Your basket is empty
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.’
The Austrian guitarist with Larry Grenadier and Brian Blade, lyrical and grooving by turns.
The wonderful bandoneon player. ‘The work is alive with different genres: from dances such as zamba to carnavalito to chacarera… the tango… the milonga, wounded yet strong, intrinsic yet expressive.’
Alluring duets by Swedish nickelharpa and accordion, inspired by Bach’s sonatas and Pergolesi. (You might recall Matinier from sessions with Anouar Brahem and Louis Sclavis.)
With Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette.
Nicolas Masson (tenor saxophone, clarinet), Roberto Pianca (guitar), Emanuele Maniscalco (drums).
Duets covering Gershwin, the Duke, Strayhorn, a Billie Holiday, a Beach Boys… I Shall Be Released by Bob Dylan via The Band… The title suite is a deeply moving CL original, about his great-great-grandmother.
Inspired by the great poet Wislawa Symborska, who died last year. Ace NY quartet. Full of dread and life, tersely sophisticated, imbued with Miles. Monk and Andrew Hill in the pianism. Always recommended, TS.
Terrific solo guitar recordings of the Catalan’s own compositions — in the flamenco tradition, but also nodding to Baroque music, specifically Bach.
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.
The Nordan Project, combining Swedish folk and jazz improvisation. With Palle Danielsson on bass, from various Charles Lloyd, Keth Jarrett and Jan Garbarek lineups.
Multi-tracking especially the raj nplaim from Laos and the nohkan from Japan (a free-reed pipe and flute, both bamboo), as well as many male voices, inspired by Georgian polyphony, sung by himself.
A song-cycle life of Aisha, youngest wife of the prophet Mohammed, co-written by the Armenian-German guitarist and Julia Hulsmann, performed together with her trio and Serbian singer Yelena Kuljic.
Contemplative, mysterious excursions in the Russian psalms and folk-songs of the Finno-Ugric diaspora, songs of the Udmurtian, Vepsian and Karelian peoples. Drums, trumpet, piano.
A village banda take on tunes from Italian opera — knees-up, sublime, lovely.
The Norwegian-American guitarist — sparsely beautiful — with trumpeter Mathis Eick, and the great drummer Jon Christensen, amongst others.