Solo Saxophone

By Stef

A quick and dirty overview of all some solo sax albums that were released this year. We were already spoiled by the beautiful Victoriaville performance by Anthony Braxton, but there is a lot more to enjoy.


Joe McPhee - Seattle Symphony (Kye, 2017)

One of my preferred solo sax albums was actually released in 2017, but never reviewed (shame on us!. It is a solo performance by Joe McPhee, also on trumpet, recorded in August 2010. The performance and the album are dedicated to Bill Dixon (Side A) and Fred Anderson (Side B) who had just passed away in June of that year. McPhee is a formidable player, an artist who has the luxury to be able to translate almost every subtle feeling and spiritual insight into a musical expression. He plays with timbre, tone, pace and volume in a natural, free-flowing and soulful way, managing to be immediately rewarding while at the same time creating artistic novelty.

All pieces are subdued, solemn and reverent, even if the second piece is called "If I Had Drunk An Entire Bottle Of Scotch, I Still Wouldn't Have Understood A Fucking Thing You Said". Dedication to deceased friends does not mean that humour should be absent.

If you like McPhee's playing, this one should be in your library.


Kan Tae Hwan - Live At Café Amores (No Business, 2018)

Again a treasure trove find by No Business, now with a solo performance by South Korean altoist Kan Tae Hwan, recorded live on the 8th October 1995 at Café Amores, Hofu, Yamaguchi, Japan.

His tone is fascinating, as are his skills in altering the timbre of his horn. Musically, he includes jazz and folk elements to build his improvisations which are all quite distinct and with a unique voice. He makes the rare combination of lengthy timbral explorations and multiphonics à la John Butcher, while at the same time trying to add soul to the process, more in the style of McPhee. The mood shifts between sad melancholy and wel-paced spirituality, with the occasional - albeit rare - outburst of nervous energy, making this a very entertaining album.


John McCowen - Solo Contra (International Anthem, 2017)

We reviewed Josh Sinton's "Krasa" solo contrabass clarinet album earlier this year, and as mentioned, it was released only a few weeks after John McCowen's "Solo Contra". Highly coincidental, but such is the nature of chance happenings.

McCowen started with music as the singer of a hardcore band, and shifted to saxophone when his voice got affected. He took his new vocation seriously, studying the instrument at various schools, ending up studying with Roscoe Mitchell. Even if McCowen's voice was affected, apparently his lungs were well trained by the heavy metal singing. The feat he performs on this unwieldy instrument is exceptional and a real treat: he leads us on a real journey of sonic discovery of both the very deep tones and the spectacularly high vibrating and multiphonic tones that he manages to extract from his instrument. The artist's effort is one of high physical concentration and effort, especially in the long circular breathing moments, when even the listener is gasping for breath, yet McCowen plows on, uprooting sounds, and freeing them for the world.

It sounds impossible, but the whole performance is acoustic without overdubs, and was recorded with no less than thirteen microphones to capture the full sound and vibrations of McCowen's improvisations. The sound is unique, and it demonstrates that even music lovers with a broad and deep interest in improvised sonic adventures can still expand their horizon.

Patrick Shiroishi - Tulean Dispatch (Mondoj, 2017)

In a way it's amazing that we have not reviewed any music by Patrick Shiroishi, a Japanese American multi-instrumentalist based in Los Angeles. He has performed solo sax albums before, and "Tulean Dispatch" is really easy to recommend. He is a saxophonist in the style of John Butcher, creating intense resonating timbral explorations, but adding more melodic melancholy and raw anger to it.

The "Tulean Dispatch" is the name of the newspaper of the Tule Concentration Camp, where Japanese American citizens were relocated after Japan declared war to the United States at Pearl Harbor. Shiroishi's grandparents were placed at the camp. The narrative is reflected in the music, in all its power of indignation and sorrow. Calm and mourning moments alternate with ferocious outbursts, as in "The Screams Of A Father's Tears". The longest piece, "Form And Void", is by itself worth buying the album for, with its deep tones of unrest, powerlessness, agony and feeling of injustice: pure and authentic expressivity. The last track, "The Flowers and Candles are Here to Protect Us" brings the tone back to calmer and solemn spheres, full of sorrow and pain.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.


Patrick Shiroishi - Sparrow's Tongue (Bandcamp, 2018)

On "Sparrow's Tongue", the tonality and mood are completely different. Gone are the anger and the sadness, and replaced by more intimate and spiritual beauty. Shiroishi never raises his tone but develops long timbral explorations, overtones and circular breathing bouts, simplifying his melodic approach, and working around a core tone, adding subtle changes in pitch and colour. His mother, Uzuko Shiroishi, recites Japanese tanka poems as introduction to some pieces or as an integral part of others, poems written by Shiroishi's grandfater, Seiji Inoue. Field recordings provide the backdrop for some pieces. On two tracks he plays alto and soprano simultaneously, and on "The Crocodile's Dilemma", he plays his "soprano into a snare drum to create a kind of feed-back with the instrument interplaying with an audio recording of an atomic bomb slowed and reversed". On other pieces, and especially on the last track, silence or absence of sound also plays an important part. A wonderful reduction to the essence of sound.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.


Lea Bertucci ‎– Metal Aether (NNA Tapes, 2018)

Lea Bertucci is a composer, saxophonist and clarinetist. She also uses field recordings, ranging from Mayan pyramids to New York subways. On "Metal Aether" she explores what its title suggests: the paradox of sound, the physical impact of something intangible, the effect of sound on the brain, the vibrations of sound that penetrate your body. Unlike the other albums, her performance is layered, with more interest in the overall sound of the piece than on the actual power of the instrument itself. She creates interesting and fascinating harmonic structures, but also dramatic effects as on the long "Sustain And Dissolve". Clever and imaginative.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.


Marco Colonna - Sketches for Victor Jara (Self, 2018) & Foraminifera (Plus Timbre, 2018) & Prometheus (Bandcamp, 2018)

After last year's "Bushido", on baritone sax solo, Italian saxophonist Marco Colonna offers us several solo albums, and of a quite different nature.

"Sketches For Victor Jara"is a very lyrical tribute to Chilean poet, singer and political activist Victor Jara who was killed during the Pinochet regime. Colonna performs the compositions by Jara and a few others on alto, clarinet and bass clarinet. The music is very accessible, reverent, jubilant, dancing and weeping: it sounds simple, but Colonna's beautiful tone and lyricism makes this a very unpretentious and nice album.

