The suite was originally intended for the Irish National Ballet choreographed by Domy Reiter-Soffer who, Doherty wrote, “confessed to knowing nothing about jazz and I confessed to knowing less about ballet, so it was agreed that I would write a jazz dance project.” Doherty’s wry humour aside, it may be a blessing in disguise that funding fell through for the theatre performance, because making this music danceable may have compromised what’s a dazzling set of ballads, Latin, bop and the blues.

One trace of the suite’s jazz-dance origins is that Doherty was inspired to create a “boy meets girl” narrative across the tracks and assign a persona to each soloist. The opening track “Nordic Maiden” has Stewart on guitar as the girl, and is a romantic ballad with a lush Gil Evans / Miles Davis feel to the horn arrangements and a beautifully lyrical solo from Stewart.

“When Two People Meet” has Bobby Shew representing the boy, first on flugelhorn for a quartet performance with the rhythm section, interspersed with lush horn fills. What follows is a “dance” between the full band and guitar/trumpet counterpointing, the band twice discreetly withdrawing for two beautiful guitar/trumpet duets.

The personae on “Bertha D. Blooze” are a madame called Bertha (alto sax) and her pimp El Sponzo (tenor sax). None of that matters, though. This is essentially a rhythm-changes workout with scorching bebop solos on alto then tenor saxophone, delivering the pulse-raising excitement of earlier great saxophone battles on rhythm changes. I was particularly reminded of Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins on “The Eternal Triangle”, Bob Sheppard’s alto suggesting to me a softer-toned version of Stitt.

“El Sponzo” is a Latin number that starts with a clave riff on piano (a rare moment of exposure for the self-effacing Doherty, who assigns himself no persona or solos) and drums supplemented by congas and a shaker, before settling into a samba groove featuring Gordon Brisker’s tenor saxophone. Tenor and alto then trade fours, before Brisker leads out on the head before a punchy ending.

“Sergeant Bones” (persona, a Keystone cop type character) showcases Randy Aldcroft on trombone playing a major blues that briefly quotes Charlie Parker’s “Now’s the Time” – it’s fleshed out with some great horn fills, and more trading between alto and tenor sax.

Rounding off this most satisfying set is “Maybe It’s You”, which features cheerful ensemble playing on the head, and solos from trumpet, guitar and trombone. The horn arrangements are great, and include a tight unison passage towards the end.

All in all, it’s a corker of a session, recorded in just one day (mainly in single takes) after a rehearsal the day before – and despite its age, it sounds freshly minted. Congratulations to Livia for bringing it back to life – and (as with all other Livia re-releases since the label was reactivated in 2021) for wrapping this gift in beautiful packaging. The artwork on the front is a colourful homage to Henri Matisse’s Jazz art book (a vast improvement on the 1986 cassette cover of gold lettering on a plain black background), and the cardboard gatefold cover contains a 16-page booklet with photos, sleeve notes (both new and from the 1996 CD release), and bios for all the musicians.

In four words: great music beautifully packaged.

‘Spondance’ is released on 28 February 2025

The post Jim Doherty – ‘Spondance’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Happy (2022) hinted at this direction in having pop/soul/funk influences, and even has the same line-up of Elliot Galvin on keyboards, Magnus Hjorth piano, Conor Chaplin electric bass, and Anton Eger drums and percussion. But Cabaret goes even further, partly due to Neset playing not only soprano and tenor saxophone but also an “EWI” (electronic wind instrument), a synth controller with a saxophone-like body and keys, and a mouthpiece that’s sensitive to both breath and bite pressure.

In the right hands – and mouth – an EWI can combine the unlimited sound possibilities of a synthesiser with the expressivity of a saxophone. One of its finest exponents was Michael Brecker, as exemplified by his EWI performance of “In a Sentimental Mood” on the Steps Ahead album Magnetic (1986). The EWI fell out of fashion after the eighties, but I for one welcome its return – and Neset is a worthy successor to Brecker thanks to his virtuosity, muscular tone and musical taste.

