Several esteemed guest musicians add further valuable colour to Songs of the Roma: singer-violinist Masha Natanson from Lublin, Poland, who reportedly “ran away from home at the age of 15 to learn the genuine traditional music of the Carpathian and Romany communities”; as well as two musicians originally from Budapest, cimbalom maestro Gyula “Julius” Csik and double bassist Gyula Lázár.

The eight-track album is a mix of new takes on traditional Roma tunes, and new compositions by Thacker. It is a richly-hued album, strikingly lyrical and high-octane, with multiple flamenco and other related styles and many a dramatic flourish. Many traditional Roma tunes are to be heard, with their hum-along melodies that burrow their way into the listener’s mind. I enjoyed the Arab-sounding Ibrahim, as well as the searingly sad Ederlezi.

Two tunes, Jolta and the final Phirado (Romani for wanderer or wooed) are new compositions by Thacker. The piece starts with contained walking bass but quickly careers into eccentricity, Csik’s cimbalom adding extra interest.

With its energy and emotional intensity, Songs of the Roma is an absolute delight, and the level of detail, technical virtuosity and lyricism merit repeated listening. Itis accompanied by a booklet giving detailed background information and translations of the lyrics.

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To someone who occasionally ‘sees’ incidents before they actually occur, that strange phenomenon we call ‘time’ has long intrigued. So my hope was that Roberto Bonati’s musical meditation upon time, La Fòla de l’Oca / Over Time, might perhaps throw some light…

Bonati is a Parma-based double bass player, composer and conductor, and an important figure on the Italian experimental, jazz and improvisation scenes. Following Parma becoming Italian Capital of Culture 20/21, he composed La Fòla de l’Oca (meaning ‘the goose’s tale’) for an orchestra of young musicians to be drawn from across Europe. Thanks to the covid pandemic however, only six musicians could be invited, hailing from Oslo, Nürnberg, Hamburg, Göteborg, Stavanger and Glasgow, The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s tenor saxophonist Simon Herberholz being the UK representative.

These six had the exemplary learning experience of being joined by twelve established members of Bonati’s ParmaFrontiere Orchestra. In autumn 2021, following a week of rehearsals, this album was recorded in front of a live audience in the 17th century Teatro Farnese. Bonati conducted.

The resultant album consists of seven mostly instrumental pieces, with just a sprinkling of vocals from soprano Giulia Zaniboni, the lyrics being drawn from greats Saint Augustine, Heraclitus, Marcus Aurelius and Walt Whitman.

The larger-scale ‘symphonic’ pieces impress most of all. The album opens with one of the album’s most beautiful extended pieces: Quid Est Ergo Tempus? Night insect noises merge into an elderly female voice questioning a youngster, presumably reflecting Bonati’s childhood interactions with his grandmother. However, the orchestra grows increasingly prominent, indeed briefly forbidding, swelling then receding in wave-like rhythm. Zaniboni’s bell-like voicing of Saint Augustine’s words adds poignancy, indeed her intermittent singing throughout this album is one of its many pleasures.

Instrumentalists likewise have brief solos, one highlight being in Apidón Eis To Tachos which starts out quietly and at measured pace, but becomes quite rambunctious in the last three minutes thanks to Luca Perciballi’s hugely fun electric guitar. Further deliciously ‘out there’ jazz can be heard in the gallumphing rhythm of the Sun Ra – evoking Potamós.

Final piece Aión is worthy of particular mention, with a charming trombone reitteration of the original theme, and the orchestra personnel all singing the final words in unison, Zaniboni alone singing the very last words.

La Fòla de l’Oca is a glorious album of orchestral jazz that combines a winning mix of thoughtfulness, technical prowess and beauty and helps us think about that perplexing phenomenon: time.