"Foraminifera" is much more avant-garde, a solo perfomance on clarinet and bass clarinet only. Colonna looks for unique sounds, with lots of whispers, tongue clacking, howls, circular breathing, and polyphonic explorations, but always built around focused linear improvisations, which maintain a kind of implicit lyricism, including some folk elements. The music has an overall deep organic quality, something intimate and close to earth and nature.

"Prometheus" is again of a totally different nature, and not really a solo sax album, since he also plays flute, alto flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, baritone sax, Sicilian tambourine, pandeiro, bendir, riq, glockenspiel, analogue synthetizers and low mbira. It's an album full of variation, often with strong rhythmic explorations, including the joke of the stuck record needle, and with a multi-layered density that also creates interesting harmonic interplay, as on the last track, "Sketches Of The Future", where his horns collaborate like a real ensemble.

Interesting and prolific work, and I recommend readers to check first which side of Colonna will please them most.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.


Florian Walter - Bruit Botanic (Umland, 2017)

Florian Walter is a young German saxophonist from Essen, whom we know as one of the musicians on the Umland label, with "Bruit 4" and as a member of "The Dorf". On this album he plays alto, baritone, contrabass clarinet and reed trumpet.  He is an artist with a very clear idea of what he wants to do and how, combining intellectual curiosity in new sounds with a pleasure to also share them. The label writes that "Based on the idea of amplifying the low-end dynamics of his horns, he developed an uncommon way to produce dense and microscopic fields of sound which aesthetically blur the borders between drone, noise and musique concrète", which is a good description of the music ... or put differently: you will be treated to a journey into the unknown, with Walter as your assertive and determined guide. He seems to love all these weird sounds that come out of his various instruments, and then he paints with them, abstract canvases, in broad strokes, or in energetic lines, in pointillist gurgles, or in stretched tones, spliced even, circular, with growling and screaming and steaming at the same time, as if through some unknown magic his instrument has become an orchestra of the unusual, an ensemble of the extraordinary, a band of the unexpected. He enjoys it, he loves it, and his enthusiasm is infectious.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.


Watch a fourty minute performance by Walter on various known and unusual horns:

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Kaoru Abe & Sabu Toyozumi - Mannyoka (NoBusiness Records, 2018) ****

By Nick Metzger

Kaoru Abe's later work is feast or famine depending on your particular taste. The popular consensus is generally that his best work was done between 70’-73’, reaching his creative zenith in the winter of 72’ (if you haven't heard Winter 1972 or Solo.1972.1.21 both are in the YouTube playlist linked below, mind blowing stuff). This period saw Abe laser-focused on speed and power, whereas his later career became more exploratory and expressive, with Abe utilizing multiple instruments to chase his muse (sometimes successfully, sometimes not). In 1978 Abe recorded Overhang Party with Sabu Toyozumi, a wild and sorted affair and sister album of sorts to the new release from NoBusiness Records, Mannyoka. Kaoru Abe played and recorded with Sabu Toyozumi frequently in the year of his passing. The two had been close friends and played together for a decade before they ever put anything to tape. The sessions that make up Mannyoka date to January and July of 1978, flanking the Overhang Party sessions in February and April, with Abe’s tragic death at age 29 coming on September 9^th . Overhang Party itself is a mixed bag. Like much of Abe’s later work, there are flashes of brilliance intermingled with plodding multi-instrumental experimentation and self-indulgence on the part of the saxophonist. This takes up the middle half of a pretty bloated record (IMO), and without it the album would be more succinct. So, as it stood I wasn’t sure what to expect from this release given the time frame it comes from, but I was very pleasantly surprised to find some great expended improvisations with Abe on reeds only (soprano and sopranino sax) in fantastic (dis)harmony with the legendary free jazz drummer.

The two-part Song for Mithue Totozumi (named for Toyozumi’s mother) begins with Kaoru Abe on soprano saxophone, squelching and stuttering over the rolling rhythms of Sabu Toyozumi. What makes this late collaboration work so well is how sympathetically Abe plays with Toyozumi. If the legends are true, Abe was known to be a difficult musician to collaborate with (e.g. Keiji Haino), but he sounds as engaged here as I’ve heard him in a group setting. The early thunder of the tracks ebbs into softly blown shrieks and reed squeaking amid the sparse crackling percussion and then explodes into fury again, with the musicians navigating several probing sections amid violent crescendos. Perpetual overblowing became more prevalent in Abe’s later music and its extensive use here renders the pitch of his horn obsolete except on the softest passages. Starting off more introspectively is the three-part Song for Sakamoto Kikuyo (named for Abe’s mother), the first part consisting of a softly blown lamentation from Abe played over sparse, knocking percussion. The second part starts with Abe’s shuddering altissimo shriek probing for double notes and harmonics before disappearing and reappearing intermittently as a whisper of color bobbing to the surface of the Toyozumi’s sparse percussion. Around the nine-minute-mark Abe catches fire on sopranino and around two minutes later, unable to resist any longer, Toyozumi erupts. The third and longest part is my favorite of the bunch due to its relative fieriness and good to great interplay. Abe pushes the sopranino as far as it will go, making it sound malicious and throaty over Toyozumi’s vicious percussion. The final few minutes finds the duo tapering off the improvisation, reducing in speed and volume until nothing remains.

This is about as successful an album as you can get from Abe’s late phase. Absent are the extended experiments, replaced by here with a sympathetic ear and a willingness to explore as a duo. However, also absent is the careful attention to his searing tone and lightning fast articulation that makes his early work so exhilarating, replaced here with a broader, uncontrolled palette. I’m not saying that this is bad by any shake of the stick, in fact just the opposite; I think it’s a very good reissue and worth your time to listen (especially for Abe fans). But relative to the portion of his work that makes him so special, it’s a fairly middling effort.



Kaoru Abe Playlist on Youtube.

