World of Jazz 530

A fantastic selection of new releases from Michael Formanek, Tim Berne & Matt Mitchell, William Parker, Thumbscrew, Lee Brouwer & Mariel Mayz, Marco Pignataro, Jussi Reijonen, Martin Fabricius and Noam Lemish. Also a couple of classic tracks from Pharaoh Sanders

PLAYLIST

• Show Intro 00:00
• Michael Formanek Quartet “Porcelain Thrones” from Other Zones (Circular File Records) 00:49
• Pharoah Sanders “Greeting to Saud (Brother McCoy Tyner)” from Elevation (Impulse!) 14:26
• Tim Berne, Matt Mitchell “Purdy” from One More, Please (Intakt) 18:57
• William Parker “Open System One” from Universal Tonality (Centering) 24:36
• Thumbscrew “Swirling Lives” from Multicolored Midnight (Cuneiform) 51:28
• Pharoah Sanders “Thembi” from Thembi (Impulse!) 1:00:00
• Leo Brouwer, Mariel Mayz “Variations on a Theme by Brouwer” from Cuban Sketches for Piano (Zoho Classix) 1:07:23
• Marco Pignarato “Moon Threads” from Chant For Our Planet (Zoho) 1:20:00
• Jussi Reijonen “Median” from Three Seconds|Kolme Toista (Challenge Records International) 1:31:51
• Martin Fabricius Trio “A Very Good Man” from New World (Berthold Records) 1:42:52
• Noam Lemish “Beethoven’s 7th Visit to Romania” from Twelve (TPR Records) 1:46:33

NOTES

Michael Formanek

Other Zones is an album of previously unreleased improvisations recorded in the studio around the same time as another recording of original music by the same group.

Michael Formanek – Double Bass
Tim Berne – Alto Saxophone
Craig Taborn – Piano
Gerald Cleaver – Drums

Pharoah Sanders

Elevation

The only studio track on the 1974 album release- recorded at and at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco, California on September 13, 1973

Pharoah Sanders – tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, shaker, vocals, bells, percussion
Joe Bonner – piano, harmonium, cow horn, wood flute, percussion, vocals
Calvin Hill – bass, vocals, tambura
Michael Carvin – drums, vocals
Lawrence Killian – conga, bell tree, vocals
Jimmy Hopps – percussion, vocals
Michael White – violin
Kenneth Nash – percussion
Sedatrius Brown – vocals

Thembi

From 1970/1971 – Sanders moved away from the long, intense compositions of his earlier albums and produced an album of shorter tracks. He and other musicians played a large variety of instruments. Sanders played tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone, balaphone, small percussion instruments, and a cow horn. Sanders’s other major collaborator, pianist and composer Lonnie Liston Smith, performs on Thembi (though this would be the last time they recorded together). Also featured are violinist Michael White, bassist Cecil McBee, and percussionists Chief Bey, Majid Shabbaz, and Nat Bettis.

Tim Berne/Matt Mitchell

Tim Berne, pioneer of New York’s legendary “downtown scene”, and his long-time duo partner Matt Mitchell on piano release the album One More, Please – an impressive and refreshing example of the art of improvisation. The two virtuoso instrumentalists have worked together for more than ten years – including in Berne’s acclaimed band Snakeoil – and over this time have developed a distinctive language and musical depth in a dynamic musical relationship. Six of the seven tracks on One More, Please are written by Berne, with all of them opening doors to endless interpretation and development. “With this duo, there’s always a further possibility and always the courage to take it on and see it through,” writes Django Bates in the liner notes, and adds: “The deconstructions, reconstructions, explorations and extrapolations of great improvisors reconfigure our brains and fine-tune our ears, as you will discover here with One More, Please.”

William Parker

William Parker’s Universal Tonality documents an epic performance which brings his titular concept to full, vibrant life. An exquisite example of this system in practice, it features a truly once-in-a-lifetime assembly of creative music luminaries and legends. Clocking in at nearly two hours and featuring six extended pieces flowing across two discs, this Universal Tonality happening took place in December 2002. Parker invited 16 musicians of various ages, cultures and musical backgrounds – to join him in an experiment of “breathing together.”

