Reviews of the week

The new album After The Last Sky by Anouar Brahem with Anja Lechner, Django Bates and Dave Holland is acclaimed by UK and French media

Brahem began this project before the horrors of Gaza unfolded. But it remains a powerful response to the tragedy of the Middle East […] It’s hard to imagine a more poignant sound than an oud with it’s yawning bass bends as on ‘Never Forget’, with Bates, sparingly, bluesily, singing around Brahem’s lament. ‘The Sweet Oranges of Jaffa’ is a fantastical yet melancholic remembrance of an Eden that probably never existed, yet somehow the oud and cello yearn to conjure it into existence. […] The spirit of the American-Palestinian Edward Said, co-founder of the West Eastern Divan Orchestra, underwrites much of this music which refuses to yield truth and beauty, to horror and brutality.

Andy Robson, Jazzwise (Editor’s choice)

L’oudiste tunisien y joue avec une gravité, une sensibilité et une économie d’effets qui laissent transparaìtre, au delà de son effroi (évoqué explicitement dans le livret), son attachement à un peuple et une culture menacés d’anéantissement. D’arpèges solitaires en lentes méditations, d’évocations nostalgiques en fragiles élans d’espoir, Anja Lechner (violoncelle), Django Bates (piano) et Dave Holland (contrebasse) font plus que le seconder. L’une est allemande, les deux autres britanniques. Leur grande implication dans cette musique le dit assez: ce qui se passe à Gaza concerne l’entière humanité.

Louis-Julien Nicolaou, Télérama

The upcoming album Watersong by Savina Yannatou is welcomed in a leading UK daily paper

Her new album with Greek jazz ensemble and long-term collaborators Primavera en Salonica and Tunisian singer Lamia Bedioui is a global tour of traditional songs about water: how it can be balm and curse, source of life and storm. […]  The album jumps across the centuries, from Ireland to Iraq, Corsica to Calabria, but it is filled with intensely modern moments. Michalis Siganidis’s double bass in Greek carol ‘Kalanta of the Theophany’ has motorik-like propulsion. The 10th-century Arabic poem ‘Mawal (To the Mourning Dove I Said)’ comes across as an avant garde contemporary prayer, setting a tangle of percussion against Yannatou and Bedioui’s spoken-word delivery, full of contrapuntal whispers and wails. Traditional instruments such as Kostas Vomvolos’ qanun (an Arabic zither) and Harris Lambrakis’s ney (a Persian flute) also add drama and dreaminess. This album sets traditional music flowing and crashing in many unexpected, wonderful directions.

Jude Rogers, The Guardian

The album Defiant Life by Vijay Iyer with Wadada Leo Smith is welcomed by media in the USA, the UK, Germany and Italy

With their latest collaboration, ‘Defiant Life’, pianist Vijay Iyer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith reunite for a second time, driven by their deep ‘aural attunement’—a creative blend of inspiration, reflection, and healing. Composed over two days, the album channels their sorrow and outrage over the world’s cruelties while maintaining faith in human possibility. They convey this through freewheeling avant-jazz atmospheres that lean into ambient textures. […] While the duo imbues each collaboration with a touch of grace, their individual compositions—one from each—stand out. Smith’s ‘Floating River Requiem’ dedicated to Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba, who was assassinated in 1961, unfolds with mournful intonations and fluid rhythmic freedom. Iyer’s darkly bluesy comping provides a majestic backdrop for Smith’s piercingly emotive melodies. In turn, Iyer’s ‘Kite’, written for the late Palestinian writer and poet Rafael Alareer, highlights the duo’s remarkable synergy in a piece that is both plaintive and luminous. Here, Smith’s trumpet emits bouts of light. Iyer and Smith follow a more contemplative philosophy weaving deep lyrical contours with a sense of spontaneity. They prove that there’s no need to be bound by rules. They simply need their freedom.

Filipe Freitas, Jazz Trail

Like its predecessor, ‘Defiant Life’ mainly consists of co-written pieces, with Iyer and Smith each contributing one of their own. Smith’s, with a sparse notated score in the album booklet, is ‘Floating River Requiem (for Patrice Lumumba),’ referring to the Congolese Prime Minister killed in a CIA-assisted coup in 1961. Iyer’s is ‘Kite (for Refaat Alareer),’ dedicated to the late Palestinian writer in the title and more broadly, one can surmise, to Gaza’s people. Words often fail us in times like these, but to paraphrase John McLaughlin, it’s music that speaks here, and ‘Kite’ does so eloquently, with Iyer’s Rhodes conjuring eerie harmonies and keeping a steady, unobtrusive rhythm as Smith’s trumpet sings to those in need of strength and solace.

David R. Adler, Jazz Times

As the title suggests, this is a work inspired a struggle and challenge, despair at the state of the world and belief in humankind’s capacity for redemption. As they have shown when both leading their own groups and working together, Wadada Leo Smith and Vijay Iyer are able to lend to such themes the necessary emotional depth as well as musical invention. The soundscape on ‘Sumud’ makes the point in no uncertain terms. Trailing electronic hiss, like the flicker of  a faulty generator, unsettles yet somehow soothes while Smith’s  muted trumpet creates vaporous phrases, some long held, some spiraled downwards with mild force supported by Iyer’s acoustic and electric  tremolos, which slowly and purposefully build to a measured yet powerful conclusion. If the net result is a deeply affecting lament, then ‘Floating River Requiem (For Patrice Lumumba)’ is heart stopping for the understated gospel implications of Iyer’s chords and the wry blues of Smith’s melodies, tracing a line from Armstrong to Eldridge to Cherry. […] Elsewhere digital effects are almost like a distant purr of cellos, and when the brass phrases fragment against the faintest of loops or the gentle hammering of a single icy note on the keyboard the result is intense. Disciplined, solemn music by two masters of communication that provides a serious response to serious issues.

