#Chamber Jazz

[haveyouheardthisband]

[iamlisteningto]

Dawn Richard And Spencer Zahn’s Pigments

[haveyoulistenedtothisalbum-poll]

Tracklist:

Baghon Main • Diya Hai • Inayaat • Last Night • Mohabbat • Saans Lo • Suroor

Spotify ♪ Bandcamp ♪ YouTube

[burlveneer-music]

Rain Sultanov's new album Forgiveness has unusual instrumentation: saxophone, organ, cello. You would be forgiven (heh) for thinking it's by John Surman.

Composer, Saxophone: Rain Sultanov Organ: Vladimir Nesterenko Cello: Aleksey Miltikh

[vexx-ation]

365 Albums in 365 Days: 1/365

Date: Monday January 1st

Album: Penguin Cafe Orchestra

Artist: Penguin Cafe Orchestra

Released: 1981

Genre: Chamber Jazz

Review: Starting off this year with some easy listening— PCO has consistent and lush instrumentals that make it ideal BG music for drawing or just chilling. Despite the ostensibly western aspects of the band, each song incorporates international rhythm patterns and musical concepts, most notably the African drumming styles peppered throughout. The band never seems to lose its indoor voice, keeping a soft, smooth sound in every song. Energy builds throughout, but the repetitive nature of the songs and building harmonies mean that the music never quite barges into the spotlight. Though complex, it’s never intrusive, inviting anyone deeper who wants to be overtaken by the sound without being very in your face. Fades and pads keep the mystery, but despite this the album never loses momentum. It’s great meditating music.

Favorite Track: Walk, Don’t Run

[theparanoid]

Bark Psychosis - Hex

(1994 album)

Youtube Playlist | Bandcamp | Spotify

[Post-Rock, Ambient, Jazz-Rock, Slowcore, Chamber Jazz]

[dustedmagazine]

Reverso — Shooting Star-Étoile Filante (self-released)

On previous recordings, Reverso has explored the music of French composers Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Ravel, linchpins of the early 20th century classical repertoire. Here, the trio of trombonist Ryan Keberle, pianist Frank Woeste, and cellist Vincent Courtois are inspired by another French composer, Lili Boulanger (1893-1918), the short-lived but prodigiously talented artist who was the first female to win the Prix de Rome. Such was the grief of her sister Nadia that she gave up her own promising composition career, devoting herself to pedagogy, a teacher to many Europeans and a raft of American expats. Reverso titles the recording Shooting Star as an acknowledgement of Lili’s extraordinary gifts. While the composer would likely have heard little jazz, her work serves as an excellent starting point for the original tunes written in response to it by Reverso. One wonders about balance issues a trio with this complement might encounter, but it never seems to be an issue, with Reverso careful to make every note heard.

“La Muse '' opens the album with liquid ostinatos from Woeste and legato melodies traded between Keberly and Courtois. “Obstination '' has a syncopated Iberian cast that recalls the craze for Spanish traditional music among the Impressionists. The solos use distinct registers, with Courtois flying high and Keberle playing resonant pedal tones. Woeste’s solo is a modal post-bop excursion that celebrates the off-kilter rhythms of the piece. Likewise, “Resilience” explores rhythmic variety, with alternations between quick polyrhythms and solos that vary it. A slow tune serves as an overarching motif. There is a bridge where small, repetitive segments take over before a return to the opening material, Keberle playing the main tune in octaves with Courtois.

The “Nocturne” is a venerable form, usually for solo piano. Reverso captures the mood with sculpted delicacy. A repeated tenor note in the piano underscores a chromatic bass-line alongside melancholy chords, as well as corruscating melodies between trombone and cello. Woeste brings out a filigreed soprano register melody in the bridge before returning to harmonies from the opening. Doubling of the melody by Keberle and Courtois gives way to another varied duet between them, culminating in a high trombone cry and a quick outro of repeated passagework. “Ma Jolie” has a bluesy trombone solo that is repeated with the cello playing liberal slides. The central section is led by Woeste, playing a zesty bit of cabaret music. Keberly returns to his solo while Courtois plays a pizzicato bass-line. The piano drops in with tasty harmonic fills. The quick cabaret music returns, and the piano and cello provide a sinuous take on the main tune to close.