But Cabaret has much more going on than a simple homage to earlier acts. Yes, the album has its Brecker / Steps Ahead moments such as Neset’s tenor solo on “Hyp3rsonic Cabar3t” (which starts with a Steve Reich-ish riff of overdubbed saxophones and piano); and the spirit of Weather Report, with a tungsten hardness of edge, permeates “Cabaret” and “Quantum Dance”. There’s a feel of the Pat Metheny Group when “Lizarb” starts with strummed acoustic guitar and a mouth-organ synth patch, and a moment when “Wedding in Geiranger” sounds a bit like Jan Garbarek. But then the music will race off in new directions, tossing out new ideas like quotes in a bebop solo.

It’s not all frenetic showmanship. “Forgotten Ballet” has melancholic piano backed by keyboard synth washes (having two keyboard players really expands the tonal palette), tinkling keyboard textures and soft drumming, even hints of birdsong, before a tender soprano/piano duet backed by barely discernable cymbal splashes; and “The Ocean” starts with a deep bass synth line and long tenor-sax notes, creating a mood as mysterious as the view from a bathyscaphe’s porthole, before picking up pace with fat-toned electric bass and drumming that starts with the metronomic drive of a drum machine, building to a beseeching tenor solo, dropping back to sequencer synth and drum-and-bass style drumming, then introducing a delicately expressive soprano solo that builds towards a euphoric finish.

The closer “Wedding in Geiranger” offers another build from a quiet start (piano, cymbal splashes, drum rolls) to a triumphal ending, the procession of ideas including the sounds of church organ and chiming bells. The wedding of the title is Neset’s own, last summer. Perhaps Neset’s recent marriage goes some way to explaining the sheer joyfulness of this exhilarating album.

Release date is 28 February 2025

The post Marius Neset – ‘Cabaret’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

The flugelhorn’s naturally mellow and dark tone sits well with the album’s relaxed vibe. But even when Julian is playing rapid flurries on the naturally brighter trumpet, his tone is soft and warm. Roman matches the mood on piano, the many years of their fraternal and musical relationship audible in the ease with which they play together.

The cello works so well in this chamber-jazz environment it’s surprising there aren’t more jazz cellists. For a start, the cello’s range of over four octaves means it can comfortably access the register of a double bass and a viola: something Brinkmann exploits by playing pizzicato in the low register to emulate a bass, and bowing in higher registers for playing a melody or lyrical solo.

All tracks are Wasserfuhr originals, apart from a version of Sting’s “Fields of Gold” that begins in a sombre mood but builds to a lively trumpet solo, before melting away to a quiet trio finish. The overall mood of the album is lyrical, peaceful jazz that occasionally drifts into more classical-sounding territory, for example the two Spanish-titled tracks “Movimento” (“movement”) and “El Caballo Valiente” (“the brave horse”), both of which begin with the melody played on bowed cello.

Paul Heller expands the tonal palette on “Solitude” (inspired by the isolation and loneliness people felt during Covid) with an expressive tenor saxophone solo, and on “El Caballo Valiente” with both a counter-melody and solo. Heller has had a long tenure in the WDR Big Band and cites Johnny Griffin as a major influence, and there’s a sense of that in his metal-mouthpiece tone, rapid flourishes and use of growl – a sense of raw power throttled to maintain the mellow mood.

The only other expansion on the trio format is Roman’s overdubbed bass and drums on “Luzifer”, a piece inspired by Julian’s concern for his ailing cat, whose mood is set by glacially sparse piano and cello harmonics before bass, cymbal splashes and subtle brushwork add ballast under Julian’s flugelhorn.

The title Safe Place suggests music that takes the listener to a place of comfort and reassurance, a brief fulfilled by this quietly charming album.

The post Julian & Roman Wasserfuhr – ‘Safe Place’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Bałdych was considered a prodigy in his youth, graduated with distinction from the Academy of Music in Katowice, received a scholarship to study at Berklee College, and has performed worldwide to great acclaim. After a concert back in 2011, the late Ulrich Olshausen of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote, “Adam Bałdych is undoubtedly the most technically advanced violinist in jazz today. We can expect everything of him.”