Thumbscrew

released September 30, 2022

Michael Formanek : double bass and electronics
Tomas Fujiwara : drums and vibraphone
Mary Halvorson : guitar

Recorded September 2-3, 2021 at The Bunker Studio, Brooklyn, NY

Lee Brouwer and Mariel Mayz

To know contemporary classical music is to know Leo Brouwer. An acclaimed Cuban composer, conductor, Brouwer has long been celebrated as a modern-day Mozart who has birthed an inimitable body of work. While he has composed for a variety of formats, from quartets to orchestras, Brouwer’s canon is most widely associated with the guitar. For starters, he is a terrific classical guitarist whose teachers come from impressive lineage. His teacher’s teacher’s teacher was Francisco Tárrega, widely considered “the father of classical guitar.” As the saying goes, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

But to truly know Brouwer is to also know that he has also composed exquisite works for solo piano. Enter, Mariel Mayz. She is a remarkable pianist, composer, and teacher who has performed at venerable institutions such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. She even wrote a chamber opera that premiered during New York Opera Fest. She helped to start Porto Pianofest, an annual piano festival in Porto, Portugal. Like Brouwer, she wears many hats and moves deftly among these roles.

Quite naturally, Mayz first became aware of Brouwer via his guitar compositions. Some of these impactful compositions include “El Decamerón Negro”, “Variations on a Theme of Django Reinhardt”, “Tríptico”, and the “Estudios Sencillos.” Mayz heard some of these selections performed by João Luiz, a fellow ZOHO label Artist, and was thoroughly impressed. “I came to truly experience the detailed layers, references, and unequivocal finesse of Brouwer’s sound world,” she said. In fact, she credits Luiz for suggesting that she learn Brouwer’s Diez Bocetos for solo piano. “This music was utterly idiomatic, imaginative, and brilliant,” she reflects.

Mariel Mayz’s Leo Brouwer: Cuban Sketches for Piano is a thoughtful, elegantly rendered piano solo album that features world premieres of two multi-part pieces: “Diez Bocetos” and Nuevos Bocetos para Piano. Listening to these works is surely an awakening, as you’ll come to see Brouwer in a new light. And you’ll no doubt be enveloped by Mayz’s magical virtuosity as a performer and composer on this production.

Marco Pignataro

released October 21

Marco Pignataro (soprano, alto, tenor), John Patitucci (bass), Joe Lovano (saxophone), Terri Lyne Carrington (drums) and Chico Pinheiro (guitar),  Anastassiya Petrova (piano) and Nadia Washington (vocals)

Jussi Reijonen

Finnish-born guitarist, oud player and composer Jussi Reijonen has lived in Finland, Jordan, Tanzania,
Oman, Lebanon and the United States, soaking up the sounds, sights, scents and shades of Nordic,
Middle Eastern, African and American cultures. These influences combine in Three Seconds | Kolme
Toista, the long-awaited follow-up to his acclaimed 2013 debut, un. On this remarkable and ambitious
new recording, Reijonen delivers an epic transcultural suite that feels as deeply personal as it is expansive
and far-reaching.

Noam Lemish

Noam Lemish is a Toronto-based pianist-composer whose music often defies categorization. In Twelve he
leads a formidable jazz 12tet presenting a captivating set of six original compositions. This chamber-sized
jazz orchestra – a nimble, yet powerful ensemble – features a stellar cast that includes many of Canada’s most prominent jazz artists, including multiple JUNO award winners. Growing up “in-between” cultures and places, having lived for extended periods in Israel, the United States and now Canada, Lemish’s music fuses an array of disparate influences and traditions. In Twelve, Lemish and his orchestra distill this integrated, transcultural musical life into a compelling, poignant, and joyful artistic statement. Lemish’s distinct and innovative voice as a composer permeates every facet of this recording. The six pieces that comprise Twelve stretch the conventional boundaries of the jazz idiom in more ways than one. Pushing jazz structures in new directions, the works showcase inventive, long-form, through-composed music that seamlessly integrates soaring melodies, exquisite large ensemble writing and orchestration with stunning improvised solos. Owing to Lemish’s multi-cultural upbringing and life experiences, the compositions also reveal a musical vision that embraces genre-bending as an essential feature. Lemish’s writing effortlessly blends his rootedness in jazz and western art music with the musical influences of his Israeli childhood and Eastern-European Jewish heritage.