“En Avant” deftly channels the texture and melodic approach of Impressionism, a style that, while not encompassing, appeared in Lili’s music. Courtois’s solo features Eastern sliding tone. Gamelan and other non-Western artists fascinated French musicians, notably Debussy, at the 1889 Paris Exhibition, and they continued to incorporate its signatures for decades. Keberle’s solo, on the other hand, is a more raucous affair, and Woeste plays dexterous small cells and a repeated stepwise progression. The close returns to referencing Impressionism and ends with halting utterances.

“Requiem” is a touching memento mori for Lili, with a haunting minor key melody that is deftly varied in its doublings. “Shine” too has a melancholy cast. However, the somber mood doesn’t prevail. “Lili’s Blues” imagines an introduction of Lili to “Le Jazz Hot,” with a plethora of glissandos and rollicking swing.

The recording closes with “Dernier Moteur” (“The Final Action”) in which bucolic riffs and mysterious, angular melodies are played by Woeste, Courtois adds a sumptuous solo, and Keberly provides countermelodies with slow glissandos that distress the crispness of the rest of the proceedings. A denouement is completed surprisingly, with the piano simply stopping to conclude the piece.

Creating “new standards” of early twentieth century music would be a far less imaginative choice than the approach taken on Shooting Star, where Lili Boulanger’s biography is as much an inspiration as her music. Reverso inhabits a musical space both of homage and innovation.

Christian Carey

[mywifeleftme]

345: Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld // Never Were the Way She Was

Never Were the Way She Was Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld 2015, Constellation (Bandcamp)

My prevailing memory of seeing Sarah Neufeld and Colin Stetson’s duo performance in a small room at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa was the way they spent much of the performance with their eyes locked on one another. When violinist Neufeld became lost in her own playing and arched backward, in the same motion Stetson would lean forward over his hulking, steampunk bass saxophone, his legs braced wide. It was as though the two of them were bound at the neck by a long, invisible leather strap. In the most intense passages, they would square off barely a foot apart, like two rams, the veins in Stetson’s sweaty neck and forehead standing out, Neufeld’s angled forearm a blur of precision cuts. Despite also seeing Stetson’s SORROW, an arrangement of Gorecki’s 3rd Symphony for a 12-piece band, during the same festival, it was the intimate physicality of the duo show with Neufeld that had the bigger impact on me.

While Stetson has frequently performed in larger combos (as has Neufeld with Arcade Fire, for that matter), in solo and duo performances his uniqueness as a player is more legible. On Never Were the Way She Was, he uses his uncanny circular breathing technique to create ogrish drones (“With the Dark Hug of Time”), loop-like melodic phrases (“The Sun Roars Into View”), and even to emulate broken techno beats (“The Rest of Us”). Stetson is a pretty physically jacked guy, and when you see him do this stuff in person it’s a bit like watching a blacksmith going at his forge—on record it can be easy for an inattentive listener to miss the exertions required to produce these sounds. But when you start tuning in to the fact all of this groaning cacophony is produced by one man’s laboured lungs, its rawness and minor imprecisions become captivating.

Neufeld takes centre stage on the more somber, post-rocky tunes like the title track, her violin weeping rust as she overlooks a grey bay, Stetson contributing various fog horns and stomach upset. Now and again she wordlessly sings, but it’s always recorded distantly, like a memory of some ever-present sorrow you refuse to allow to surface. On “In the Vespers,” she sketches out a tricky rhythm that Stetson eventually echoes on a tenor sax, the pair running through an odd-time workout that would sound like prog were in not for the chilly clarity of her phrasing, the way the energy decays once again into remorse.

The pair’s previous collaboration was a 2013 film score (Blue Caprice), and the record is of a piece with the influential work Stetson has subsequently done as a soundtrack composer (notably Ari Aster’s Hereditary). As with fellow Aster collaborator the Haxan Cloak, Stetson’s work has helped to define the sound of contemporary unease. If you’ve watched a recent horror movie or psychological thriller, the palette of Never Were the Way She Was will already be familiar—but here the pieces aren’t tied to any preconceived scenario, and the interplay between the two musicians gives it a dynamism and complete-in-itself mood all its own.