This album shows such assessments and predictions to have been justified. Bałdych coaxes a huge range of tonalities from his instruments, a conventional violin and a unique replica of a Renaissance violin built by an Austrian luthier: from a shimmering riff on “Genesis” created by ricochet bowing (lightly bouncing the bow on the strings), to a low-register sonority as rich as a cello on “Canon”, a thick pizzicato and phrasing that recalls an oud on “Tree of Knowledge” and “Lullaby for the Ulma Family”, and eerie shrieks on the sombre mood pieces “Depths of the Earth” and “Vision (Talking to Jesus)”.

Like jazz violin virtuosi of the past, Bałdych has the chops for solo pyrotechnics, as on “River”. But what feels fresh is how much he subsumes himself into the musical tapestry. With bassist Andrzej Święs, for example,Bałdych’s frequent pizzicato means that on occasion the two string players almost feel like the same instrument in different registers, particularly noticeable when they play in unison at the start of “Tree of Knowledge”. There’s also some lovely violin-bass counterpointing on “Protest Song”, while Święs comes to the fore on “Relief” with a warm-toned and springy bass solo.

On tenor saxophone, Marek Konarski often provides coloration so subtle it’s barely discernable, as on “Genesis” and “Canon” – when a full-blown saxophone solo emerges on the latter, it feels organic rather than predictable, lifted to declamatory heights when Bałdych adds a counterpointing solo. Pianist Sebastian Zawadzki (like Konarski, domiciled in Denmark) is also a film composer and in his own work combines classical, jazz and electronica. These additional elements are hinted at in his hypnotic ostinati on “Canon” and “Passion” and dreamy interjections on “Vision (Talking to Jesus)”, while “Prelude” (0:42) gives a brief chance to hear him playing solo on his own composition – the only tune not written by Bałdych. Dawid Fortuna on drums and percussion adds equal subtlety to the weave of the music, from cymbal work on “Genesis” that’s as fine as raindrops in drizzle, to atmospheric shaker percussion on “Code” to a brief but muscular full-kit solo that concludes “River”.

The track titles imply a narrative arc informed by religious concerns. For example, the first track is “Genesis” and later tracks (in order) include “Tree of Knowledge”, “Litany”, “Passion”, “Vision (Talking to Jesus)” and “Hamsa” (a hand-shaped amulet for protection against the evil eye that’s common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam). The CD sleeve notes confirm this implication, explaining that Bałdych drew on Szymon Laks’ publication Auschwitz Games and poems and letters from Auschwitz-Birkenau to ask profound questions about human nature, what it means to exist, and how human sensitivity and creativity can possibly coexist with unspeakable brutality.

Bałdych’s clearest musical answer to such profound questions might well be “Lullaby for Ulma Family”. They were a Polish family of nine (including an unborn child) who, along with eight members of the two Jewish families they were hiding, were murdered in 1944 by Nazis. The entire Ulma family was beatified in September 2023. This short track (it lasts only 2:20) is a perfect example of the beauty that humans can create despite the world’s horrors, a triumph of light over dark – a musical beatification in miniature.

‘Portraits’ is released today, 31 January 2025

The post Adam Bałdych – ‘Portraits’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

UK Jazz News: Can you briefly describe how Livia Records began?

Dermot Rogers: Livia Records began in 1997. An artist called Gerald Davis was also a Joycean scholar and jazz fan, and had produced Louis Stewart’s first album as a leader. He thought that Louis was such a talent that he should be recording in Ireland. At the time, record labels were interested in vanilla showbands and probably not commercially interested in modern jazz guitar. Gerald died in 2005, then the label was dormant until I got curious about where Out on His Own was. I was doing a radio show, and I was dipping into this record and was amazed you couldn’t buy it in Ireland. It was like being unable to buy a Van Morrison record or a James Joyce novel, in the land of their birth. We reactivated the label in 2022 when we found the remasters and tested the tapes, and realized they were really good.

UKJN: Why did the label go defunct, and how did you get involved in relaunching it?

DR: The label went defunct because Gerald died. The relaunch is one of those “I never set out to do this” stories. During lockdown, walking on the beach with a friend, I was telling him about not being able to buy Out on His Own. So he said, “Why don’t you find out where the masters are?” I was working from home and had some had time to spare. I found out that Louis’s widow was still alive, and she got in touch with his son. He said that he and his two sisters had always wanted to release the archive but life got in the way.