Kevin Le Gendre, Jazzwise (Editor’s choice)

Trotz ist keine politische Haltung, aber ein gute Voraussetzung für hartnäckigen Widerstandsgeist. Das Bekenntnis zu einem ‘Defiant Life’, einem trotzigen Leben, wie es der Pianist Vijay Iyer und der Trompeter Wadada Leo Smith ablegen, wird von Ereignissen genährt,  die man ihrer Musik allein nicht anhört. Doch der Stolz, die Würde und die Unbeugsamkeit, die sie in sechs Stücken entfalten, passen zu den Widmungen der beiden einzigen Kompositionen. Smiths ‘Floating River Requiem’ gilt dem 1961 ermordeten kongolesischen Ministerpräsidenten Patrice Lumumba, Iyers ‘Kite’ dem 2023 in Gaza durch israelische Bomben zu Tode gekommenen palästinensischen Dichter Refaat Alarer. Auch sie sind weitgehend improvisiert und leben von jener brüchigen Schönheit, die schon das Vorgängeralbum ‘A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke’ ausmachte.

Gregor Dotzauer, Tagesspiegel

Musicisti di enorme talento, sviluppato in decine e decine di registrazioni, tra cui non pochi capolavori (a partire da quel ‘Divine Love’ del 1979 di Smith, che Iyer definisce ‘una delle più grandi opere registrate di tutti i tempi’), i due sviluppano un lavoro in continua evoluzione, come se fra loro avessero solo concordato le grandi linee e il presente ‘doloroso’ apparisse in continuazione durante le sessioni a dettare il percorso definitivo. Ne nasce un senso di meraviglia che accompagna l’ascoltatore, che lo pungola tra i dubbi e le illusioni di ‘Elegy: The Pilgrimage’ oppure lo opprime nel lucore sinistro di ‘Sumud’ oppure ancora lo prende per mano nell’avvilimento della magnifica conclusione di ‘Procession: Defiant Life’. Perché oggi è sempre più indispensabile vivere ogni giorno una ‘vita ribelle’.

Raffaello Carabini, Spettakolo

A German music magazine on the album Just by Billy Hart with Ethan Iverson, Mark Turner and Ben Street

Hart ist das unaufdringliche Epizentrum dieser Einspielung, die vor allem von Mark Turners sanften Linien auf dem Tenorsaxofon und Ethan Iversons vergnügten Akzenten auf den Tasten getragen wird. […] Hier geht es eher um eine zeitlose Feierlichkeit, deren spirituelle Connections tief ins Außermusikalische reichen. ‘Just’ wirkt wie ein Fenster, das nicht erst geöffnet zu werden braucht, um uns bereits einen Ausblick in ferne Dimensionen zu gewähren.

Wolf Kampmann, Eclipsed

A German reviewer on the album Lullaby by Mathias Eick

Die zwei letzten ECM-Releases unter Eicks eigenem Namen erschufen melancholische Klangwelten im Grenzbereich zwischen Jazz und Folk (bzw. wie althergekommene Volksweisen wirkenden Melodien) mit größeren Ensembles, bei denen jedes Instrument die innig empfundenen weichen Melodielinien mit- und forttrug. Die Neuerscheinung ‘Lullaby’ zeichnet statt großer, weiter Klanglandschaften nun mit neuer Quartettbesetzung eher filigrane Linien, die sich mitunter wie in einem lebhaften Dialog durchkreuzen. Der musikalische Austausch ist zuweilen quirlig und reich bewegt, auch wenn Eick weiterhin weitgespannte Melodien auf der Trompete zu singen versteht. Am deutlichsten greifbar wird die neue Qualität von Eicks neugefundenem Stil am Spiel des Drummers Hans Hulbækmo, der mit feinnervigen Beckenschlägen und unregelmäßig gesetzten Akzenten ins kammermusikalische Geflecht aus dem Hintergrund heraus wichtige Impulse setzt, wenn sich im Zusammenspiel der anderen Räume öffnen. Das gelingt großartig […] Als Gegengewicht zu seinen weiterhin eher versonnenen, wenn auch nicht so folkig-eingängig daherkommenden melodischen Linien hat sich Mathias Eick den Pianisten Kristjan Randalu ins Quartett geholt. Randalu sucht in seinen improvisatorischen Soloausflügen die unerwarteten Wendungen, bricht harmonische Klarheit auf, setzt in diesem intensiven kammermusikalischen Jazz farbkräftige Kontrapunkte in der musikalischen Textur.

Tobias Pfleger, Fairaudio

The vinyl-reissue of Paul Bley’s Open, To Love within the Luminessence-series is reviewed in a French monthly

Ascèse méditatve, recours frequent à l’allusion voire au non-dit, cette quasi-hésitation traduit moins le désemparement technique qu’une volonté d’improvisation pure et débarrassée des stéréotypes, sans qu’on sache trop s’il remonte au plain-chant medieval ou s’il  s’aventure dans le future du jazz, utilisant une vaste palette technique jusqu’ à mettre la main dans le piano. Cette musique, où chaque note prend une valeur immense et où le silence compte autant que son contraire, n’a rien perdu de sa puissance ni de son mystère.

Yazid Kouloughli, Jazz Magazine