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Showing posts with label Trumpet-piano-drums Trio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trumpet-piano-drums Trio. Show all posts

Monday, August 19, 2024

Søren Nørbo, Wadada Leo Smith, Kresten Osgood - Dét, Som Ikke Kan Kaldes Tilbage (ILK, 2024) Trumpet Trio Series

By Stef Gijssels

We don't have that many trumpet-piano-percussion trios in our archives, just a handful in the 17 years that we've been active, and actually it's a fine format, here with Wadada Leo Smith on trumpet, Søren Nørbo on piano, and Kresten Osgood on drums. The Danish pianist has only some ten albums in his own name, and is possibly less known outside of his home country. He is a professor at the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen. Kresten Osgood we know well from the many albums on the ILK label that he features on. 

As the composer, Nørbo is the driving force behind the music, setting the scene and the context for Smith and Osgood to improvise on, often with sketchy and implicit structures and harmonies, and letting the creative and listening skills of the musicians do the rest. The music is quiet, intimate and subdued, notwithstanding the occasional jubilant horn or dynamic drumming. The performance was recorded in Nørbo's living room, already more than ten years ago. Your guess is as good as mine why it took so long for this album to be released. 

The title means "that which cannot be recalled", signifying the unique oppurtinity to have one man writing  compositions in one evening, and then performing it in one go. It's not a boundary-breaking album, in the sense that there is not much risk-taking or sonic explorations, yet its gentle nature and the quality of the playing make this worth a listen. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp.




Friday, July 31, 2015

Les Amants De Juliette - S'Electrolysent (Quoi De Neuf, Docteur, 2015) ***½

[b]By Stef[/b]

To celebrate their 20th Anniversary, Les Amants De Julliette released their sixth album, of which two were reviewed on our blog : Les Amants de Juliette (2009)  and Les Amants De Juliette & Majid Bekkas (2010). The trio are Serge Adam on trumpet, Benoît Delbecq on piano and bass station, and Philippe Foch on tablas. All three also use live electronics during their six improvisations, which is probably the biggest change compared to their previous albums - and it explains the title - even if there was actually no need for it, considering what electrolysis actually means: "electrolysis is a technique that uses a direct electric current to drive an otherwise non-spontaneous chemical reaction". The spontaneous chemical reaction was there to start with! And furthermore, the electronics play a role, although it does not significantly change the band's sound. 

 In any case, even if the band, has not drastically changed its approach, it still sounds like the musical equivalent of "fresh bowl of salad" as I once described them. Their music is rhythmic, open-ended, light-hearted, without pretense and with a very positive spirit ... this is music that doesn't stop dancing. It is jazzy but not limited to a genre, and like a fresh bowl of salad, it contains many ingredients that are fun and easy to digest.

Judge for yourself:




Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Jachna, Tarwid & Karch - Sundial (Fortune, 2014) ****

By Stef
Poland has without a doubt one of the prolific jazz scenes in the world at the moment, churning out one great album after the other. Here is another one, with Wojciech Jachna on trumpet, Gregory Tarwid on piano and Albert Karch on drums.

Despite the presence of a drummer, the music sounds like chamber jazz, intimate, measured, subdued. The album also has a strong coherence, making it sound like a long suite, a feeling which is reinforced by the fact that some tracks come in several variations on the album.

The amazing thing is that Grzegorz Tarwid was born in 1994, and Albert Karch in 1993, I mean, almost yesterday, yet they sound like they've been playing together for ages. The music is also hard to pigeon-hole, shifting between classical romanticism and more abstract open-ended jazz.

Tracks like "Terpsichore's Chant" even have bluesy references à la Jarrett, while "Little Draft" is more impressionistic and meditative, whereas the title track starts like avant-garde.  "Intermezzo", the long central piece, offers much space for Tarwid for a more classical diversion, and maybe that is to the credit of Jachna that he gives these two young musicians so much space. But this space and openness is essential to their approach, resulting in fresh, free, inventive and rich music, combining classical and jazz traditions into something new.

Three fantastic musicians, and a band to follow.




Wednesday, November 19, 2014

3D - Vermilion Tree (ForTune, 2014) ****

By Stef

Last year we praised the collaboration between Polish trumpeter Tomasz Dabrowski and Tyshawn Sorey on "Steps", recorded when visiting New York some years ago. He then also recorded this excellent trio performance with Kris Davis on piano and Andrew Drury on drums. The trio's music shifts between composed and improvised pieces, between quiet melancholy moods and rawer more adventurous moments.

The young trumpeter finds great kindred spirits in Davis and Drury. Even in the more explorative moments, the three musicians keep their natural kind of lyricism and great sense of pulse, which are kept at a very implicit level, present, noticeable, yet with a subtlety and nuance of delivery that give the music a kind of ethereal beauty.




Saturday, November 9, 2013

Marc Hannaford, Scott Tinkler & Simon Barker - Faceless Dullard (Marchon, 2013) ****½

By Stef

Some musicians seem to be made for each other, as is the case with these three Australian masters, Marc Hannaford on piano, Scott Tinkler on trumpet and Simon Barker on drums, who have released albums in various bands and settings, most of which are easy to recommend, and as can be suspected, reviewed on this blog in the past years.

I have no clue what the title means nor what it refers to. What matters is the music, which consists of one long improvised track of fourty-eight minutes, extremely jazzy in its phrasings and rhythms, full of pulse and nervous tension, and possibly the most amazing thing is the interaction between the three, which is phenomenal by the coherence of it, the space they leave each other, without ever letting go of the density and dynamic undercurrents, even when Hannaford takes the foreground after eighteen minutes for a piano solo, the pulse remains and the drums kick in easily, challenging the incredible rhythm, yet the next best thing about the overall sound is that all three musicians have both percussive and lyrical roles, not only alternating them, but playing them simultaneously, easy to believe from a piano player, but here it's also true for Tinkler, who is a rhythmic improviser, and Barker whose lyricism on drums equals his percussive power.

And then you have the telepathic interplay, including intense moments that suddenly end in silence for a second, only to move forward again, and in a long improvisation, this requires some strong listening skills and good knowledge of each other's playing.

The second part of the piece is a little less energetic, yet the tension is maintained, with Hannaford and Tinkler exchanging some abstract and eery phrases, but beautiful, beautiful, and then Barker kicks them back to full energy nearing the end, for a kind of grand finale, but beautiful, beautiful and intense.

Highly recommended.

The album is dedicated to Australian alto saxophonist David Ades, who passed away yesterday.


Listen and download from Bandcamp.