345/365

[asmallexperiment]

Just felt like a folky-jazz kind of night. It's so spare that I'm amazed that the three of them can make it beautiful, as well, but it is definitely that.

[luuurien]

Jonah Yano - Portrait of a Dog

(Jazz Pop, Neo-Soul, Singer/Songwriter)

Padded by BADBADNOTGOOD’s rich and warm jazz stylings, Portrait of a Dog captures multiple kinds of grief in one marvelous hour, Jonah Yano’s rush to immortalize family history and heal from heartbreak allowing for gentle folk meditations and heavier jazz pop jams to hold equal weight.

☆☆☆☆

Named after a painting his ex-partner made, Portrait of a Dog is in a constant rush to catalog as much of Jonah Yano’s memory as possible. It’s an album woven around two different kinds of grief that don’t always make their presence clear, heartbreak from both the lingering hurt of a past relationship and watching his grandparents’ memory fade the foundation of everything Yano creates, Portrait of a Dog’s rich neo-soul arrangements padding for the toughest topic matter he’s breached yet. Across its 12 songs and 50 minute runtime, Yano is able to expel all his emotions without letting the music drag behind him, Toronto jazz heavyweights BADBADNOTGOOD at the production helm to give Yano’s stories compositional strength and a slight dreaminess for his abstracted, cloudy songwriting to bounce off, Portrait of a Dog grounded by intense emotions Yano allows to drift about the air. For how harrowing his inspirations are, Yano and BBNG keep the compositions fluffy and warm, restrained when the focus is on Yano’s voice and blooming into the BBNG’s ecstatic soul jazz when all his thoughts have been laid out, bringing balance to the album Yano uses to keep himself stable while recounting the waves of emotion that came over him in the aftermath of visiting his grandparents and working through a breakup at once. Loss permeates all of Portrait of a Dog, but Yano is set on capturing those bruises at their most tender, unafraid to look his grandparents' health in the eye and hold onto his memories of them along the way, his reserved performances situating him near heartbreak without forcing him to sing of it outright. Portrait of a Dog shrouds its stinging core in heavenly neo-soul and inky songwriting, but every emotion is deeply felt through the beautiful arrangements and gentle pace. BADBADNOTGOOD’s production is Portrait of a Dog’s beating heart, but rather than the mystical chamber jazz of their 2021 release Talk Memory, they return closer to the sound of IV tracks like In Your Eyes and Cashmere and their dusty soul jazz, straightforward composition roadmaps where the verse-chorus-verse structure is accentuated with instrumentation that wanders around those boundaries. In the places where Yano’s voice drops away, the band are able to express spiraling grief in ways his words cannot: Leland Whitty’s rich tenor sax tone makes for a wonderfully melancholic lead voice in the ending section of Haven’t Haven’t, and closing track The Ordinary Is Ordinary Because It Ordinarily Repeats sounds like it could have been an outtake from Talk Memory as its stumbling percussion and glowing improvisational work from Whitty ends Portrait of a Dog without Yano’s voice at all, him and BBNG instead choosing to let the album drift away into tender soul jazz that doesn’t seek to act as a definitive end point for Yano’s story - he’s continuing to process the massive holes in his familial history and how much he’s able to preserve of it, and Portrait of a Dog is just one departure point into the next chapter of Yano’s life and artistry. It’s those imperfections and the album’s refusal to do everything in one go that the album uses as an emotional engine: early highlight Always presses on its 3/4 waltz feel with Yano’s sharp vocal delivery and regal string arrangements from Eliza Niemi for a song that’s both heavenly on the ears and tense on the heart; The Speed of Sound! cuts out much of the thick instrumentation to close out the A side of the album with trickling, abstracted neo-soul perfectly matched to the story Yano is telling. The music matches Yano's tangled emotions while simultaneously helping to bring clarity to him, and the resulting songs work perfectly to bring you close to his heart. Yano’s diaristic, often indirect songwriting fortifies the two separate losses he worked through while writing them, but his performances and specific lyrical moments still pierce right through the center of his soul. The title track is one of the few songs here solely focused on his breakup, the glowing painting that adorns the album cover one of the few memories he allows himself to keep of his last relationship  (“Well, there's your portrait of a dog / And the apartment is a mess / So why can't I remember you?”), Yano’s smoothly fingerpicked guitar and BBNG’s smooth backing instrumentation blooming a perfect slice of moody, introspective jazz pop. By knowing all the different dynamics he’s looking to parse through with Portrait of a Dog, Yano’s songwriting is able to sprawl without becoming emotionally distant: his cover of Vashti Bunyan’s Glow Worms is dark and brooding, Bunyan’s sentimental lyrics turned so slightly sour by the sorrow of the album’s core themes, the song clever situated between the heartbreak of watching his grandparents’ health decline he sings of in So Sweet (“We'll all sit down to eat / Remember where you sit this time / You're opposite of me”) and the Sea Oleena-assisted ethereality of Quietly, Entirely is absolutely brilliant, Oleena’s glistening ambient stylings melting beautifully into the jazzy inflections of BBNG’s arrangements and Yano’s gentle singing. Though Portrait of a Dog's lush soul compositions and Yano’s dreamy songwriting may paint the album as a plush, cloudy listen, it’s impossible to hear a song like Song About the Family House or Haven’t Haven’t and not feel Yano’s immediate desire to hold onto as much of his history as he can even as his family disappears right in front of him, his cryptic songwriting keeping his pain from flowing over and creating a measured but passionate listen. Portrait of a Dog's shaggy, extensive examination of all the pain Yano has recently crossed paths with is highly dynamic and valiant in its approach to heartbreak, delicate as it tries to both collect as many memories as it can without pushing Yano past his emotional limits. Through its rich soul jazz arrangements and fantastic group of performers, the album creates space for Yano to traverse the depths of his different relationships and what it’s like to both leave them and watch them start to disappear, Portrait of a Dog unafraid to mix multiple griefs into a singular thesis for Yano. As he archives his family history and attempts to recount romantic loss at the same time, Portrait of a Dog becomes an elegant and poignant exploration of how different kinds of pain subsume into each other; how part of healing from heartbreak is learning where each individual part of that sorrow lies and making an effort to understand and grow from all of them. Yano’s sentimental neo-soul couldn’t have been a more perfect place for him to do exactly that.