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Westlin/Tontin – Westlin/Tontin (Grodor Och Fåglar, 2018) ***½

By Gustav Lindqvist

On the tiny Swedish label Grodor Och Fåglar (Frogs And Birds) comes the first 12” vinyl release by Westlin/Tontin. This is an album filled with fun! They stay true to tradition, but clearly Westlin has thought this through and spices each song with humoresque melodic snippets. Jonsson is often on a different planet throughout the entire album, and I love it! On Dagen då 50-öringen försvann he seems to have decided where to go, and then he’s off, leaving the rest of the band in a cloud of smoke. This album reminds me of Jari Haapalainen Trio with its theme à la madness and its bend-and-break style. I find myself standing on a dancefloor after having just a little bit too much to drink, but still with a distinct idea of certain dance moves. Westlin/Tontin accompanies that perfectly. It’s a small box of jewels that are all unique in color and feel. I’d like to hear more from Mogensen and Davidsson on future releases, even though on Trimmer they’re stretching their legs a bit. Jonsson is the highlight of this somewhat short release. This is promising, and I hope to hear more from the group in 2019.

Personnel:

Double Bass – Boel Mogensen

Drums – Anton Jonsson

Tenor Saxophone – Pelle Westlin

Trombone – Gustav Davidsson

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Chris Burn & Simon Fell - Continuous Fragment (Bruce's Fingers, 2018) ***

By Stef

Star ratings also reflect the length of the album, and if this album was longer, the rating may have been higher. The duo fo Chris Burn on piano, and Simon H. Fell on double bass already dates from improvisation they gave in January 2010, but these twenty-three minutes of exploration have become published only this year. Burn is more active on the inside of his piano than on the keyboard, using a variety (of unspecified) objects to work its strings, by plucking, rubbing, scraping, caressing, marbling (?) and hammering, all movements that create sounds that work amazingly well with Fell's bass. Even if initially the sonic bits are investigating and colliding and sometimes hesitant, gradually a wonderful collective sounds emerges from this, sensuous and ominous, subtle and refined, which is masterfully changed in the last two minutes. And then it suddenly stops. Twenty-three minutes is short. But well, then you listen to it again.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

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François Houle / Alexander Hawkins / Harris Eisenstadt - You Have Options (Songlines, 2018) ****

By Eyal Hareuveni

Canadian, Vancouver-based clarinetist François Houle, fellow-Canadian, Brooklyn-based drummer Harris Eisenstadt and British, Oxford-based pianist Alexander Hawkins owe their meeting to the late artistic director of Vancouver Jazz Festival, Ken Pickering (1952-2018). Pickering always fostered international collaborations and he encouraged Houle to invite Eisenstadt to his quintet performance at the 2012 edition of the festival.

Later Pickering urged Houle to team with Hawkins. Houle had not heard of Hawkins, but trusted Pickering and invited Hawkins for a trio performance during the 2014 edition of the festival, again with Eisenstadt, who had worked before with Hawkins in the Convergence Quartet. The trio returned to the festival in 2016, and recorded You Have Options immediately afterwards. The album is dedicated to the generosity of Pickering's spirit and his singular vision.

Houle, Hawkins and Eisenstadt followed the wise advice of Pickering: trust the process, and employed their unselfish friendship for new, challenging experiences. The trio focuses on eclectic program of original pieces and tunes of Steve Lacy, Andrew Hill and an improvisational version of Charles Ives piece rather than replicating the free-form format of their performances at the festival. All the pieces stress melodic themes but with no attempt to reach sentimental territories, and all highlight the subtle, lyrical and poetic language of the trio, delivered in a quiet and introspective interplay.

The trio’s lyrical approach characterizes its interpretation of Lacy’s nostalgic “Art”. The trio interplay is truly poetic, as if meditating on Lacy’s beautiful, fragmented theme, is totally different than recent interpretations of this piece by double bass master Barry Guy and partner, violinist Maya Homburger or by the Swedish-Norwegian super-group Atomic. Even Houle’s “Run Riot”, the most intense piece here, emphasizes the trio's intimate and emphatic interplay. Hawkins’s bluesy “Advice”is the only piece that corresponds directly with jazz legacy, but from an ironic yet compassionate perspective. The improvisational arrangement of Ives “Largo” - originally written for violin, clarinet and piano and in the trio arrangement features Houle in the role of the violinist, highlights again the poetic sense of poise in this trio interplay. Eisenstadt’s clever “You Have Options, I Have a Lawyer” demonstrates a layered pulse, gradually explored by the trio, together and individually. The cover of Hill’s “Dusk” is true to the late pianist vision, blurring distinctions between contemporary, chamber music and modern jazz, or between the composed and improvised.

Pickering was right. This trio realizes his vision faithfully.

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Huh? Belgium? Well, why not ...

By Stef

Belgium, this little country aggregated out of three language regions, historically a political buffer between the European powers, has an interesting jazz history with some great names, such as Adolphe Sax, yes, the inventor of the saxophone, and then some famous names: Django Reinhardt was born in Belgium, René Thomas was a great guitarist, as is Philip Catherine, and of course the great Toots Thielemans... then what? Not many names resonate internationally. More recently, we have seen bands such as Aka Moon, or excellent musicians such as Bert Joris, Michel Herr, Steve Houben ... but they are all so very mainstream. Technical skills and utterly boring music were often the result. Flat Earth Society has a unique niche with their uncategorisable and often mad big band music. Pianist Jeff Neve also is worth mentioning as is saxophonist Robin Verheyen who released a great modern jazz album this year with Marc Copland, Drew Gress and Billy Hart. In the past, music education in Belgium was heavily focused on instrumental skills, killing the appetite of many young aspiring musicians.

Luckily, a new generation of musicians has extracted itself from this boring instrumental focus and the technical aspects of interplay and arrangements, and found its way to creativity. Pianist Fred Van Hove led the way since the sixties, followed by a handful of other musicians who dared colour outside the lines. Most other musicians remained within an almost academic mode. Today, luckily, a very creative younger generation has stood up, bringing music with character, vision and a good sense of adventure, backed by a few music labels who are willing to take risks.

I will not go into the details of every band or musician, but share some thoughts on their approach and sound.

Albums by Belgian musicians reviewed earlier this year include "Hightailing" by Bulliphant, "Fundament" by Peter Jacquemyn, "Tonus" by Dirk Series and Martina Verhoeven, "Boundless" by Paul Van Gysegem, Chris Joris and Patrick De Groote, Nils Vermeulen on "Luminaria" as the bassist of Frame Trio, and pianist Seppe Gebruers on "Live At Ljubljana" with Luis Vicente and Onno Govaert.

Noteworthy past albums are the ones by hyper-creative clarinet virtuoso Joachim Badenhorst (solo, Lama, Carate Urio Orchestra) and imaginative composer/drummer Teun Verbruggen with his Bureau Of Atomic Tourism.