UKJN: How did you discover the trove of Louis Stewart recordings?

DR: Louis’s son lives on almost the opposite side of the planet but his two sisters live in Dublin. One of the sisters said the archive was in a lockup. Fortunately, it was a modern lockup with a raised mezzanine, so the tapes were in good condition. To my delight, not only did we find the tapes we expected but also others we didn’t, like the Jim Hall and Noel Kelehan recordings, and Louis the First, which was originally released on a showband label. We didn’t ever expect to find his first album.

UKJN: What’s been the process of cleaning up and remastering these recordings?

DR: I didn’t know about analogue recordings, but I know people who did. The advice I got was “Don’t play them. Digitising is probably the first time they should be played.” These recordings were fifty years old, the crown jewels, so I had to be very careful with them. I discovered a company that could digitise quarter-inch tapes, for Out on His Own and the material that became Some Other Blues [duos with Noel Kelehan]. Even quite hardcore jazz fans didn’t know about the Louis/Kelehan recording. We got those tapes digitised and the files were absolutely fine. As the other tapes had been stored in much the same way, they were probably OK too.

The only thing that was missing was the money. I said to the family I’d do as much as possible pro bono, but I didn’t want to lose money. I spoke to the jazz reviewer for the Irish Times. If we got the money together, would the Irish Times review it? He was incredibly enthusiastic and offered to write a feature for it.

The brothers and sisters put up €500 each. Also, I’d written to the minister for culture and asked how I could get some money – I actually got a considered response from the arts officer for Dublin city. I’d written a business plan that said what the archive contained and different scenarios as to where and how these albums could be released, from minimum to releasing everything.

I tried touting the business plan around some rich people interested in music. I got a response from an arts council guy, saying if you can come up with 50 per cent I’ll give you 50 per cent. So that was €3000. Then I was having a drink with a friend and I said, “Can I send you the document?” She came back saying, “Do you need €10,000?” She’d inherited money from an aunt and wanted to give to a worthy cause. Then we had the wind in our sails.

UKJN: What’s the response been like and who’s the audience?

DR: That was the big question: does anyone care? The response has been fantastic. There’s two tribes: people new to Louis and existing fans, who are by and large older guys north of fifty. In Ireland, he’s like Bird or Miles, referred to just by his first name. He was viewed as a master but mainstream, a sense that he wasn’t progressive enough, for example that he didn’t play non-standard tunes.

But when the recordings came out, the response was very positive, both in Ireland and the UK. Rob [Adams] often supplied me with new releases for my radio show. I asked him how we can get attention, and he’s amazingly well connected. We got fantastic reviews in Ireland and the UK, but also in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, and Northern Europe – even in Taiwan, India and South America. Interestingly, people who didn’t know who Louis Stewart was were astounded: how come we didn’t know about him? They associated Ireland with folk and rock, and didn’t know about the jazz scene. In Ireland, as is probably the case in the UK, there are rifts and factions. But the response has been positive across the board. For me, it’s been a very rewarding experience.

Louis is a great story of a kid who grew up working class, goes to an audition as a teenager and is identified as a really good musician. He was playing for an Irish showband that was touring in the US and was in Birdland or somewhere when he decided he wanted to become a jazz musician. (In extremely Catholic, 1960s Ireland, the showband venues were closed during Lent, so each year many of the bands went overseas until Lent was over.) He was sitting in with visiting jazz musicians, and got picked up by Benny Goodman and ended up sitting in Charlie Christian’s old seat. It’s like being a footballer in a small club and being discovered by a premier league club.

UKJN: What other recordings have you discovered?

DR: Lots of things are coming. Louis recorded an album with an octet in 1986 with Jim Doherty, the person who discovered Louis. They recorded it in LA. It will come out some time late this year or early next year. Louis also recorded with Sam Jones, Billy Higgins and John Taylor and there’s a funny story to that album. It’s really good, but Louis wasn’t happy with his solos, so he came back to Dublin and re-recorded some of them. We’ll be releasing the original London sessions as the Dublin overdubs used for the original version were of poor audio quality but the original London tapes are very good.

