the results are ... 

ØKSE - self-titled (backwoodz records)

Congrats to the forward thinking, international quartet of ØKSE whose debut album handily won the hearts and ears of the Free Jazz Collective. Martin Schray offers that not only have they captured the spirit of what Free Jazz was, but they may just be leading its way forward: 

Free Jazz, which in the 1960s and 70s was a music of rebellion and driven by the desire to reflect social conditions, has almost completely lost this ambition today. In the USA in particular, this task has been taken over by hip-hop and R’n’B. As a result, it’s necessary not to romanticize Free Jazz, but to view it as a contemporary music, which must ultimately offer room for cross-over experiments. ØKSE is such an experiment. The band seems to have recognized where the revolutionary momentum of the music has drifted and improvises on beats that are relevant to a younger generation. The consequence is a new music that demands new standards. The band itself cab almost be called a Free Jazzsuper group: New York based drummer Savannah Harris, Danish saxophonist Mette Rasmussen (who has played with actually everyone who has a name in today’s Free Jazz), Haitian electronic musician Val Jeanty, and Swedish bassist Petter Eldh (Koma Saxo), who is also on synths and sampler. Deciding to break relatively new ground, they have chosen four rappers for this collaboration, including the two Brooklyn superstars of conscious Rap - ELUCID and billy woods (a.k.a. Armand Hammer), plus Maassai and Cavalier, both also from the same New York borough. 

If Free Jazz wants to attract a younger and more diverse audience, if it wants to regain relevance, projects like ØKSE are certainly a way forward. It’s definitely an interesting album for fans of Irreversible Entanglements or Sons of Kemet. I'm really looking forward to where they go from here.

Read the review here.

Darius Jones - Legend of e'Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye) (AUM Fidelity)

Coming in second place in our vote is Darius Jone's with his latest on AUM Fidelity. Lee Rice Epstein gave this one high praise by placing Jones' playing with some giants of the genre:

Arguably, Legend of e’Boi reaches a mighty high peak; throughout the album, Jones plays with the lushness of Arthur Blythe, the lyricism of Julius Hemphill, and the compositional range of Oliver Lake—oh, how he swings, how he skronks, and all with one of the most beautiful alto tones.

Read the review here.

أحمد [Ahmed] - Giant Beauty (Fonstret)

Pianist Pat Thomas took the Top spot in 2022 with his recording Pat Thomas and XT, and in 2021 with the group أحمد [Ahmed], featuring Joel Grip on bass, Seymore Wright on sax and Antonin Gerbalon drums. This year أحمد [Ahmed] comes in third place with their 5 CD box-set Giant Beauty.  Fotis Nikolakopoulos boils down the music in this expansive set to the essentials:

Giant Beauty is massive in its ideas and willingness to step on two boats, the past and the present. I really like the fact that it doesn’t offer an easy way out. You have to listen and think, probably (re) imagine how to get out of your comfort zone.

Read the review here.

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And so, we begin 2025, already half-way through the 2020s - a decade that began shakily and does not seem to be getting much stabler - the only thing we can say is that, judging from the music that we've been previewing and will be coming out in the coming weeks, we still have a vital musical community to comfort and challenge us. Of course, once again, we thank all of you, our readers, writers and musicians for your visits, comments, focused criticism and trust, allowing us to share our enthusiasm for the musical experiences that we all thrive on.

Happy New Ears!

Sincerely,

The Free Jazz Collective

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