Seppe Gebruers, Hugo Antunes, Paul Lovens ‎– The Room: Time & Space (El Negocito, 2018) ****½

And now for something completely different. The trio are Seppe Gebruers on piano, Hugo Antunes on bass and Paul Lovens on drums, or a Belgian, a Portuguese and a German; or a 28-year old, a 44-year old and a 69 year old ... and none of this matters. Quite to the contrary, the trio perform as if they have played together for ages. Lovens is one of the icons of free improvisation, a master of percussive effect and story-telling, and Antunes also no longer needs introduction to our readers, maybe with the exception that he did his bachelor both in Amsterdam and later in Brussels, where he currently lives. Gebruers is one of the up and coming musicians in Belgium, and part of the "Live In Ljubljana" album with Luis Vicente and Onno Govaerts.

On this album, the music is equally mysterious, combining an inherent weightlessness with a real physical presence of the instruments, creating both intimacy and a sense of space. Gebruers plays on two grand pianos which are tuned with a quarter tone difference, leading to a strange dissonance, that sounds fresh and appealing (at least to this guy), and at times imitated by both bass and percussion. Nobody takes the lead, and they allow the music to grow and develop by itself, clearly listening carefully what the other two are doing, resulting in a very focused and cohesive sound of sonic particles and splinters locking into each other, creating a forward moving dynamic in the process.

Paul Lovens explains the title in more length in the album sleeve, but here's the last paragraph :
"There are rooms that invite you to seek shelter whereas other rooms seem to help you to concentrate, or they pull out of you thoughts and behaviour that has been waiting inside you to be awakened. Seppe, Hugo and myself met in this little gloomy theatre, and because we were ready to receive, the room took power over us. It is impossible to describe what it did to the three of us, but I find comfort in what Ludwig Wittgenstein told us: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”. Still, you can do what we did: listen". 

The result is pure magic.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.


Guillermo Celano, Badenhorst & Baggiani - Lili & Marleen (Clean Feed, 2018) ***½

Argentinian guitarist Guillermo Celano and drummer Marcos Baggiani are two argentinians living in Amsterdam, and Joachim Badenhorst, the Belgian clarinetist and saxophonist, also studied for a while in Amsterdam. The three artists meet for a wonderful journey through the land of music, touching on a number of musical influences through their compositions, and adding joyous improvisations welcoming other cultures and people and sounds into their idiom. The music is genre-bending, with little tunes and compositions that sound vaguely familiar, as if taken from our common unconscious and reformated into something more modern and exciting, imagining new and totally unexpected, and even contradictory sounds, with one instrument playing 'inside' while the others go completely 'outside', creating tension and coherence at the same time. The same can be said from the combination of Celano's often harsh guitar sounds versus Badenhorst's warm clarinet tone. But again that's not a given, because once you detect a pattern, these guys will take you again on the wrong foot and do the exact opposite.

This is smart and interesting music. Modern jazz with a very open perspective.

De Beren Gieren - Dug Out Skyscrapers (Sdban Ultra, 2017) ***½

Possibly internationally best known from "The Detour Fish", their album with Susana Santos Silva live in Ljubljana, this piano trio is again of international assemblage, with pianist Fulco Ottervanger of Dutch descent, and bassist Lieven Van Pée and drummer Simon Segers of Belgian origin.

The trio is one of the best known jazz trios in Belgium, also outside the more avant-garde scene, even if 'known' is still very relative. Their music is not mainstream, yet it has a level of accessibility that will lure many jazz lovers to their more creative approach, rhythmically, harmonically and in terms of timbre, integrating rock elements as much as avant-garde ideas. At times the music of Benoît Delbecq comes to mind, and that is a great reference.

Dirk Serries & Colin Webster - Gargoyles (Raw Tonk, 2018) ****

Dirk Serries may be known for his minimal music, as reviewed recently with his Tonus series, but in this duo with saxophonist Colin Webster, the style is direct, raw and expressive. There is not one long track on which a whole sonic environment can be slowly created and developed and expanded on, no, quite the opposite: the duo offers us seventeen short tracks, with only two of them exceeding the 2-minute ceiling. Serries' guitar sounds harsh and distorted, as abrasive as Webster's tones on baritone and tenor. Their dialogue is one of immediacy and suppressed violence, with sounds being squeezed out of the instruments, apparently against their own will, colliding and rapidly being replaced. The total lack of resonance and spatial feeling, makes the listener feel as if he's part of the proceedings, and if not, at least watching and listening from very close by. This intimacy by itself collides with the ferocity of the interplay.

The titles of the seventeen tracks can all be found in the Wikipedia article that explains what "Gargoyle" means. Gargoyles are not meant to please: they depict evil, the grotesque, and may have been used to deflect evil, but in any case they are disturbing creatures, distorting the peace of mind of the person who sees them.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.


Jukwaa - Cushion (Smeraldina-Rima, 2018) ****

Originally a piano trio, for their latest album, pianist Thijs Troch, bassist Nils Vermeulen and drummer Sigfried Burroughs are joined by Laurens Smet on bass and Elias Devoldere on drums.

Despite the double rhythm section, the music relies more on sonic texture than on pulse, and is relatively fragile and light. All five musicians manage to create very abstract, intimate improvisations, built around an agreed structural approach for each song. This makes that each of the six piece has a distinct character, which can shift from the gentle "Feodorovna", the joyful to the outright sinister, as on the slow "Yakhont" and "Hen", to the neurotic "Vekselberg" and the dense and hypnotic "Trellis".


Kabas - Negen & Live At SMUP (FMR, 2017) ****

Kabas and Juukwa are closely related bands, because the core musicians are the same: Thijs Troch on piano and Nils Vermeulen on bass, and Elias Devoldere on drums, with the addition of Jan Daelman on flute. The performance was recorded during a concert in Lisbon and Portuguese musicians Luis Vicente on trumpet and Caros Godinho on percussion join.

The music of Kabas is even more abstract and intangible than Jukwaa's, with sound sculptures and sonic scenery that does not rely on the identification of individual instruments but rather on the total and collective effect of all instruments at the same time. The first track is a calm opener, and the energy increases as the music develops, culminating in the fierce "Cilindro Pendulo", the central track of the first album, then it slows down again for the intense calm of "St. Print 3", only to end the album with the ferocious and dense "Fogofaze".

