Veteran jazzer Jack Wilkins has always been under appreciated despite his command of various styles of Jazz guitar. On his latest effort, he expands a bit to include a mastery of fine pop tunes, and even a trip into classical music with his take on Beethoven's Fur Elise, which gets a solo verse or two and chamber treatment that takes a different road. Not surprisingly, Wilkins plays wonderfully on jazz cuts like “Show Me” a lightswinger that shows off his chops. His ballad work is showcased on “Two for the Road”. Sonny Rollins “Airegin” features imaginative soloing, and the surprising element on this record is how Wilkins arranges the pop tunes. Who would dream of Christopher Cross “Arthur's Theme” could become a latin piece that swings hard and accentuates the melody before Wilkins takes it to places Cross never dreamt. “Blossom”, a James Taylor chestnut from Sweet Baby James, lets Wilkins and pianist Jon Cowherd display their tremendous interaction. As always, Wilkins solos goes places you'd never expect, especially for that particular tune. There is also a cover of Buffy Sainte-Marie's “Until It's Time For You To Go” that let's him pull out a nylon string acoustic.
While the choice of tunes here is occasionally surprising,Wilkins strong playing never comes as a shock.
Jack Wilkins - Until It's Time ( Max Jazz 606 )
Oumou Sangare – Seya
11/09/2009 - Roma - Auditorium Parco Della Musica
12/09/2009 - Acquaviva (Siena) - Acquaviva Rock Festival
Seya (“Gioia”) è il nuovo album, il primo in sei anni, della “Stella delle stelle del Mali” e riafferma con forza la sua posizione come una delle più grandi cantanti africane e come vero fenomeno della scena musicale e culturale africana contemporanea. Dai tempi del suo debutto Moussoulou, l’album che l’ha proiettata ai vertici della popolarità in patria nel 1989, Oumou ha saputo conquistarsi un ruolo di primissimo piano sulla scena internazionale, ed è oggi reputata tra gli artisti più ammirati e influenti dell’Africa occidentale. Adorata dal suo pubblico, Oumou Sangare è la cantante più popolare del Mali e, con Salif Keita, è l’artista più conosciuta e commercialmente rilevante del suo paese. Un primato davvero importante, se si considera che il Mali ha dominato per anni la cosiddetta scena “world” internazionale con stelle di prima grandezza come Amadou & Mariam, Toumani Diabaté, Bassekou Kouyate, Rokia Traoré e l’indimenticabile Ali Farka Touré.
Ricordiamo che il cd
- Oumou Sangare – Seya Arrangiata dal più noto produttore Maliano, Cheikh Tidiane Seck, Oumou si avvale dela collaborazione di Benego Diakite, Massambou Wele Diallo, Mogo Kele, Neba Solo, e Magic Malik.
può essere acquistato on line presso www.moonlightrecords.com
"Her first album in five years combines modernity and tradition with seamless verse"
Observer
"If Seya is her response, it is a mesterly one"
Financial Times
"She's duetted with Alicia Keys, Dee Dee Bridgewater and Me'shell Ndegeocello. She gets mobbed, petioned, praised and pursued by fans the world over."
The Indipendent
"This is Sangare's first new album in six years, and she'll still in confident, impressive form ( 4 stars)"
The Guardian
"Seya is a massive album of 11 big-hitting tracks that leaves the listener breathless"
Songlines
"Does the world need another Aumou Sangare Album ? It most certainly does"
Daily Telegraph
Oumou Sangare was born in Bamako, Mali in 1969. When Oumou was two years old, her father took a second wife and emigrated to Côte d’Ivoire, leaving Oumou’s mother, who was pregnant at the time, and their three small children. The struggle to keep the family afloat was the backdrop to Oumou’s childhood. Oumou's mother was a singer and her main source of income was the ‘sumu’ (wedding and baptism celebrations organised by women) or 'street parties' as Oumou calls them.
"My mother's still a fighter" says Oumou. “She brought up six children on her own, with no money. Sometimes all she could find to feed us with was wild herbs.” Oumou accompanied her mother to the sumus from the age of five, and very soon was in demand in her own right. She thrilled in the atmosphere of these parties, fired in equal measure by her passion for the music and by her desire to help her mother out by earning a little extra cash.
By the age of thirteen Oumou had become the family breadwinner. “That’s what has given me strength in my life. It was a very hard childhood and it gave me an incredible character. I can face up to any obstacle”.
