By StefIn the past years Swedish saxophonist and bandleader Martin Küchen has made quite a name for himself, with the much acclaimed band "Angles", with his solo performances, with his more funky expansive "Exploding Customer", with "Looper", with "Chip Shop Music", with "All Included", and probably some more, but equally with the great "Trespass Trio", a real trio with Per Zanussi on bass and Raymond Strid on drums. I write a "real trio", because even if the compositions are mainly Küchen's - and familiar from other albums - all three musicians contribute equally to the sound and where the music goes.Now the band expands with nobody less than Joe McPhee, whose phenomenal powerful and tender tenor sax sound fits perfectly well with the overall sound of the trio, but his musical vision strongly matches it too. Sorry, McPhee of course also doubles on pocket trumpet - his first instrument actually before he learned to play sax - and this sound is as welcome as the tenor in the trio's open embrace.Like with Trio X, McPhee is comfortable with slow, bluesy music that freely improvises around set themes, as is the case here. McPhee himself adds three compositions himself to this live performance, and it is obvious that the trio delivers their best efforts in the presence of their honored guest.Küchen's repertoire becomes familiar, here with "Bruder Beda Ist Nicht Mehr" and "In Our Midst", two grand compositions, yet we get new material too, with "Xe" and "A Desert On Fire, A Forest", again inspired by the intolerance of nations (tribes?) fighting each other, with the latter referring to Palestine in 1948.And the music? It is heartfelt, passionate, with four musicians giving their very best, getting the audience clearly on the edge of their chairs, or at least with ears wide open if there were no chairs on this memorable date in Salão, Brazil in June 2012, the music is warm, welcoming and especially fierce and more uptempo in the middle part of the album, when McPhee's pieces are being played, but also then, the sound matches well, the emotions flare up in the heat and intensity of the playing, offering Zanussi also his solo moment and Strid the chance to energise this great quartet.Fans of Trio X will love this album, as much as fans of Trespass trio, confirming again that great musicians can find each other blindly, as long as they share the same musical vision, which is clearly the case here.Available at instantjazz.com.createSummaryAndThumb("summary8871727840362997260");
The trumpet-bass duo is a format I like, as I have said before, the brass and the wood, the high and the low tones, both instruments able to resonate well in closed spaces, not requiring much volume, the intimacy of conversation without disruption ... Paul Smoker and Dominic Duval, Jean-Luc Cappozzo and Joëlle Léandre, Itaru Oki and Benjamin Duboc, John Corbett and Nick Stephens.And now we get Portuguese Susana Santos Silva, the trumpeter of Lama, and Swedish bassist Torbjörn Zetterberg, reviewed before on this blog with various Swedish bands, who met at a jazz festival in Portugal, then recorded this fully improvised session somewhere in the north of Sweden, in winter, with snow and cold outside, and the warmth of the music and the intimacy of closed space to come up with this riveting and moving dialogue.Both musicians manage to find the perfect balance between strong musical character, pushing the envelope of sonic phrasing, with short bursts and extended techniques, yet alternating with more welcoming lyricism of the more traditional kind.To give some examples : the beautiful "Notskalmusik" with long and yearning phrases, is followed by "Head Distortion Machine", a very fit title for the abrasive arco and the growling trumpet, full of misery and unwilling submission.The most beautiful pieces are "Columbus Arrival At Hajerdalen", a long and deeply emotional improvisation emerging from Zetterberg's arco, with Santos Silva playing some absolutely heartrending and moving phrases, capturing the mood and intro perfectly, and the title track, "Almost Tomorrow", which has some references to Coleman's "Lonely Woman".Other tracks are more experimental, like the short "Action Jan-Olov", in which Santos Silva adds a dialogue on her own between muted and unmuted, with shifting embouchure, over stagnant staccato pizzis from Zetterberg, or "Flocos De Mel", a longer more minimalist improvisation with sparse sounds creating an ominous and menacing atmosphere.Highly recommended for fans of intimate avant-jazz dialogues.Available at instantjazz.com.createSummaryAndThumb("summary1767483375239812346");
The National - Trouble Will Find Me (2013) Lossless