[haveyouheardthisband]

[iamlisteningto]

Masayoshi Fujita’s Migratory

[haveyoulistenedtothisalbum-poll]

Tracklist:

Strange Feelin' • Buzzin' Fly • Love From Room 109 At The Islander (On Pacific Coast Highway) • Dream Letter • Gypsy Woman • Sing A Song For You

Spotify ♪ YouTube

[burlveneer-music]

Zach Barocas New Freedom Sound - Two Freedoms - minimalist composition, chamber jazz instrumentation (with voices), exuberant energy

Drummer Zach Barocas (Jawbox, BELLS≥, The Up On In, et al.) turns his compositional ear to ensemble collaboration and improvisation. Fourteenth Freedom: Zach Barocas: drum kit, percussion, voices Mark Cisneros: tenor saxophone, cornet Erica Kane: viola Janet Morgan: voices J. Robbins: piano Gordon Withers: cello Lenny Young: oboe, bass recorder, tenor recorder Twelfth Freedom: Zach Barocas: drum kit, percussion, voices Mark Cisneros: stritch, flute, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet Amy Domingues: viol da gamba Janet Morgan: voices J. Robbins: piano Gordon Withers: cello Lenny Young: oboe, English horn Zach Barocas plays Ludwig Drums Compositions by Zach Barocas Cover painting, "Protest Song," by Lyle Kissack Layout by Zach Barocas

[zhanteimi]

mòs ensemble – Behind the Marble

mòs ensemble – Behind the Marble

Belgium / Kosovo / Italy, 2022, chamber folk / chamber jazz / indie folk Like an acoustic, jazzier Moulettes, with three female lead vocalists weaving their charming harmonies among the stalking clarinets and saxophones, with some phantastical guitar work by newcomer Denayer. This album is an easy, rewarding listen.