ParmaFrontiere Orchestra:

Roberto Bonati – composition and conduction
Giulia Zaniboni – vocals
Mario Arcari – oboe
Marco Ignoti – clarinets
Riccardo Luppi – soprano sax and flute
Simon Andreas Fredheim Folkvord – alto sax
Simon Herberholz – tenor sax
Michael Gassmann – trumpet and flugelhorn
Benjamin Löfgren – trumpet/flugelhorn
Fabius Mey – trombone
Finn Henrik Stamer – violin
Ingrid Berg Mehus – violin
Paolo Botti – viola
Gregorio Buti – cello 
Luca Perciballi – guitar
Tommaso Salvadori – vibraphone
Andrea Grossi – double bass
Roberto Dani – drums, percussion

Fiona Mactaggart lives in Edinburgh, writes about music on Scottish Jazz Space and is co-founder of Jazz Forward.

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Viewpoint is Latchin’s fourth album, consisting of eleven deeply engaging, self-composed tunes, all of which sound as if they might be re-discovered lost Standards.

This, however, is Latchin’s first album to consist solely of originals, and his most personal to date, referencing key family events (A Mother’s Love followed the birth of his second son, Oscar, Prim and Proper for his daughter Mairi, nicknamed Primrose) as well as various jazz musicians whose music he loves. These include the recently deceased Ahmad Jamal (Train Of Thought), João Gilberto (O Mito – meaning the myth), Cedar Walton (Mr Walton) and Herbie Hancock (A Song For Herbie). Listening to this album one can almost feel the spirit of each of these jazz greats, all of whom have clearly helped form Latchin’s musical sensibilities.

Alongside him, leading UK bassist Jeremy Brown and New York-based drummer Joe Farnsworth similarly demonstrate ease and finesse which enable the trio to seem like a single indivisible organism.

I particularly enjoyed the overt humour in Rest And Be Thankful, with its drum sounds, which made me visualise a motorbike labouring to the top of a steep road in the west of Scotland.

All the tracks have the sense of a steady hand at the tiller, without a note out of place and a deeply pleasing charm. Viewpoint’s ease on the ears and lyricism belie its intelligence, its multiple jazz references and delicious detail making this an album that requires multiple listens. Viewpoint is a keeper that I predict will not grow old.

Viewpoint is released on 21 April 2023 on CD, vinyl and digital.

Fiona Mactaggart lives in Edinburgh, writes about music on Scottish Jazz Space and is co-founder of Jazz Forward.

TOUR DATES

The Edinburgh Society of Musicians, Edinburgh on 23 April (with Calum Gourlay and Stephen Henderson)

Pizza Express, London on 26 April (with Jeremy Brown and Steve Brown)

Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham on 27 April (with Jeremy Brown and Steve Brown)

The Blue Lamp, Aberdeen on 18 May (with Calum Gourlay and Steve Brown).

The post Gabriel Latchin Trio – ‘Viewpoint’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Norwegian-born, Edinburgh-based Medbøe is omnipresent on the Scottish jazz scene. Professor of Music at Edinburgh Napier University and founder of the Scottish Jazz Archive, he includes cultural identity in jazz in his interests and runs his own label, Copperfly. As an active musician he collaborates widely, tours internationally, and records extensively.

Here he partners Konrad Wiszniewski, an award-winning saxophonist (including Best Instrumentalist twice at the Scottish Jazz Awards) who is an established member of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and co-leads, with pianist Euan Stevenson, the classical and Scottish folk-inspired New Focus.

Poiesis is Greek for “an act or process of creation” and its ten tracks are presented in the order of their conception.  Sometimes poetic (Celestial Veil and The Soul Selects), sometimes obscure (Fortune’s Expensive Smile and Dances like a Bomb), the individual titles reflect the music’s meditative ambience.

In opening track Exordium (the Latin for “introduction to a discourse or treatise”), Medbøe’s electric guitar develops a blanket of apparently looped, altered noise as the foundation for the duo’s adventures. Thereafter, this delicate mesh of guitar textures underpins and gracefully interacts with Wiszniewski’s rich acoustic tones.

The sax flutters and soars, sometimes with a serpentine languor, as in A Bridge Away and Wrinkles of the Road, at others with great insistence, as in Molten Blue. Their unhurried dance induces in the listener a feeling of great calm.

Indeed, this ethereal, roomy and ruminative album truly takes the listener to the zone the duo inhabits: that of careful mutual attention within a deep meditative space. In other words, this is improvisation at its most beautiful.