After that we’ll be releasing live recordings, for example with the flautist Brian Dunning. In 1979 Livia released what could fit on an LP, but there’s about twice as much material. Then there’s Joyce Notes. The only recording of this that’s been released so far is one made in Norway, with spoken word in Norwegian. Livia has the original premiere concert from the Cork Jazz Festival 1982, with a renowned Irish actor delivering the spoken word in English and with a far better eight-piece band of Irish and American musicians.

We also have about 15 club dates from Dublin in the 70s and 80s that we’ll filter for the best material. We’ll also be releasing some contemporary artists next year.

One thing I hold very strongly is the value of a recording, which is generally a loss leader in jazz. But if it becomes part of your legacy or a calling card, you should do it. Otherwise a performance is just a memory in the minds of the fifty or sixty people who were in that club. Overall, I’m very pleased. The albums are successful on a jazz scale. They’re covering their costs and living musicians are interested in us getting involved, so I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing.

The post Livia Records first appeared on UK Jazz News.

The space between the screen and front rows was deep enough to accommodate a full orchestra. Impressively, the audience filled nearly all of the 566 seats. The ELCB exploited this combination of big space and big screen by laying on a programme that included various jazz combos, a percussion group, an early-music group, a documentary film, a big band, and an orchestra comprising woodwinds, brass, double bass, percussion, piano/celeste, and harp.

The repertoire played by these groups was equally diverse: from “Amazing Grace” and the tango “La Cumparsita” performed by the premier band (multi-generational beginner musicians) to excerpts from Handel’s Messiah performed by the early-music group, to jazz standards (such as “On the Sunny Side of the Street” and “Doxy”) performed by the jazz combos and big band, to Alexander Arutunian’s Trumpet Concerto in Ab Major (1950).

Given the range of abilities, the level of performance across the whole programme was impressive. Arutunian’s Trumpet Concerto in particular is a challenging score and was performed to a high standard, with Zoë Miara (a former ELCB member) a dazzling soloist. Also impressive was the fact that the band had different generations of composers writing material for them: classical composers Howard Jones from the NMC label (born 1948) and Lucy Armstrong (1991), and jazz saxophone sensation Emma Rawicz (still only in her early twenties), who conducted the big band for her compositions “Saudade” and “Time, and other Thieves”. The latter, written for the band and receiving its premiere, was enhanced by a dazzling tenor saxophone solo from Rawicz.

The big band’s director is jazz trombonist Rory Ingham, who has won the British Jazz Awards 2017’s Rising Star award amongst other nominations and awards, and who has played with many top names in jazz, including Dave Holland, Chris Potter, Evan Parker and Dave Liebman. The fact that musicians of his and Emma Rawicz’s calibre are prepared to work with the ELCB is a testament to the value of this great community service.

Happy birthday, ELCB, and long may you prosper.

The post East London Community Band first appeared on UK Jazz News.

At times Seim and Haltli sound almost like two players of one instrument. Saxophone and accordion are both reed instruments driven by air, and Seim’s and Haltli’s phrases often seem to breathe together. Also, the saxophones’ pitches fit within the upper and lower limits of the accordion, and the feeling of oneness is further abetted by Seim’s soft and breathy delivery, and how the accordion spreads across the stereo panorama with the saxophone somewhere in the middle.

But Seim and Haltli also know how to contrast their voices. Seim is fond of large pitch bends (especially effective on the raga “Shyama Sundara Madana Mohana”) and long phrases that sometimes finish with a thick vibrato, creating a Middle Eastern sound akin to that of a tárogató. It’s very different from the accordion (fixed-pitch and polyphonic), a fact that Haltli often judiciously exploits when dancing impishly around Seim’s sinuous lines. Seim provides further tonal contrasts by switching between soprano and tenor sax. For example, he plays his original composition “Fanfare” as a coda to two of the free improvisations, soprano on the first and tenor the second.

The album was recorded in the Himmelfahrtskirche (“Church of the Ascension”) in Munich, a church with a magnificent organ with 35 registers (2377 pipes) that was built in 1994. The church has often been used to record small and mid-sized ensembles, due to its favourable acoustics and quiet location. But there’s a poetic beauty about this conversational set of duets being played in the shadow of a pipe organ, an instrument that (like the saxophones and accordion) produces sound by blowing air through pipes and over reeds.

