“Music is my life and life is my music; they are both intertwined, enriching the other.“- Roberto Fonseca
Roberto Fonseca - Akokan
The world knows well the incomparable musical resources cultivated and harbored in Cuba. But with the release of Akokan, many jazz and Latin music lovers will receive enlightenment on one of the most distinctive contemporary artists to emerge from that vibrant creative community.
Roberto Fonseca has already visited the United States on several occasions, as pianist with the Buena Vista Social Club™ and the Grammy-winning group’s legendary lead singer, the late Ibrahim Ferrer. Now, recording with the quartet he has led for the past dozen years, he asserts his own voice as a pianist, composer and facilitator of emotionally deep, intellectually stimulating performance. Continue reading →
“One of the most original and accomplished young pianists in years.” — Village Voice
Vijay Iyer Trio, Historicity
Vijay Iyer Trio | Historicity [ACT Music + Vision, 2009]
ACT Music + Vision presents the new Vijay Iyer Trio album Historicity, out across Europe in late August-early September, and in the U.S. on October 13. Jazzwise (UK) praises “a particular resonance in the music,” and Concerto (Austria) gives its highest rating of five stars.
* Twice voted the #1 Rising Star Jazz Artist and Rising Star Composer in DownBeat’s International Critics’ Poll, Vijay Iyer is a largely self-taught creative musician grounded in the American jazz lexicon and drawing from a range of Western and non-Western traditions.
* His widely acclaimed recordings on innovative labels like Pi Recordings, Sunnyside, and Savoy Jazz include Panoptic Modes (2001), Blood Sutra (2003), Reimagining (2005), Tragicomic (2008), Your Life Flashes (2002), Simulated Progress (2005), Door (2008), Raw Materials (2006), and many more.
* Historicity is informed by the constant transformative relationship between past and present. “It’s just a condition of being alive,” Iyer says. “We’re always shaped by history, even as we reach into the future.”
Imagine a pianist with Thelonious Monk’s angularity, Cecil Taylor’s force, and Andrew Hill’s genius, coupled with a profound compositional mind that extends, elevates, and elaborates on the traditions of jazz, world, and Indian music, and you ll get Vijay Iyer, the most critically acclaimed improvisationally oriented artist of this young century. Named the # 1 Rising Star Jazz Artist of the Year and the # 1 Rising Star Composer of the Year in Down Beat magazine s 2006 and 2007 International Critics Poll, this sensational South Asian/American pianist/composer/author/educator has performed and recorded with an impressive roster of stars, from Steve Coleman and John Zorn, to poet Amiri Baraka and the rap duo dead prez, and has presented a number of astonishing CDs as a leader and co-leader.
Iyer s music mirrors the complex political, economic, religious and social challenges in today s world, which results in a kind of quantum jazz: a poly-tempoed approach, where two listeners can hear two different time signatures at the same point in a composition. The Coltrane-coded The Weight of Things and Becoming open and close the CD.
Swinging, reflective and melodic, this album is certainly a first laudable effort. “In addition to becoming a very fine pianist, Ms. Gagné is also developing into a quite a composer” – Kenny Barron
A native of Quebec, Canada, jazz pianist Chantale Gagné began studying music at the age of 8. For more than 7 years, the organ was her primary instrument. At 15 however, the piano became Chantale’s true passion.
In 2005, Chantale met famous pianist Kenny Barron and although she studied with him for a short period of time, this encounter proved to be so inspiring to Chantale both as a pianist and composer that she realised jazz had become her deepest calling. – CDBaby.com
“Modern day piano hero Matthew Shipp adds to his voluminous discography with this curiously interesting 2008 date, that at times, sketches out (less physical) parallels to latter day Trane and Cecil Taylor’s horns-based ensembles. Yet it’s not all about flexing muscle and relentlessly soaring into the heavens as the quartet mixes the brew rather jubilantly amid quieter moments and free-form motifs.
On “Cosmic Suite Part Four,” the musicians whirl through a medium tempo shuffle bop, heightened by Carter’s animated sax lines. And of course Shipp remains a catalyst throughout by pushing and pulling the variable metrics. Moreover, drummer Whit Dickey stretches out on “Cosmic Suite Part Eight,” whereas Carter reenters the scene with a reprisal that could be mistaken for a full-fledged aerial assault.
theurbanflux.wordpress.com 