“At the age of eighteen, Lamine Sidibe, the director of Mali’s Instrumental Ensemble, spotted me singing in the street. After that, I joined Bamba Dembélé’s ‘Djoliba Percussion’ band (which also included a young Toumani Diabaté), and went with them on a European tour. I was the youngest singer in the troupe but I managed to make a niche for myself. On stage, the audience would be asking for more. That’s how I learned to have confidence in myself. I was singing songs from Coumba Sidibé’s repertoire.” Oumou credits Coumba Sidibé, Wassoulou’s famous female singer of the 70s and 80s, for teaching her the values of purity, simplicity and vocal freshness.
Oumou's mother is from Wassoulou, the remote forest region in the south of Mali which boasts a rich and distinctive culture. For hundreds of years, until the beginning of the 20th century with French colonial rule, it was Mali’s Wassoulou hunters who were the protectors of the villages, the providers of food, and the healers. Still today they occupy a special place deep in the Malian psyche. Their music, played on a special six string harp, is believed to have magic powers that can protect hunters and tame even the most dangerous of animals. Wassoulou hunters’ music was very different from the prevailing griot-based music of the dance bands. It had strong, hypnotic dance rhythms and in contrast to the Mandé griots, whose lyrics focus more on the wealthy and the powerful, Wassoulou the lyrics talk about more general aspects of life. Oumou’s vision from the outset was to bring the power and charm of this music into her own songs.
“When I got back to Bamako I formed my own band, with a flute-player, a percussionist and a kamele ngoni (youth’s harp) player. Then I appeared on ORTM (the national Malian Radio and Television Broadcasting Authority). The next day, an admirer sent me a brand new Yamaha Dan motorbike! That gave me the confidence to keep singing and follow my path”
Around this time she came into contact with the bass player and arranger Ahmadou Ba Guindo, leader of the legendary National Badema dance band which played traditional music on modern instruments. (Following his death in a car accident in 1991, Oumou paid tribute to Ahmadou Ba Guindo in the magnificent ‘Saa Magni’, which features on her album Ko Sira (‘Modern Marriage’), released by World Circuit in 1993). Ahmadou gathered a group of musicians around Oumou including Aliou Traore who played western violin (and who had studied music in Havana, Cuba as a cultural exchange student) and the guitarist, Boubacar Diallo, who had also played in the National Badema. At the core of the group was a young Wassoulou kamele ngoni player named ‘Benego’ Brehima Diakite who has remained Oumou's main musical collaborator to this day. Oumou believes that “Today Benego is really the best player in the world, even of all time.”
In 1989, after some persuasion – wary of the pitfalls that could await her if the album was not successful -, she recorded her first album Moussoulou (‘Women’). It was recorded in Abidjan with arrangements by Ahmadou Ba Guindo and released on the 4th of January 1990, and it took West Africa by storm. She was 21 years old. Her songs talked openly about subjects that no one had dared express before in public in this fundamentally conservative society and caused endless debate amongst the Malian population. The album's messages were powerful - encouraging women to seek personal freedom to be themselves and have dignity, warning against the wrongs of polygamy and forced marriage and even covered the taboo subject of female sensuality, such as in her stunning hit song “Diaraby Nene” (the Shivers of Passion).
This was all the more remarkable because of her chosen idiom - a slightly modernized version of the traditional, rural music of the enigmatic and mysterious Wassoulou hunters, delivered with a funk-driven pulse. The true impact of ‘Moussoulou’ is still hard to gauge. The release of this cassette with its striking, deceptively simple and direct sound rocketed the previously unknown Oumou Sangare to huge fame and notoriety and its unprecedented success meant it provided a non-stop, all-enveloping soundtrack to Bamako's homes, markets, shops, cars and buses.
The cassette was brought to the attention of Nick Gold of World Circuit Records by Ali Farka Touré, and Gold witnessed the phenomenon during a trip to Bamako in 1991. "You couldn't escape that music. And you didn't want to. It was everywhere. As soon as you left a café where they were playing it, the baton was taken up by a passing car and then the next market stall. I spent that week in Bamako hearing Oumou wherever I went. And I mean EVERYWHERE."
Later that year World Circuit released ‘Moussoulou’ internationally to great acclaim and she has continued to record for the label ever since. Oumou has enjoyed a long and illustrious career, touring internationally and becoming recognised as the greatest female African star of her generation. She is known as the “songbird of Wassoulou” and an ambassador for the music of Mali, quite an achievement for an output of just five extraordinary albums in a twenty-year career.
Through records like ‘Ko Sira’ and ‘Worotan’ (meaning 10 kola nuts – the price given by a groom’s parents in exchange for a bride), Oumou has continued to sing about the issues close to her heart, encouraging better conditions for women in society. After becoming a mother herself, she also focuses on her desire to defend children who are in difficult circumstances.