The post Trygve Seim, Frode Haltli – ‘Our Time’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

The two have played together in various groups for over twenty years, and Moussay has appeared on three previous Sclavis albums on ECM: Sources (2012), Silk and Salt Memories (2014) and Characters on a Wall (2019). But Unfolding is the first time they’ve recorded as a duo. All the compositions on the album are originals, three written by Sclavis (“A Garden in Ispahan”, “L’étendue” and “Somebody Leaves”) and the remaining six by Moussay.

Sclavis and Moussay’s musical partnership has been compared with the Jimmy Giuffre 3, and this album shares some of the restless probing between Giuffre’s Bb clarinet and Paul Bley’s piano, and a sense of hovering between jazz and the classical avant-garde. But Sclavis and Moussay have long had distinctive voices of their own, and overall this album feels more lyrical and less “out there” than, say, the Jimmy Giuffre 3 album Free Fall. And although Sclavis plays Bb clarinet on this album, he favours the bass clarinet. He’s a master at exploiting the instrument’s full range, from fluttering in the altissimo range to plunging into plump, rich tones deep in the chalumeau range.

Sclavis has said, “I wrote rather simple pieces that allow a lot of improvisation and letting go” and that’s where over twenty years of trust comes in: knowing intuitively where to sketch the melody, to counterpoint, to nudge each other, break free, or drop back and leave space. Everything flows gracefully: from gentle melodicism on “Unfolding” and “Snow”; to glacially sparse piano at the start of “Loma del Tanto” that builds to a classical elegiac feel; to lively unison melodies on “Somebody Leaves” and “Siete Lagunas” (the latter with gorgeous solo bass clarinet and solo piano); to dreamy French impressionism on L’heure du loup”; to harmonic ambiguity on “None” and “L’étendue”.

At 40:25 the album is LP length, and the LP version has been released two months after the CD and costs more. All this suggests a reversal of fortunes for vinyl over CDs. Also, streaming services have made entire catalogues (including ECM’s) virtually free. So it’s intriguing that some audiophiles and collectors are willing to pay more and wait longer for a single recording on an older format. But if any label can produce an LP desirable enough to be viable, it’s ECM with their high-quality pressings, beautiful artwork, and collectable recordings by outstanding musicians such as Sclavis and Moussay.

Whichever format you choose, this beautiful album is well worth hearing.

The post Louis Sclavis, Benjamin Moussay – ‘Unfolding’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Unlike The Dublin Concert, this album has been released before: on cassette then vinyl in 1986, then CD on a German record label in 1996 with the addition of “Billie’s Bounce” and “Bernie’s Tune”. But this reissue is the one to go for. It comes in a handsome gatefold sleeve, with a 16-page booklet containing all generations of sleeve notes plus new notes and photographs, and includes a recently discovered alternate take of “Stompin’ at the Savoy”. Best of all, like other Livia releases it’s been digitised and remastered by sound engineer (and professional saxophonist and clarinettist) Seán Mac Erlaine. He’s done an incredible job. The sound is clean, bright and detailed, as if recorded yesterday rather than restored from one-inch studio and quarter-inch master tapes nearly 40 years old.

For Stewart aficionados, a draw will be the rarity of hearing him playing acoustic guitar, alongside a then younger player with a different style but equal virtuosity. The two first played together in the early 1980s in Stéphane Grappelli’s quartet, and on this recording they sound very comfortable with each other – playful, in fact, the music full of joy and surprises, and effortless switching of roles between soloing and accompaniment.

Taylor has said that his influences were piano players, especially Art Tatum, and that his guitar playing is like the left and right hands of the piano – different lines rather than a traditional chords-and-melody approach. Add Stewart’s lightning bebop fluency and the result is a complex tapestry of sound that at times defies belief. “Cherokee”, for example, sounds almost like three guitarists playing, such is the effortless weaving of soloing, chords, walking bass, and ornate counterpointing.