The first album is a studio release, the second was recorded Live, as the album's title suggests. And the music is different. Luis Vicente's trumpet plays a more audible role at front stage, over the mysterious sonic background woven by his band members, offering the stage to Jan Daelman's flute near the end of the track. On the second track, silence gets slowly woken from its sleep by the quiet rustling of various instruments, with the flute slowly and hauntingly dragging the trumpet along for a slow and sad and eery improvisation. The last and very long track leads us to various moods and approaches, in an intense and carefully crafted sonic edifice, that seems fragile at first, but ends with full solid power.

In short, a real treat by a group of musicians who feel very comfortable with the possibilities of their instruments and the musical engagement with each other, managing to bring very coherent and impressive music.

Lynn Cassiers - Imaginary Band (Clean Feed, 2018) ****

Even if I am not a fan of vocal jazz, Lynn Cassier's approach is slightly different from traditional jazz singing, very melodic and sometimes more pop than jazz. Her compositions are quite something else, angular, quirky, dense, a little crazy at times, and well arranged.

Her 'imaginary' band are Lynn Cassiers on voice and electronics, Ananta Roosens on violin and trumpet, Sylvain Débaisieux on soprano and tenor saxophones, Niels Van Hertum on euphonium, Erik Vermeulen on piano, Manolo Cabras on double bass, and Marek Patrman on drums (in fact the latter three are the normal Erik Vermeulen trio).

Cassiers is brilliant. She really couldn't care less about genres and vested expectations: she creates her own sonic universe in which avant-garde pop (think Laurie Anderson), traditional jazz and free improv meet, in a wonderful mixture that avoids all the traps of doing this, for the simple reason that she does not just add styles to emphasise musical knowledge and cerebral composition, but quite the opposite: she has a musical vision for which she needs the varieties of styles to make it come to life. The styles offer the ingredients to make it happen, yet the result is coherent and strong.

An artist with a clear and personal vision.

Teun Verbruggen feat. Jozef Dumoulin, Nate Wooley, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten - KaPSalon (Rat Records, 2018) ***½

This quartet performance was recorded live at the Middelheim Jazz Festival in Belgium in 2014, and brings together drummer Teun Verbruggen en pianist Jozef Dumoulin with Nate Wooley and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten. Both Dumoulin and Håker Flaten are also member of Verbruggen's Bureau Of Atomic Tourism (BOAT), yet the music on this album is totally different, and possibly the presence of Nate Wooley's more adventurous spirit is the determining factor. The record is relatively short, 27 minutes in total, but the playing is good, very dense, highly unpredictable, and great fun to listen to.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.


Catherine Smet & Dirk Wachtelaer ‎– Improvisations (Creative Sources, 2018) **½

Catherine Smet is a classically trained pianist, who studied both at the Conservatory of Brussels and Antwerp. She has been active in many genres, including African and Latin, which she further perfected in Buenos Aires and Cuba. She is a member of the tango band 'Tango2".

Dirk Wachtelaer has been a drummer for over 30 years, and has played in a variety of experimental settings, including collaborations with Toshinori Kondo, Jim O'Rourke, Paul Lytton, to name just a few.

Even if the album's title is not very original, it says what it is, and you get eleven tracks of improvisations. Smet's harmonic approach is more classical than jazzy, improvising with limited use of dissonance and extended techniques, and very loud and 'busy' in terms of style, as if afraid of silence, playing full chords very often, as if trying to avoid any sentimentality, and very broad in her improvisations, using the full range of her keyboard each time, with a high sense of drama and immediacy, as if what she has to say must be told now, immediately and completely, as if she is running out of time. All this makes for a very nervous and agitated album.  Wachtelaer's drumming, which is excellent, luckily matches her style, as he's also hard-hitting and intense, and he often leads the improvisation, or at least he takes the intro for some pieces. Yes, there are more subtle pieces, such as "Look At The Right Side", which is more avant-garde and quiet, and "Improvisation 11", which is calm and gentle, both welcome variations in the avalanche of pounding chords.

Both are also member of the Eclectic Maybe Band, whose "The Blind Night Watcher's Mysterious Landscapes" was released earlier this year on Discus, and which I could unfortunately only listen to for two minutes, despite the presence of Joe Higham, our former colleague in the Free Jazz Collective.


Donder - Donder (Self, 2018) ***

Despite its title, this is the trio's second album, after "Still" which was released in 2016. The trio are Harrison Steingueldoir on piano, Stan Callewaert on double bass, Casper Van De Velde on drums, all three born in 1995, and joined here by Danish reedist Lars Greve on clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor saxophone. "Donder" means as much as "thunder" in Dutch, yet it's a strange name for the music, which is usually calm, open-ended and light, with the exception of "Mirror" and the short "Secrets". The band uses nature as an inspiration for their music, and the musicians agree in advance on some compositional concepts, around which they improvise. The quality of the playing is good, yet there is a lot of unused potential in the trio: for musicians of their age, a little more risk taking is welcome, so that they can carve out their own voice.

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Jozef Dumoulin, Lidlboj ‎– Live In Neerpelt (El Negocito, 2018) ***

One of the reasons why keyboardist Jozef Dumoulin has not been reviewed often on our blog, is simply because his approach to music, even if unique and eclectic at the same time, is always just that little touch outside of the profile of the adventurous music that we cherish. Does that mean that Dumoulin not adventurous? No, not at all, and quite to the contrary even, but he develops new musical avenues within given idioms, and even if the bands he plays in are quite distinct, his approach to music and to his instruments remains unique. He likes subtle changes and precise gestures rather than bombast and volume, he likes his playing and music to have a floating, mysterious quality that permeates the entire sound in an unhurried but determined way. He has released albums with musicians as diverse as Magic Malik, Reggie Washington, Jerôme Sabbagh, Keiji Haino, Benoît Delbecq and Nate Wooley. 

On this album we find him back with his no longer existing band "Lidlboy", with Lynn Cassiers on voice and electronics, Bo Van der Werf on baritone saxophone and electronics, Dries Laheye on bass and effects, Eric Thielemans on drums. The music is "poppy", with Cassier's vocals preciously drifting over a strange texture of light-footed music that is rooted in jazz, yet equally borrows from rock and traditional music. Some of Robert Wyatt's later work come to mind.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.