[sonmelier]

Avant-cuvée 2024 : 4/8

Oyez, oh yeah, c'est le retour des avant-cuvées ! On reprend les choses là où on les avait laissées à la fin du mois de mai. Ce quatrième article de la série a lui aussi pour objet de mettre en lumière quelques unes des œuvres les plus marquantes de l'année en cours. Une sélection de rentrée un peu plus généreuse cette fois-ci, avec non pas 6 mais 8 disques (un peu de rab pour affronter la reprise !).

Comme d'habitude, les horizons sont divers (tant dans le style que dans la géographie), mais ils convergent tous vers une même évidence : la capacité universelle de la musique à dialoguer avec l'âme humaine et à y laisser une empreinte durable.

Actress | Statik

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Angleterre | Smalltown Supersound | 48 minutes | 11 morceaux

Changement de label pour Darren Cunningham, dont le dixième album débarque chez les osloïtes de Smalltown Supersound. Un mariage auquel nous n’avions pas pensé, mais qui tombe pourtant sous le sens. Cette maison norvégienne est un acteur de tout premier plan dans les nouvelles formes de jazz et de musique électronique et on a justement affaire ici à un des projets electro les plus captivants et novateurs des quinze dernières années. Les influences jazz qui étaient à l’œuvre dans le fantastique LXXXVIII sont paradoxalement un peu moins à l’œuvre, mais la profondeur onirique de la musique d’Actress s’abreuve subtilement à d’autres sources tout aussi fertiles (on pense à l’univers sonore de Drexciya ou encore aux mélodies obliques de l’expérimentateur portugais Nuno Canavarro).

🎧 Cafe del Mars

Arooj Aftab | Night Reign

🇵🇰 Pakistan | Verve Records | 49 minutes | 9 morceaux

Night Reign est une toile sonore nocturne absolument somptueuse, tissée des plus beaux fils issus du jazz, du ghazal, du folk et du qawwalî. Le chant en ourdu d’Arooj Aftab est loin d’avoir épuisé son pouvoir d’envoûtement, malgré les nombreuses heures passées à écouter les magnifiques Vulture Prince et Love in Exile. Plus expérimentale et en même temps plus dynamique que jamais, sa musique explore ici des territoires imprégnés d’un romantisme mélancolique enivrant.

🎧 Aey Nehin

Bab L' Bluz | Swaken

🇲🇦 Maroc | Real World Records | 45 minutes | 11 morceaux

Fondé en 2018 à Marrakech et signé par le prestigieux label Real World, ce power quartet propose une potion musicale très personnelle, survoltée et spirituelle, mêlant traditions gnawa, rock, expérimentations psychédéliques et chaâbi. Swaken (qui signifie « possession et transcendance » en darija, dialecte marocain) est son deuxième album. Le premier (Nayda !, sorti en 2020) lui avait valu une belle reconnaissance critique, et lui avait ouvert les portes d’une longue tournée mondiale riche en enseignements. Mené par la chanteuse et joueuse de guembri Yousra Mansour, il aborde de manière intense et conquérante de nombreux thèmes politiques et sociétaux avec la volonté de faire bouger les lignes, particulièrement pour l'émancipation des femmes. De la révolte, de la transe mais aussi de la magie irriguent ce disque, à l’image des prestations live du groupe.

🎧 AmmA

Camera Obscura | Look to the East, Look to the West

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Ecosse | Merge Records | 45 minutes | 11 morceaux

On ne l’attendait plus, ce sixième album du si délectable groupe indie pop de Glasgow. En pause depuis 2015, après un Desire Lines (2013) assez décevant et suite au décès de la claviériste Carey Lander, Camera Obscura a repris son parcours discographique sur les meilleures bases. On retrouve ici tous les ingrédients qui font la magie de sa musique (mélodies délicates et entêtantes, textes qui touchent et qui font mouche, sans parler du chant magnétique de Tracyanne Campbell, le tout dans un subtil mélange de chaleur et de nostalgie, de spleen et d’énergie) mais on découvre aussi quelques pistes nouvelles (textures électroniques par ci, influences country plus marquées par là). Sans prétendre égaler les deux albums phares que sont  Let's Get Out of This Country et My Maudlin Career (mais on parle ici de deux des tous meilleurs disques d’indie pop des vingt dernières années), Look to the East, Look to the West nous offrent des retrouvailles réjouissantes avec un groupe irremplaçable dans son genre.

