‘Music, its forms and rituals, has the power to bring us close to distant civilizations. Armenia offers a special case: a sacred culture that was preserved and presented at its fullest flowering through the work of one man, the scholar-monk Soghomon Soghomonian, known under his religious name as Komitas.’
Duduk, blul, santur, tar, saz, dap, kamancha, kanon, oud…

Nicolas Masson (tenor saxophone, clarinet), Roberto Pianca (guitar), Emanuele Maniscalco (drums).

Armenian sacred music from the fifth to nineteenth centuries — chants, hymns and sharakans — in settings for choir and piano.
‘Extraordinarily beautiful… Hamasyan uses the characteristic, Eastern-hued Armenian modes to summon up an ancient world. It’s very different to Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble’s million-selling Officium, but if you like that, you’ll love this’ (The Independent).

The Armenian pianist in a quartet setting, meditating on ancient folk melodies (including a couple of compositions by Komitas), between jazz and ambient.

Duets by trumpet, or French horn, and guitar.

‘The ghosts of Armstrong and Handy smile down as Trovesi’s octet roars through a programme that cross-references the spirit of New Orleans with Italian popular song and European classical music.’

A village banda take on tunes from Italian opera — knees-up, sublime, lovely.

Top-notch quartet-jazz, feeling and brainy. MT evokes Trane — though no chordal instrument here — and Shorter (to Avishai Cohen’s Miles). There are tributes to Stevie — ‘master of the blues’ — and Ursula Le Guin. ‘It needs to be personal, meaningful, otherwise the blues can be banal. I believe it to be sacred, like a spiritual discipline.’

Based on recordings by John Abercrombie, Miroslav Vitous, Louis Sclavis, Bennie Maupin, Paul Motian, Arvo Part and co.

Customised five-string electric double bass, mostly in his own keyboard settings and treatments, but also with the saxophones and overtone flute of Jan Garbarek, and the percussion of Michael DiPasqua.

A companion volume to Résumé, from 2011, retrieving EW’s bass solos with the Jan Garbarek Group, 1990-2007, and reworking them with the addition of his own keyboard parts and contributions from veteran Dutch flugelhorn player Ack van Rooyen (who played on The Colours of Chloë, more than forty years ago). New Music with old things, EW calls it.

With Lee Konitz, Bill Frisell, and Dave Holland.