Florian Ross -][- MECHANISM [Pirouet]

Tags

European Jazz, Florian Ross, Piano

Florian Ross - Mechanism (Pirouet, 2010)

Florian Ross -][- MECHANISM – [Pirouet Records, 2010]

Florian Ross is not just a pianist; he is also a composer and a shaper of sounds. As such he has made a name for himself throughout Europe over the last decade. His creativity and virtuosity has earned Ross, who was born in Pforzheim, Germany in 1972, numerous honors, including first prize at the Danish Radio Big Band’s Thad Jones competition, and in 2006 he received the WDR’s (West German Radio) jazz prize for composition. Germany’s Goethe Institute sent him as exemplary cultural export to Asia, South Africa, and Central America. And he teaches at renowned music conservatories in six German cities.

Florian Ross is a masterful arranger, as he has a deep understanding of how to combine the various instruments into unusually sophisticated voicings. Whether for the Vancouver Jazz Orchestra, the BMI Jazz Orchestra, or the Metropole Orkest, when it is about transforming large bodies of sound into lean polychromatic music, then Florian Ross is the one to call.

This is his first CD as solo pianist and his first recording on Pirouet Records.

While you’re here, check out previous recordings by pianist and shaper of sounds Florian Ross …

..:: Source: Pirouet Records | Two for The Show ::..

New Releases [Jazz] … for the week of 8/30/2010

Tags

Chucho Valdes, Danilo Pérez, Jazz, Kirk Whalum, New Releases, Piano, Saxophone, Vijay Iyer

Greeting’s jazz enthusiasts, it’s great to be back this week with the stunning new project “Solo” by modern jazz pianist Vijay Iyer as our featured “Album of the Week.”

As always, there’s another intricate canvas of what’s -cool – and maybe not so -cool- from a optimistic perspective we don’t usually find in the diet of the chromatic pop music culture. The origin of new music featured each week encompasses various branches of jazz, which exudes a wealth of complex and distinctive styles, insinuating textures, immaculate melodies, and relentless rhythms exalted by the definitive voices of creative artists serves up sounds to quench our immutable thirst for quality music.

Featured Album of the Week

Vijay Iyer - Solo (ACT Music, 2010)

Vijay Iyer -][- Solo – [ACT Music, 2010]

ACT Music presents Vijay’s most personal statement yet: a kaleidoscopic solo piano album, his first, presents bold originals alongside works by Ellington and Monk, as well as a reverent take on Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature.” Release date: August 31, 2010. —ACT Music

“Bursting with both emotion and intelligence, this album is a dispatch from the vibrant forefront of jazz”
—The Utne Reader

“even more compelling than its predecessor… Iyer dives deep to find new twists and turns and harmonic surprises; all of them, however radical, sounding ineffably right, all of them glistening with a sense of revealed mystery… magic, from start to finish.” —All About Jazz

2010 MUSICIAN OF THE YEAR – Jazz Journalists Association Annual Jazz Awards

Do you want more music by progressive jazz pianist Vijay Iyer then go here: http://www.vijay-iyer.com/albums.html for more details.

Bill Charlap & Renee Rosnes -||- Double Portrait [Blue Note Records]

Tags

Bill Charlap, Jazz, Piano, Renee Rosnes

Bill Charlap and Renee Rosnes - Double Portrait

Bill Charlap & Renee Rosnes -||- Double Portrait [Blue Note Records, 2010]

Bill Charlap and Renee Rosnes, two of the premiere pianists in Jazz, and also husband and wife, have joined forces to record their first collaborative album, Double Portrait. The album is a sparkling set of four-hand piano duets that traverses many of the couple’s musical touchstones including the great jazz composers (Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson), Great American Songbook composers (George & Ira Gershwin, Howard Dietz & Arthur Schwartz), and one of Rosnes’ own striking original compositions.

The depth of musical experience shared between Charlap and Rosnes is truly staggering. Charlap is a two-time Grammy Award nominee and the son of two renowned musicians (Broadway composer Moose Charlap and pop singer Sandy Stewart) who has performed with icons such as Tony Bennett, Phil Woods and Gerry Mulligan, and served as the musical director of The Blue Note 7. The Canadian-born Rosnes is a four-time Juno Award winner who has collaborated with legends the likes of Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson and J.J. Johnson, and has also been the pianist and contributing composer in the dynamic SFJAZZ Collective. It’s a happy musical marriage that both proclaim is “a natural evolution of our partnership and love for each other.”

..:: Source: Amazon.com ::..