Available digitally and on cassette.

Fiona Mactaggart lives in Edinburgh and writes about music on Scottish Jazz Space.

The post Haftor Medbøe and Konrad Wiszniewski – ‘Poiesis’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

A 2019 debut album, Swansong, was especially successful in Japan where the trio subsequently toured, although the pandemic put follow-up plans on hold until last spring when, in Budapest, the trio recorded this, their second studio album, Do Swans Fly? (Only a few days before, they had also recorded their first live album, Turbulence.)

Do Swans Fly? is a fresh, even youthful-feeling jazz album of eleven originals. The mix of electric bass guitar with acoustic piano lends a mild fusion feel to the mostly mainstream European jazz sound. Led by Csordás, he takes composer credits for five of the eleven tunes, Hosoya the remaining six.

Csordás states that the trio’s style is “centered around melodic ideas coming from European music,” which is most overtly shown in his soaring title track, reportedly strongly influenced by the early music of Hungarian keyboard player Zsolt Kaltenecker.

Another highlight of this 74-minute-long album is Hosoya’s Far From Winter which features the extraordinarily lovely tones of guest Bence Táborszky’s flugelhorn.

Indeed, gentleness and lyricism are two words (listen to Hosoya’s delightful Komorebi) that come to mind when listening to this charming album, as well as a sense of the composers taking pleasure in sharing their favourite musical styles and heroes; Rush Hour, Csordás’ take on Herbie Hancock’s Actual Proof, is a felicitous example of this.

With their disparate origins and influences, these friends together seem to be starting to find their own particular, rather attractive jazz style. It will be interesting to hear how they evolve.

Fiona Mactaggart lives in Edinburgh and writes about music on Scottish Jazz Space.

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A native Māori speaker from the east coast of New Zealand’s north island, Allana Goldsmith was drawn to jazz through hearing Billie Holiday and has subsequently sung in an Andrews Sisters-style harmony group and with the band Wakakura. She blends her rich cultural background with a contemporary jazz nous to create a richness and openness of vocal tone.

Goldsmith and Mark Baynes, who is originally from Alton in Hampshire and who studied with Gary Burton at Berklee and with Hal Galper and Andy Laverne in New York, have been working together for ten years.  

The album has eleven songs, all in Māori, with English briefly featuring in just two tracks, Tīpuna (Ancestors) and Tō Ihu (Get Stuffed). Reading some of the English translations provided by Goldsmith, the lyrics are highly poetic and deeply grounded in Māori culture.

Goldsmith shares an example: “The title of the song Hei Kawe i a Au, for example, is taken from a whakataukī, or proverb, that translates as ‘Let me be carried by the easterly breeze,’ This is suggesting that we shouldn’t be in a hurry, but to wait until the time and conditions are right.”

E Rere Rā itself opens the album. Its lyrics were written by Donovan Te Ahunui Farnham, a Te Reo Māori consultant and they constitute a blessing. The tracks that follow are quite lovely, occasionally poppy in feel but no worse for it, although Kore Rawa (with lyrics about unrequited love) allows Goldsmith’s and indeed the whole band’s jazz chops to shine brightly.

Tō Ihu (Get Stuffed) has a raunchy, R & B feel and Pīata Kau Ana, a song mourning the death of a loved one, is a striking and beautiful album coda.

Notwithstanding an occasionally light tone, there is courage and dignity to Goldsmith’s sharing of her language and culture with a jazz audience. This unusual and beautiful sound deserves to be heard widely.

Additional line-up: Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa (drums), Alex Griffith (electric bass), Tom Dennison (bass), Riki Bennett (Taongo Puoro), Cameron Allen (saxophones), Jono Tan (trombone), Mike Booth (trumpet and horn arrangement) and Kim Paterson (flugelhorn and trumpet).

Release Date: 2 September 2022.

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This adrenaline and serotonin-bath of a one-hour Fringe show entailed French drummers Sébastien Rambaud and Yann Coste using multiple, often eccentric or homemade instruments as their percussion armoury while regularly gravitating back to the two humongously big drum kits which dominated the stage. Towards the end of the show they took turns to deliver impressive drum solos, leading one to wonder how thrilling a straightforward concert from them might have been.