By StefMusic fans who are familiar with Nate Wooley's latest releases will be surprised to hear the other side of the trumpeter's musical vision, one that is less focused on sound and technique, but more on composition and arrangements, and with equal success I must say.The band is actually an extension of Wooley's quintet that released "(Put Your) Hands Together", with tuba-player Dan Peck as the new member, next to Wooley on trumpet, Josh Sinton on bass clarinet and baritone saxophone, Matt Moran on vibes, Eivind Opsvik on bass, and Harris Eisenstadt on drums.The music is as inventive and varied as on the first album, yet taking even a step further, making it more memorable in that sense, maybe more complex, more compelling, with solos that just go a notch deeper and stronger, in such a way that you want to listen again and again, because even if all sounds are quite easy to get into, and are welcoming and warm from the first listen, the compositions and arrangements develop in unpredictable ways, with lots of tempo and rhythm changes within each track, making it an almost mandatory gesture to push on the start button again, just to make sure you understood what was happening, and especially how it all fits together and how it works out so nicely.The album opens with the magnificent theme of "Old Man On The Farm", so beautiful and moving, that you wonder whether this is truly Wooley you're listening to, but then the theme collapses in absolute free improvisation with great duets between trumpet and bass clarinet, spiralling upwards, in absolute frenzy, then move back into the unison theme with Swiss clock precision.The album also gives us a grand tour of jazz history, with boppish moments as on the second track, "Make Your Friend Feel Loved", on which Dan Peck plays a lead role, with deep intro growls from his tuba gradually picking up rhythm, Eisenstadt and Moran joining soon, then Wooley Sinton Opsvik bring the theme, things change into hesitant stalling chords, going nowhere at all like a track stand in cycling, full of built-up tension, only to be released by a boppish "walking tuba" underpinning for a great solo by Wooley, full of joy and anger at the same time, things come to a halt again, the theme resurfaces and Sinton shouts through his baritone for his solo part."The Berries" offers Moran the stage for a long solo moment in between a jubliant unison theme that is fun although somewhat too mellow for my taste.Things get better again with "Plow", with odd thematic counterpoints as beacons in an otherwise open-ended structure, with solos for Opsvik in the first part, and some weird trialogue between trumpet, vibes and bass clarinet in the second. "Executive Suites" is a strange animal, with changing themes, rhythms and moods even, varying between funny and solemn, with complex arrangements and sudden surprises."My Story My Story" is a melancholy piece that starts rhythm-less with muted trumpet tones over slow vibes which sound like church bells in the distance, and with bass and tuba adding darkness in the lower tones, over slowly changing ascending chord changes, then halfway an explicit slow blues emerges with Wooley unmuting his horn, playing some astonishing fully voiced multiphonics, then sounding like Lester Bowie in "The Great Pretender", heartrending and deeply emotional."Sweet And Sad Consistency", has a contemplative beginning which evolves into a stomping uptempo 7/8 juggernaut with Sinton blowing some hair-raising howls out of his baritone sax, in stark contrast to Wooley's warm introduction, while bass and drums are more of the headbanging kind, but when the band is at full throttle, the thing stops for some side conversation of the low volume kind, all this in sharp contradiction with the track's title.The album ends with "A Million Billion BTUs", a composition built around several themes, one more sweeping, the other interestingly accelerating, with changes of tempo throughout and great solo space for Wooley, Sinton and Moran.So, now listen to this album, and again and again. To describe it in a few words is hard, as you can understand from the above, but here is a try : a warm and heartfelt album, full of inventive compositions, building on various elements of jazz tradition, yet moving it a step further into the future, performed with superb musicianship and equally warm and tight interplay.Play it again!You can find a copy at instantjazz.com.createSummaryAndThumb("summary7749745819664003095");
Unfortunately, seagrasses are in trouble. Seagrass coverage is being lost globally at a rate of 1.5 percent per year. That amounts to about 2 football fields of seagrass lost each hour. It's estimated that 29 percent of seagrass meadows have died off in the past century. In a 2011 assessment, nearly one quarter of all seagrass species for which information was adequate to judge were threatened (endangered or vulnerable) or near threatened using the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List criteria. This is especially worrying because seagrass losses are projected to have severe impacts on marine biodiversity, the health of other marine ecosystems, and on human livelihoods. Additionally, some threatened marine species such as sea turtles and marine mammals live in seagrass habitats and rely on them for food. For every seagrass species there is on average more than one associated threatened marine species. In fact, the only marine plant listed as endangered in the United States is a seagrass (Halophila johnsonii) found in Florida.
2ff7e9595c
댓글