During the last twenty years she has noticed a lot of changes. “Mali has developed considerably. Today, the female population outnumbers the male. Women now play a greater role in Mali’s development. It is hard for a country to move forward without its women. We have to have freedom of speech, the freedom to express ones self, to love and to choose a husband. Democracy is working. The people of Mali are free. As an artist, I am also free to say what I think.”
She fights fiercely against female circumcision. “I think the country has made progress regarding female circumcision. When it was decided to abolish the practice, people were singing in the streets. The law is respected now. I think people are aware of the problems it causes. And I opened the way, to a certain extent. A lot of people now ask me for advice. The women of Mali and other African countries still continue the fight. I’ve shown them what they can do. I always encourage them, and I provide an example. I’ve sung hard to support them. My fight has always been positive, otherwise I would have quickly been discouraged. And I get a lot of support these days: ‘We’re with you!’”
At home in Bamako, where Oumou has remained very close to her audience, greeted and recognised wherever she goes, there is an air of natural sincerity about her that is completely genuine. “I feel relaxed here, I don’t need security. I’m friends with everyone. People are always stopping me for a chat. My fans look after me,” she explains, laughing, as if to ward off the inaccessible image of a star of her calibre. “I’m not allowed to make mistakes here in Mali. It’s what dictates my career abroad. It’s also why I take my own sweet time. I once sang on the soundtrack to Oprah’s film ‘Beloved’. That gave me some ideas. I would love to make a film. I’d like to play the kind of woman that would set a good example. It would be a childhood dream taken care of, for me.”
Although she may have a superstar status at home, she never forgets where she came from, or the virtues of a humble background. In October 2003 she was appointed as global Ambassadress of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), a role that forms part of the FAO’s struggle against famine. She also plays an active role in Mali’s Mother and Children Association, donating millet, milk and rice to mothers in need. She believes it is the duty for those who are ‘born under a lucky star’ to provide for others less fortunate than them.
In recent years she has been focusing on setting up in business. The Hotel Wassulu was built in response to the Malian government’s appeal to provide more hotel accommodation for visitors to the Africa (football) Cup of Nations, which was hosted in Bamako in 2002. However, Oumou also finds it useful for accommodating the large groups of visitors and friends from abroad that she meets on her travels, from New York to Paris. “I gave it that name because I wanted Wassoulou to be engraved in the memory of all Malians and it made me proud to be able to help create jobs for people”
Oumou created an initiative in 2006 to import cars from China. “I make the most of my fame. My name sells things. With Oum Sang, I launched my own brand of car. The President of Mali was so pleased that he even came to a special opening ceremony of the car showroom to cut the ribbon!”
In the Bamako market places, you can even find ‘Oumou Sangaré Rice’. I don’t make any money out of it, but I help make sales of Malian rice. People like to have my name on the things they need. I’ve also got my own farm in Baguineda, near the river, about forty kilometres from Bamako. The main crops are oranges, mandarins and a lot of maize.
But her business activities don’t stop her from singing. This naturally energetic woman is sometimes away performing for three months without a break. She appears almost all over Africa, from Morocco to South Africa, by way of Nigeria and Burkina Faso. And when she’s at home in Bamako, if she’s not being asked to perform at private ceremonies, she’ll be found singing at the Hotel Wassulu at the weekends. Oumou also continues to perform at selected dates around the world.
In 2003 she promoted the release of the 2CD collection simply titled ‘Oumou’, a retrospective look at her career to date. The album features 12 of the best tracks from her first three World Circuit albums, plus 8 tracks previously unreleased on CD (including 6 tracks from the best-selling Mali cassette ‘Laban’). The tour included an incredible performance at WOMAD that was hailed by critics as one of the best in the festival’s history.
2004 found her performing at “Global Divas” in a show that also featured Tracey Chapman at the Hollywood Bowl in the US. That year was rounded off with an amazing, live duet on French TV with the multi-Grammy winning R&B superstar Alicia Keys. This year she is invited to perform at Harvard University’s celebrations to mark the 60th year since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 2009, as well as headlining at the Segou festival in Mali, she will be coming to Europe for a series of dates.
On stage her natural presence, huge charisma, irrepressible energy and joie de vivre is very much in evidence. Yet it’s her voice that holds you spellbound. “Here in Mali, everyone knows the way instruments sound naturally. And singing, for me, is a natural truth. I’ve always known how to manipulate my voice. It’s still the same after twenty years, even if I’ve often sung too much in my life, sometimes going on tour for two or three months without a break.”