However, this was to be an ear-splitting, full-throttle, non-stop percussion clown-show, very tightly choreographed (thank you Director, Quebecois Daniel Brière), the brief blasts of lights, sometimes strobes, often emphasising the rhythmic jokes. The audience too was generally very quick on the uptake as the highly-synchronized Monkeys played brief snatches of numerous well-known drum anthems (Queen, Metallica, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins…) on everything from plastic dishwasher mops and foam swim noodles to food whisks. The pre-programmed fluffy duck and electric drum-heads (animal noises) and a plastic washing-up basin drum-hat were probably this humble drummer’s whimsical favourites.

This show was patently a major hit for the many children in the audience – although the adults were having just as much fun, judging by their almost constant laughter – and hopefully may lead to some of the children present taking up the drums.

Fills Monkey certainly seem like a winning mixture: superb percussion playing made to look easy, physical clowning and clever mime (not a single word was uttered throughout this performance), educational nous – coming down from the stage to engage with the audience, pitting half the audience against the other half in body percussion play-offs, and the constant sheer silliness. The show ended on a particular high, even by their own standards, with a ‘rave’ of electronic beats and fabulous lightwork which brought virtually the whole audience to its feet.

And whereas no limbs were lost during this bravura performance, it’s a safe bet that more than a few pairs of drumsticks are still unaccounted for.

Fiona Mactaggart lives in Edinburgh and writes about music on Scottishjazzspace.co.uk

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While recovering from a serious accident last spring, Aitken found a degree of relief in strolling through Glasgow parks at a time when cherry blossoms (in Japanese, ‘sakura’) were bursting forth. This is when the idea for this album first occurred to her, and following an Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival commission, Aitken composed the music for this jazz-folk cross-genre album. The premiere was at the 2021 festival.

Ten tracks trace the life-span of cherry blossom, from a brief tremolo then opening out like a flower in Awakening, to final track Hanami (Reprise), a reference to the Japanese tradition of picnicking underneath the cherry blossoms. This song is a final gentle reminder to ‘seize the day’.

The eight tracks in between also showcase the talents of this fine string ensemble, Aitken’s fiddle style in particular repeatedly recalling Stephane Grappelli. Helena Kay’s tenor sax and flute add further colour and improvisational interest.

Melodious Chasing Sakura breezes along, Emma Smith’s bass providing much of the momentum. Swinging waltz Beauty and Wonder showcase Patsy Reid’s viola and Aitken’s violin, while Hanami feels like the musicians are having a joyous party, with Scottish folk musicians cellist Alice Allen and Reid taking the lead, then with Kay’s sax joining in the fun.

By contrast, fifth track Spring Song has Aitken’s soothing, wordless vocalisations over pizzicato strings. This song, inspired by Sarah Vaughan’s Pinky, is coloured lightly by Kay’s sax and represents a point of calm in the album. The Walk has more luminous sax from Kay and Grappelli-evoking violin from Aitken, it’s hobbling gait Aitken’s humorous reference to her own predicament while she was slowly recovering from her injuries.

Mid-tempo Sakura Snowstorm is followed by swooping and soaring Impermanence – an allusion to the Japanese concept of ‘mono no aware’. Rebirth looks forward to the next Spring, and featuring Katrina Lee’s sweeping violin it somehow manages at moments to sound simultaneously both rasping and louche.

The album cover has a beautiful and evocative piece of art by bass player, synesthete and artist Kirsty Matheson. Its sinuous blue ribbons embellished with colourful blossoms against a dark background feel entirely apt as a visual representation of this generous and sunny album. Sound engineer Stuart Hamilton has done a top job in ensuring all the instruments sound beautiful.

Ensemble line-up: Seonaid Aitken (violin and vocals), Katrina Lee (violin), Patsy Reid (viola), Alice Allen (cello), Emma Smith (bass), Helena Kay (tenor sax and flute).