Jozef Dumoulin Orca Noise Unit - A Beginner’s Guide To Diving And Flying (Yolk, 2018) ****

"A Beginner's Guide To Diving And Flying", is a typical Dumoulin album. Yes, it's jazz, very much so, but it's also something else. It's one of his very idiosyncratic explorations of lyricism and rhythm, performed by an eclectic band of young French musicians: Sylvaine Hélary on flutes, Antonin Tri Hoang on alto saxophone, clarinets and percussion, Bruno Chevillon on double bass, Toma Gouband on percussion and Jozef Dumoulin on piano and percussion. For once the performance is entirely acoustic, even without his preferred Fender Rhodes.

The band's name is an anagram of "oneironautics", the ability to travel within a dream or into the dream of someone else, and it should not be a suprise that the sound reflects this bizarre concept: eery, intangible, open-ended, again with a high floating quality, as if hanging in mid-air without foundation or roots, at times with sounds that coalesce into a potential unisono, but mostly just caressing each other, coming and going, calmly, unexpectedly, surprised by themselves and the world they create. A strange dreamworld.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.

Pentadox - Between (Self, 2018) ****

Pentadox is a quintet built around the trio of drummer Samuel Ber, Bram De Looze on piano, and Sylvain Debaisieux on tenor saxophone, all three younger than thirty. They are joined by Guillaume Orti on saxophone and Bo Van Der Werf on baritone saxophone. All five musicians also play gong. The music is a creative mixture of tightly composed and arranged moments, around which almost anything can happen, even if some core improvisational concepts are agreed upon. For such a young band, it's amazing how comfortable they are with open space and silence. The individual musicians don't feel the urge to be heard, they just to let the music run its inherent logic and course, resulting in a really refreshing sound, that is at times playful, at times disorienting, often open-textured but with very dense and intense moments of interplay. The quality of the pieces is consistently high throughout the album, and so is the band's ability to keep playing within their own sound.

Not surprisingly, they won the Young Talent Award at the Ghent Jazz Festival. A band to watch!

Echoes of Zoo - First Provocations (Self, 2019) ***½

This young band is a highly energetic mixture of jazz, rock and world music,with Nathan Daems on saxophone, Bart Vervaeck on electric guitar, Lieven Van Pée on electric bass and Falk Schrauwen on drums. It's an EP, with only four tracks totaling twenty minutes, but that adds to the flavour: high compact music, with lots of rapid changes and variations. Luckily, the instrumental skills do not overshadow the emotional value of the music. It is both angry and full of sad compassion with the state of the world, and then especially with the animals. 

LABTrio - Nature City (Outnote Records, 2017) ***

LABTrio are Lander Gyselinck on drums, Anneleen Boehme on bass and Bram De Looze on piano, with the first letter of their first names explaining the band's title. So, no, they are not chemists or lab technicians spending their free time as a piano trio, even if their chemistry is excellent, as is their sense of experimentation. They are not free 'per se' but sufficiently creative to find their place in this overview. Gyselinck is thirty already but the other two not yet, and despite this young age, their music already has a strong sense of a personal voice and sounds mature, which is not surprising since they have been performing together for more than ten years. They create complex rhythmic patterns with lots of changes, with little jokes, such as "Variation 15", reminiscent of Bach (yes, De Looze studied with Uri Caine), but also other influences and inspirations, from pop, rock and jazz music. Lyricism, unexpected compositional changes and rhythmic complexities are their hallmark. All three of them are wonderful musicians, but again I would love to see them take their sound even a step or two further, into more adventurous realms. 


Giovanni Di Domenico & Abschattungen  - The Ear Cannot Be Filled With Hearing (El Negocito, 2018) ****

True, this album is a little out of place in this list, because keyboardist Giovanni Di Domenico is not Belgian but Italian, as his name suggests, but he's based in Brussels and the band he works with on this album is entirely Belgian. The band are Quentin Manfroy on flute, Jordi Grognard on clarinets, duduk and oboe, Laurent Blondiau on trumpet, Audrey Lauro on alto sax, Daniele Martini on tenor sax, Gregoire Tirtiaux on baritone sax, Marti Melia on bass sax, Giotis Damianidis on electric guitar, Axel Gilain on electric bass, Jakob Warmenbol and Mathieu Calleja on drums.

Di Domenico is a composer and musician with a broad musical background, originally self-taught, he received more formal training in his twenties. The fact that he is self-taught may be an obstacle for some, but not for Di Domenico, whose sense of listening is exceptional, as well as his skill at absorbing music in a natural way. We've reviewed around fifteen albums with him so far, in very different types of ensembles and sonic universes, demonstrating his versatility and eclecticism.

With Abschattungen, Di Domenico brings us a great mixture of rhythmic free jazz. "Infra-Thin", the first track, has a Miles Davis-like beat, but then as the foundation for a much free-er interplay by this band of musicians. His explicit inspiration are Sun Ra’s "Lanquidity" and Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza’s "The Feedback", if these are known references, combining 'futuristic sounds indebted to black music'. The big difference is that there is no real soloing as was the case in the inspiration albums, but rather a collective sound with once in a while a single voice that escapes out of the band (Blondiau's trumpet, Damianidis' guitar, ...) and that shifts between short arranged themes that work as anchor points and total freedom. Yet it is not fun and funk. The dark "Instruments Of Darkness", is a kind of resting point on the album, slower, ominous, a-rhythmic, with a more prominent role of Di Domenico's piano in the middle section. Even if different from the other tracks, it kind of consolidates the unity of the whole album, adding a suite-like effect to it.

... and it works. It works well actually: the solid pulse, the electric bass and the drums lay a really solid and hypnotic foundation for a kind of music than could go on forever, with all the horns, the guitar and the keyboard weaving a dense and warm collective free sound without evolving into chaos. There are no outbursts of anger or changes of energy, no contrasts between silent and high volume moments ... the listener gets taken on board for a psychedelic journey that is both welcoming and infectious.

It is not free jazz, but it is well worth listening to.

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Cécile Cappozzo Trio – Sub Rosa (Ayler, 2018) ****

By Nick Ostrum

The liner notes to this album highlight a quote from the early 20 ^thcentury Spanish writer Federico Garcia Lorca. The “duende,” he says, blows “insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents: a wind with the odour of a child’s saliva, crushed grass, and medusa’s veil, announcing the endless baptism of freshly created things.” This image of death and youth, of familiarity and discovery, of “the endless baptism of freshly created things” stuck with me as I listened to this album. And, I think it is key to understanding not just the recording’s conceptual foundation, but its meandering coherence and expressionistic beauty.