🎧 Liberty Print

Charli XCX | brat

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Angleterre | Atlantic | 41 minutes | 15 morceaux

Un ou une « brat », c’est littéralement un ou une sale gosse. Une jeune personne dont le manque d’éducation peut susciter chez autrui un certain degré d’hostilité. Dans une des chansons de leur premier album (en 1976), les pionniers du punk Ramones suggéraient d’ailleurs de réserver à ce type d'individu un traitement bien peu amène. Mais ça, c’était avant. Avant que ne déboule dans un tourbillon festif, déluré et touchant de sincérité, un été 2024 marqué au fer vert fluo de Charli XCX. L’artiste britannique, plus confiante et conquérante que jamais (sans pour autant avoir dissimulé ses vulnérabilités), a semble-t-il arraché des mains toutes les battes de baseball qui cherchaient à la tenir en respect. Pas tant pour les retourner contre leurs porteurs (même si elle ne se prive pas toujours de rendre quelques coups bien sentis) que pour inviter tout ce petit monde à une célébration jubilatoire. La fête est toujours plus belle quand on est désarmé. Plus de dix ans après ses débuts, et tout en conservant une esthétique audacieuse faisant penser au label hyperpop PC Music (sur lequel elle n’a jamais rien publié malgré sa collaboration artistique au long cours avec A.G. Cook), Charli XCX tient avec « BRAT » l’album frontal et extatique qui la propulse au rang de phénomène de société.

🎧 Von Dutch

Cindy Lee | Diamond Jubilee

🇨🇦 Canada | Realistik Studios | 122 minutes | 32 morceaux

Ses 32 morceaux et ses 122 minutes pourraient conférer à Diamond Jubilee une image de mastodonte tentaculaire et écrasant. Mais il suffit de lever le nez de la tracklist et d’entamer l’exploration de l’œuvre avec les oreilles pour ne ressentir que douceur et légèreté, comme en lévitation entre plusieurs époques étrangement familières qui s’entremêlent et se répondent. Profondément habité par la pop music des girls bands sixties, Patrick Flegel campe à travers son personnage drag queen Cindy Lee un groupe féminin réduit à une seule fille, rescapée mystérieuse et nostalgique plongée dans une brume d’échos lointains. Les expérimentations vénéneuses et autres assauts bruitistes entendus dans le génialissime What's Tonight to Eternity ? ne sont plus de la partie, mais il résulte de ce flot ininterrompu de chansons immédiates et accueillantes, presque dépourvues d'aspérité, un doux et troublant sentiment de vertige.

🎧 Kingdom Come

Meridian Brothers | Mi Latinoamérica sufre

🇨🇴 Colombie | Ansonia | 48 minutes | 11 morceaux

Chaque nouvel album du projet Meridian Brothers d’Eblis Álvarez s’accompagne d’une certitude absolue : l’auditeur va être plongé de manière irrésistible dans une joie bizarre et endiablée, emporté par des flots musicaux tropicalement décalés. Pour le reste, rien n’est absolument prévisible avec notre énergumène colombien, à commencer par les histoires abracadabrantesques racontées dans ses chansons. Un univers sonore unique en son genre, qui relève d’une alchimie miraculeuse entre avant-garde psychédélique et sons afro / latino-américains traditionnels (ceux de la salsa, comme sur son brillant disque précédent, ceux de la champeta et de la rumba sur le présent opus et bien sûr ceux de la cumbia, qui ont toujours irrigué l’ensemble).

🎧 Mandala

Pomme | Saisons

🇫🇷 France | Virgin | 36 minutes | 12 morceaux

Le quatrième album de Claire Pommet est un accomplissement esthétique et conceptuel captivant. Epaulée par l’artiste pluridisciplinaire Malvina (qui habille les douze chansons du disque d’orchestrations et d’arrangements absolument sublimes) ou encore par Aaron Dessner (The National) et Flavien Berger, cette lyonnaise de naissance brille de mille feux dans ce monde sonore envoûtant qu’elle a composé puis magnifiquement façonné de sa voix et par ses textes. Une ode d’une douceur infinie à la nature, au vivant qui nous entoure et aux sentiments humains.

🎧 _jun perseides