Fiona Mactaggart lives in Edinburgh and writes about music on Scottishjazzspace.co.uk

The post Seonaid Aitken Ensemble – ‘Chasing Sakura’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

It also features a number of guests (see personnel below) and has ten tracks, lasting a full hour. The volume and levels of energy and testosterone-infused emotional intensity are matched by the speed and supply of ideas in each track. The shifting, often North or West African rhythms and unmistakable presence of free-spirited improvisors make it downright impossible for the listener to keep still. 

Presented with such riches it’s hard to pick favourites. However, the lyrical, Tinariwen-evoking Loosed is especially striking and Ethio-jazz favourites Getachew Mekuria and Mulatu Astatke spring to mind during the moody yet pretty Pearls. The almost orchestrally rich The Lurch, with its playful tempo changes and electronic warping, confirms that here is a band now stepping into the serious big-time. No wonder Brian Eno and electronic music specialist David Holmes are said to be fans.

A final word. Should you be lucky enough to see Ill Considered live, make sure you’re wearing your dancing shoes.

Band line-up: Idris Rahman (saxophone), Liran Donin (bass) and Emre Ramazanoglu (drums).

Guests: Tamar Osborn, Ahnanse and Kaidi Akinnibi (saxophone), Sarathy Korwar and Oli Savill (percussion), Theon Cross (tuba), Ralph Wyld (vibraphone) and Robin Hopcraft (trumpet). 

Liminal Space was released by New Soil on 11 November digitally, on double vinyl, CD and cassette.

The post Ill Considered – ‘Liminal Space’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

New Needs Need New Techniques is Massaria’s first solo album. He has either led or co-led more than 20 albums to date, over the years performing alongside numerous jazz Names especially those in the area of free improvisation: Evan Parker, Giancarlo Schiaffini and Paul Lytton…

He has said: “Improvisation is a leap in the dark, in the unknown and we cannot know which part of us will emerge from the dark as soon as we start playing even more so when we play solo…”

This quote from the musician, taken with the album title which is a quote from the artist Jackson Pollock, alert us to the fact that Andrea Massaria is a deep-thinking improvising guitarist who continues to swim in deep waters. Indeed, as he did some years ago with his musical responses to the spirit and essential feel of Frank Zappa’s oeuvre, Massaria now takes the artworks of three artists as inspirations for his improvisations, and abbreviates their surnames in his track titles to two letters, in the style of Italian provinces: Pollock (PO), Martin Rothko (RO) and Robert Rauschenberg (RA). The results are a masterclass in the timbral transformation that can be achieved with an electric guitar, some electronics and a what sounds like a collection of household utensils.

The album consists of nine tracks, three for each artist, all of which sound largely, perhaps completely improvised. Sometimes there are obvious links with an artist such as in the second track, RA3, in which overlapping words about Art declaimed by singer and flautist Francesco Forges evoke the visual overlapping in much of Rauschenberg’s art. At other times it is less obvious (to this close listener at least) whether there are any specific references. But no matter, in Massaria’s work there is plenty to think about otherwise.

But this is not ‘easy’ music. A single listen certainly not enough – the real satisfaction comes from repeated listens. Extended technique barely covers what Massaria extracts from his instrument, the original, often slight guitar phrases are subsumed into the electronic manipulations which take the music to the very edge of what is normally achieved with guitar + electronics. All tracks hold the attention, no mean feat for a solo album.

Four tracks stood out for me:

In PO2, the opening medium-low frequencies and guitar meanderings juxtapose with interesting and unsettling insectoid stridulation. More calming, at least initially, is RA1, with its sparse sounds evoking Buddhist bells and Japanese wood blocks, the track becoming decidedly less prayerful as it unfolds. RO3 by contrast has a particularly rich and polytonal sound with layers of textured electronics and a deeply peaceful final dissolution. The last track, RO1, enters with a low frequency drone, layers of rumbles augmenting the stately and forbidding feel before coming to the end with a jolt.

This album might not be considered especially beautiful in the conventional sense, but if the listener enjoys questing that has both richness and subtly and a fearlessness that strives to reach beyond present-day musical frontiers, then this might just be the album for you.

One final thought: Café OTO, please find a space in your schedule for Andrea Massaria!

Fiona Mactaggart lives in Edinburgh and writes about music on Scottishjazzspace.co.uk

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