To the first point: this album seems a self-consciously Dionysian creation. Duende can mean a musical inebriation, something particularly fitting given the pianist and leader’s, Cécile Cappozzo, training as a flamenco dancer as well as a musician. Without projecting too much of a life-cycle onto this album, the music does reflect the spirit of playful creation, of construction and destruction, and of birth, death, and rebirth that one might expect from an album as mysterious – as the title implies – and exploratory as this.

To the second point: the first four tracks of Sub Rosaare fragments of a greater piece titled “Chaos.” In the context of duende, this seems more a reference to Greek cosmology than the colloquial meaning of chaos as absolute disorder. This album is cacophonous, but out of this discord arises (and then subsides) harmonic order. That is, just as the chaos of the ancient Greeks was a necessary precondition to order, if not also its parent.

Fittingly, this album creates order out of sheer intensity and rhythms out of disparate noise. The musicians, Cappozzo (piano), Patrice Grente (bass), and Etienne Ziemniak (drums) fill the air with sound first, then pull those sounds together into recognizable, abstract melodies, then entropically diverge. The fifth track, “Sub Rosa,” is similar, though Cappozzo’s father, the accomplished Jean-Luc Cappozzo, lends his trumpet to amplify the piece and maybe even provide the wind that blows the duende even further forward. Minus the specifics of the duende, song titles, and personnel, this description could apply to many releases reviewed on FJB. However, it applies particularly well to this one. Grente, Ziemniak, and Cappozzo the senior doubtlessly contribute their unique rhythmic sensibilities and improvisational structures to this album. Nevertheless, it is Cécile Cappozzo who provides the uniquely ludic and energetic piano that drives this album through 45 minutes of non-stop (that means absolutely no silence and maybe no chaotic void after all) creation and re-creation. She plays with a playfulness and spiritedness that evokes the build-up and release, the movement, and the emotionality of flamenco, the vessel of the duende. (That is, without sounding stylistically flamenco.) Though solidly rooted in free jazz above anything else, the music simply dances in a way that similar releases do not.

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Wayne Horvitz - The Snowghost Sessions (Songlines, 2018) ****

By Stef

Amazingly enough, this is the first piano, bass and drums trio that Wayne Horvitz ever recorded, despite his long career as a musician. Geoff Harper plays bass and Eric Eagle drums. The performance was recorded in 2015. Horvitz adds amplified piano, live processing, Wurlitzer electric piano, Hammond B-3, Nord Lead, TX-7, and Mellotron in his playing, even if the majority of the music is performed with acoustic piano.

Of all jazz pianists, Wayne Horvitz is possibly the bluesiest, in tone at least, and then he manages to compose such wonderful lyrical themes and melodies, adding a strong flavour of American more traditional music with a kind of cinematic soundtrack touch to it.

Horvitz has had many musical bifurcations in his career, from the classical avant-garde with his Gravitas Quartet or his "55 Music and Dance in Concrete", over free improvisation with with Butch Morris and William Parker and the rhythmic modern jazz of Pigpen, to the more accessible bands such as Zony Mash and Sweeter Than The Day. The music on this album is mostly close to the last two bands, which play the same sweet bluesy melodies, the first in an electric band, the second in an acoustic version, but with the same musicians.

Some of the quieter songs, seem to come from Sweeter Than The Day albums, even if the titles are different. There are some contrasts such as "IMB", which brings a violent attack on your ears with fully distorted sounds coming from Horvitz's electronic equipment. And the sweetness is often pierced by unusual sounds, such as in "For James Tenney".

This is music for dreamy evenings, quiet and nice next to the fireplace, away from the cold and the rain. It is guaranteed to warm you up inside.


Listen and download from Bandcamp.

The youtube track below is vintage Horvitz. Play it anywhere, and anybody with any knowledge of Horvitz's oeuvre will identify its author and performer immediately.

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A Year (or 60) in the Making: Satoko Fujii's *Kanreki*

                                                                               Satoko Fujii (Photo Peter Gannushkin)

By Lee Rice Epstein

• Satoko Fujii - Solo (Libra, 2018) 
• Kaze - Atody Man (Libra, 2018) 
• Satoko Fujii Orchestra Berlin - Ninety-Nine Years (Libra, 2018) 
• Kira Kira - Bright Force (Libra, 2018) 
• Satoko Fujii, Joe Fonda, Gianni Mimmo - Triad (Long Song Records, 2018) 
• This Is It! - 1538 (Libra, 2018) 
• Satoko Fujii / Joe Fonda - Mizu (Long Song Records, 2018) 
• Mahobin - Live at Big Apple in Kobe (Libra, 2018) 
• Satoko Fujii / Alister Spence - intelsat (Alister Spence Music, 2018) 
• Amu - Weave (Libra, 2018) 
• Yuko Yamaoka - Diary 2005–2015 Yuko Yamaoka plays the music of Satoko Fujii (Libra, 2018) 
• Satoko Fujii Orchestra Tokyo - Kikoeru (Libra, 2018) 

You should know, I recently got mad online about Satoko Fujii. Here’s why: at the end of a full year of exceptional releases by Fujii, a celebration of her 60th year, a handful of notable music journalists were droning on about John Coltrane and Kamasi Washington. And so, see above. Surely, I imagine, Fujii herself isn’t paying attention, because in 2018 she was too busy recording and releasing some of the most exciting albums of her career. We wrote about half of them at the year’s midpoint. And I spent several days this month listening to all of this year’s albums almost exclusively. What I came away with is the sense that even Fujii may have underestimated this project; as a song of self, her kanreki also provided her with an avenue for expansion and rediscovery. The albums by Kaze, Orchestra Berlin, and Orchestra Tokyo are among the best those groups have ever recorded. And then there are the new groups, Kira Kira, Mahobin, This Is It! and Amu. There is Fujii’s incredible new solo album, and the birth of a new duo with Alister Spence. And Fujii’s continued collaboration with bassist Joe Fonda, bringing the great Gianni Mimmo into the mix.