Other tracks are a laid-back “Pick Yourself Up”; a lengthy (9:43) workout on the bossa “Manhã de Carnaval”, topped and tailed with lovely flamenco-style playing; touches of Django Reinhardt on Harry Edison and Count Basie’s “Jive at Five” and Gerry Mulligan’s “Bernie’s Tune” (two tunes that, incredibly, Taylor had never played before); tight unison playing and counterpointing on “Billie’s Bounce”; a gentle pastoral feel to “Coming Through the Rye” (an old Scottish song originally called the “Miller’s Wedding” until Robert Burns wrote the eponymous lyrics); two takes of “Stompin’ at the Savoy”, where the head is played in octaves (it must have been hard to choose a master take, as both versions are great); a romantic “Darn That Dream”; and a lively version of the Irish reel “Farewell to Erin”.

A real treat for fans of Louis Stewart and Martin Taylor – and, indeed, for anyone who appreciates virtuoso jazz guitar interpretations of songbook, bebop and traditional tunes.

The post Louis Stewart & Martin Taylor – ‘Acoustic Guitar Duets’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Rypdal is the perfect choice. His first album, the eponymous Terje Rypdal (1971), was like a lyrical take on electric Miles Davis; Chaser (1985) and Blue (1987) were heavily rock-oriented; and, even more significantly, Storløkken has appeared on three Rypdal albums, Vossabrygg (2006), Crime Scene (2010) and Conspiracy (2020), albums that at times share a similar aesthetic to Elephant9. Storløkken and Rypdal also played together on an epic six-CD recording Very Much Alive (2010), in a trio led by Italian drummer Paolo Vinaccia. In fact, their musical affinity is such that on Catching Fire it’s sometimes hard to tell apart Storløkken’s heavily distorted organ from Rypdal’s overdriven guitar.

The six tunes on Catching Fire are taken from Elephant9’s first three studio albums, Dodovoodoo (2008), Walk the Nile (2010) and Atlantis (2012), and mostly extended into long and sweaty workouts. “I Cover the Mountain Top” is over 22 minutes and “Dodovoodoo” over 21 minutes. In comparison, “John Tinnick” is a featherweight 4:56, while the other three tunes average around ten minutes.

Expect plenty of swagger and powerhouse jazz-rock, but subtlety too. “I Cover the Mountain Top” in particular is a masterclass in building atmosphere and tension. Fans of Storløkken’s work on Supersilent albums will appreciate his eerie organ textures, clanging Rhodes and fluty Mellotron at the start, soon joined by Rypdal’s signature reverb-drenched long notes (no wonder that Rypdal is known as “the tone poet of the Stratocaster”). It’s a good nine minutes before a full-on assault of grinding Keith Emerson-esque organ, bruising guitar and driving bass and drums. But then there’s a dropdown to a pulsing bass riff and groove-driven drumming topped by sparse organ and guitar solos – before building, building, building…

… then a jump-cut straight into “Dodovoodoo”, which goes in hard with jabs of organ and tight bass and drums. Over its 21 minutes it flows and ebbs from rock-driven organ and guitar solos, to funky bass and sparse drums, to robot-chatter keyboard sounds, rapid drumming, bass riffs, murky Mellotron, and heavy bluesy riffing. “Psychedelic Backfire” starts off doom-laden with a riff of a downwards octave slide on bass and sparse drum thumps, overlaid by thick organ textures and heavy guitar blues riffing, before building pace towards a thrilling ending. In comparison, the short and thrashy “John Tinnick” has an almost punk-like energy; “Fugl Fønix” is rhythmically dense with polyrhythmic drumming and a dextrous bass riff, overlaid by long guitar and keyboard textures; and “Skink” finishes the set like ELP on steroids, bass and drums an unstoppable locomotive with an ear-bleeding organ solo on top, but then a funky, bluesy groove with heavily distorted guitar, before a final frenetic race home.

For anyone (like this reviewer) who grew up in the seventies obsessed with prog rock before discovering jazz, this album will be a glorious mix of modernity mixed with nostalgia. And maybe it will tempt younger listeners to check out not only Elephant9 but also the pioneers (Terje Rypdal included) who inspired them.

The post Elephant9 with Terje Rypdal – ‘Catching Fire’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.