The Jazz Journalist Association’s 2010 Musician Of The Year, Pianist/Composer VIJAY IYER

Tags

Jazz, Piano, Vijay Iyer

The Jazz Journalist Association’s 2010 Musician Of The Year, Pianist/Composer VIJAY IYER Releases Solo, His First Solo Piano Album & His Second Release For ACT Music, On August 31, 2010

Follow-Up to His Acclaimed Trio Album, Historicity Features Five Original Compositions
Alongside Thelonious Monk & Duke Ellington Repertory And Covers of Steve Coleman & Michael Jackson.

Vijay Iyer - Low Rez

In the liner notes to Solo, composer-pianist Vijay Iyer notes that making music alone can allow the performer an outside view of his creative process and of the energies that determine its course. Solo is the document of Iyer’s continuing dialogue with history, both his own and that of the music to which he has dedicated his life; it encapsulates both his career and his distinctive approach to his instrument.

In many ways, Vijay Iyer’s career can be seen as a path toward Solo. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Iyer performed and recorded extensively with some of the leading lights of creative music, including M-Base pioneer Steve Coleman, poet/activist Amiri Baraka, and AACM luminaries Wadada Leo Smith and Roscoe Mitchell. More recently he has received justified plaudits for his award-winning trio with Marcus Gilmore and Stephan Crump (who collectively made Historicity the critics’ #1 jazz album of 2009), his innovations with altoist Rudresh Mahanthappa and with the collective Fieldwork, and his excellent forays with Mike Ladd, Talvin Singh, Karsh Kale, DJ Spooky, ETHEL, Burnt Sugar, and many others. And above all, Iyer is rooted in the music of composer-pianists Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Andrew Hill; his unique playing style and intricate compositions owe much to the influence of these masters.

Celebrated Pianist Geri Allen To Debut Ambitious and Diverse Recordings on Motéma

Tags

African American, Geri Allen, Jazz, Piano

Mote'ma Music

Celebrated Pianist Geri Allen
To Debut Ambitious and Diverse Recordings on Motéma

Flying Toward The Sound – (Available March 30th)
Geri Allen & Timeline – Live – (Available June 8th)

Geri Allen - Flying Toward the Sound

It is a sign not only of greatness but vitality when artists repeatedly challenge themselves and their listeners through works that both affirm and expand the legacies of their art form. Geri Allen meets this standard. For all that she has achieved as a composer, performer, and scholar, her two debut releases for Motéma Music–Flying Toward The Sound and Geri Allen & Timeline – Live–vividly document her boundless curiosity, innovation, and commitment to growth and diversity in every aspect of her artistry.

Flying Toward The Sound, (in stores and online March 30) is a monumental addition to the solo piano canon. Conceptually ambitious, virtuosic in its execution and spiritual in its essence, this deeply moving recording reveals Allen in visionary communion with two fine Fazioli pianofortes. As distinguished jazz scholar and author, Farah Jasmine Griffith explains in her liner notes: “Geri Allen conceived of this project in relation to three modern jazz pianists in whom she finds inspiration: Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock. Allen does not play their music; instead she plays toward it, around it, through it to her own unique voicing… resulting in a flight of light and sound.” Ms. Allen comments that, “These three pianists are foundational in terms of the modern piano. They informed my choices in abstract ways for this suite. It’s not like playing transcriptions; it’s more about refracting the admiration and love I have for them through my own muse, and letting the music reflect the ways they’ve influenced me through the years.”

Hiromi Uehara | Place To Be

Tags

Hiromi, Jazz, Keyboards, Piano, Stanley Clarke

.:: Hiromi Chronicles Her World Travels On – Her First Solo Piano Recording ::.

Hiromi Uehara | Place To Be – [Telarc Jazz, 2010] | Release Date: 26 Jan 2010

Hiromi's first solo piano recording!

If all the world is indeed a stage, pianist-composer Hiromi Uehara has played on just about every corner of it. Since the beginning of the decade, she has supported her impressive body of studio work with an ambitious tour schedule that has electrified audiences throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia and elsewhere with performances that have pushed the limits of piano jazz to new frontiers of compositional and technical skills.

Each stop on her journey – be it the world-class metropolis, the quiet college town or something in between – has introduced her to a new and singular vibe that has left an indelible impression on her creative sensibilities. Indeed, she has come away from every new place with just as much as she has brought to it, and perhaps even more.

Hiromi chronicles just a few of the many places and moments where she has experienced the almost mystical exchange between performer and audience on Place To Be (CD-83695), her new CD on Telarc International, a division of Concord Music Group. The album is her first solo piano recording.

“I really wanted the record to be a kind of travel journal,” she says. “I’ve traveled so much in the last few years that I’ve started to wonder exactly where is the place that I’m supposed to be. Traveling takes so much out of you. It can be exhausting. But as soon as I go on the stage and I see people who are very happy because of what I’m doing, it just erases all of the struggles and the craziness that can come with all the traveling, and it really fulfills me.”