 It’s one thing to record a series of albums, quite another to release, all within a year, a dozen that could easily compete for best album of the year. Personally, if one had to rank them, I was most taken with the debut albums from Kira Kira and Mahobin, and the exceptional Diary 2005–2015 double album by Yuko Yamaoka. But truthfully, every album Fujii released this year ranked high on my personal list. Atody Man, Ninety-Nine Years, and Kikoeru have been in heavy rotation since arriving. For one, the groups are so refined, with a clear musical language that fosters creative conversation. Undoubtedly, Kaze is one of the great modern jazz quartets, and following their foray into the jumbo-sized Trouble Kaze, Atody Man features some inspired and challenging performances. On the newly-released Kikoeru, Fujii splits composing duties with trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, her husband and full-time collaborator. His new compositions for Fujii’s Orchestra Tokyo present a different side to the group and its musical arrangements. Despite their decades of close collaboration, their compositional styles are quite different, which adds an extra dimension of excitement and alluring moments of surprise to the album.

Mahobin reunites Fujii and Tamura with Ikue Mori, whom they previously recorded with on Aspiration, with Wadada Leo Smith. This time, the trio performs with Lotte Anker on saxophone for an improvised set, recorded live in Kobe earlier this year. Anker is incredible here (truly, when isn’t she incredible?), leading an early trio improvisation with Mori and Fujii, whose collective melding of electronics and inside-outside piano creates a thicket of percussive sounds and melodic runs. Compare with the remarkably different atmosphere created in duo with Spence, on their live album intelsat, recorded in fall of 2017. On the mid-album highlight “Paaliaq,” Spence and Fujii pair Rhodes, piano preparations, and electronic pulses into a layered and organic dance.

Of course, on the subject of literal dance, Fujii, Tamura, and percussionist Takashi Itani, who recorded earlier this year as This Is It!, recorded Weave with percussive dancer, and frequent Fujii collaborator, Mizuki Wildenhahn. As Amu, this is another of Fujii’s brand-new configurations recorded for her kanreki series. While it may sound cheeky, Itani could easily be considered a dancing percussionist, an inverted counterpart to Wildenhahn. A visually and sonically expressive performer, Itani has been a welcome addition to Fujii and Tamura’s particular universe of sounds. Tamura, notably, plays some lovely solos throughout this improvised set, and the physical energy of the performers is effectively channeled through their performance. Note: there is video of this set available as a DVD, which I have not seen but which, based on the audio, must be pretty wonderful. Although the three improvisations on Mizu, Fujii’s second duo album with Fonda, are presented in the reverse order they were recorded—“Rik Bevernage” and “Long Journey” is from October 14, 2017, and “Mizu” from October 13, 2017—the intentional sequencing highlights the development of multiple themes and explorations. In addition to piano, preparations, and bass, Fujii and Fonda incorporate wordless vocals and flute in two moving sets. The liner notes mention how “Mizu” is something of a tribute to Paul Bley, and the balanced delicacy and tense drama are among the finest of Fujii’s solo and duo recordings.

Diary 2005–2015 presents a unique and rather incredible view of Fujii as a composer. Fujii writes about her past warm-up and practice rituals, and how she began her composition diary, a 15-minute improvising/composing session Fujii uses to begin her daily piano practice. Recorded over two days this summer, Diary is an incredible collection of 118 short pieces, most under a minute, all performed seemingly as-written directly from Fujii’s diary. Yamaoka, who previously appeared in Fujii’s Orchestra New York, brings a subtly different voicing to Fujii’s sketches, the slight changes in approach and attack reframing the lines into a cohesive set that draws a through line from January 28, 2005, to March 13, 2016. As a capstone to this landmark year, Diary highlights the many ways in which Fujii is a remarkable composer, improviser, and performer, balancing all three at once, with a radically open and inviting worldview.

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Happy New Ears - 2018 Poll Winners

Welcome to 2019! I hope everyone has made the same resolution to listen to more and more adventurous music this year and, of course, to check in with the Free Jazz Collective every day.

Today we present the winners of the collective's writers poll and our readers choice:

New Ears Album of the Year per the Collective:

1. Tyshawn Sorey – Pillars (Firehouse 12)

Lee Rice Epstein, in his review of Pillars writes:

Okay, yes, the album is massive, thick and heady, with ideas atomically colliding. But it’s also music to simply listen to, which is one aspect of Pillars that shouldn’t be ignored. You can dive headlong or simply dip in and out of the album, let the music filter in from wherever it’s playing, leave the room and come back at a wildly new section. Much like Max Richter’s similarly beautiful Sleep, perhaps you’ll never listen to the whole album straight through. But it’s not enough just to know it’s there when you need it, you have to start by letting it in.

2. Peter Brötzmann / Heather Leigh – Sparrow Nights (Trost Records)

3. The following came in tied for third:

• Assif Tsahar / William Parker / Hamid Drake – In Between the Tumbling a Stillness (Hopscotch Records)
• Ingrid Laubrock – Contemporary Chaos Practices (Intakt) 
• Kuzu – Hiljaisuus (Astral Spirits)
• Miles Okazaki – Work (The complete compositions of Thelonious Monk)

New Ears Album of the Year per the People:

1. Biliana Voutchkova / Michael Thieke – Blurred Music (Elsewhere)

Eyal Hareuveni distills the essence of Blurred Music here:

Compositional and improvisational strategies become insignificant when listening to Blurred Music. Voutchkova and Thieke offer an arresting journey through sounds within sounds, increasing their and ours, the listeners, sensitivity of perception. Their sonic explorations are sketched with quiet intensity, reserved but passionate dynamics, adventurous, inventive spirit and austere beauty.

2. Tyshawn Sorey – Pillars (Firehouse 12)
3. Marker – Roadwork 1 / Roadwork 2 / Homework 1 (Audiographic)
4. Peter Brötzmann / Heather Leigh – Sparrow Nights (Trost Records) 26
5. Henry Threadgill – 14 or 15 Kestra: Agg - Dirt... And More Dirt (Pi Recordings) 23
6. Dave Holland – Uncharted Territories (Dare2 Records) 23

Congratulations to all of the musicians, thank you for helping us make it through another strenuous year!

Readers, thank you for your participation, consideration, creative "other" votes, and your comments. One that we received has got us thinking a bit ... "And I vote for a FJB Radio :) As I'm growing desperate in face of those tons of new unheard music!"  Believe me, we're feeling it too - this year we received over 2000 album for consideration. We try our best to get to as much as we can - at least 365 album reviews, plus coverage of as many festivals and concerts as possible, but there is always more to do, more to hear, more to share.

Finally, a big thank you to all of the writers of the Collective - without your passion and dedication to the music, we couldn't pull this off.

See you again tomorrow, right here at the freejazzblog.org.

Happy New Ears!

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