Oumou’s latest album “Seya”,(Joy) released in 2009,has taken around two or three years to come to fruition. “I choose my songs very carefully. I learn how to put them across first on the stage.” Her music is bold, seductive, funky and vibrant, but it’s her lyrics that open people’s eyes. “For me, the lyrics are more important than the melody. I write almost all my own words. I also perform the classics of Malian tradition. I draw a lot of inspiration from what happens in society. As soon as I see or feel something, I write it down. I say what I want, and what I think, because I am a free woman. I believe that my music has had an impact on the life of African women.” “It’s true that when I sing it’s joyful but in amongst that joy I always take the opportunity to slip in messages that educate my nation.”
Oumou continues the battle to encourage equality between men and women and sings about universal themes in life such as love, death, destiny, respect for each other, hope and harmony, not forgetting a couple of light-hearted tunes about the fun things in life. “The track ‘Seya’ is about a girl who has a good time. She brings joy. It’s dedicated to my tailors and my stylists and those that dye the cloth. I wanted to show the courage of Malian women. They radiate every colour on this earth. I go to them for my hand-printed outfits in ‘bazin’ and ‘tissu wax’ fabrics. I give a lot of my clothes away, I don’t keep them.” Which explains why you hardly ever see Oumou in the same outfit twice.
Standing almost six foot tall, she is an elegant and feminine woman, sure of her taste and with a huge love of fashion. In one day, Oumou might change her look several times. She delights in surprising people, one moment the American R&B star, the next a dynamic businesswoman, or then again a real Malian diva in her traditional boubou. She bursts out laughing. “I possess the art of metamorphosis. In a boubou or in jeans, I’m unrecognisable.”
An icon and role model for modern women she is both keen to encourage and embrace new ideas through her music whilst at the time she holds a deep respect for tradition and those who came before her. In the late 1990s she sought out the reclusive Wassoulou music innovator Alatta Brouleye. It was Brouleye who provided the instrument that propelled Wassoulou music to its initial urban popularity with his creation of the kamelngoni in the 1960s. The instrument was an adaptation of the traditional donso ngoni and it became known as the youth's harp because of its popularity with the young and such was its break with tradition that it was initially banned in Wassoulou villages by the elder hunters. Oumou managed to persuade Brouleye into a Bamako studio in 1998 to record his only cassette shortly before he died. On the track 'Donso' on her latest album 'Seya' she uses the traditional donso ngoni in a song that pays tribute to her father with whom she was finally reconciled in 2002 on his return to Bamako.
Oumou is an artist who is proud of her country and its diverse cultures, now recognised and appreciated throughout the world. “Mali is a country of oral tradition, which explains why music and society here are part of each other. The 32 different ethnic groups here each have their own well-developed culture. They don’t need each other to make good music, even though cross-fertilisation is always good. There should still be a lot more recognition for Malian music. I deeply respect each individual artist in Mali. Our potential is incredible. Mali and its music embody the symbol of a free and victorious Africa.”
The Bottle Rockets - Lean Forward
"If Uncle Tupelo is the Beatles of the alt-country movement, the Bottle Rockets are certainly the Rolling Stones. Featuring a brash, in-your-face sound with as much of a Lynyrd Skynyrd influence as Gram Parsons."
—Spartanburg Herald-Journal
"...the Missouri-based Bottle Rockets have churned out high-powered guitar rock rooted in the soil and have gained high praise for their detailed portraits"
–Boston Globe
"...complexity and depth of songwriting that mixes words of wisdom with a pinch of salty humor."
–American Songwriter Magazine
The simple fact is that the Rockets have been making some of the most incisive, hip and eclectic American music on the scene for over a decade now. Long known amongst folks with good taste, the Bottle Rockets have spent their career raising dust and raising lighters with their spot on and literate anthems of the ordinary Joe. They are equally adept at long hair rockers from the rural route, gut-bucket boogies that’d make ZZ Top hang their heads in fraudulent, washed-up shame, or remarkably poetic elegies of loss and displacment.
""The Bottle Rockets catalog--with a fifteen-year range of literate, vicious, tender, stupid, brilliant, political, and joyous songs -- is simply unfuckable with."
—Riverfront Times
"Back before the Drive-By Truckers got it in gear, when Ryan Adams was still settling in Whiskeytown, the Bottle Rockets were setting off musical M-80s as perhaps the most underappreciated roots-rock/Americana band of the mid-'90s... this current edition of the Bottle Rockets is both musically and thematically, a great American rock band."
—Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
In a country where interstates don’t take you to new places, but to the same places, where everywhere you go you’ve already been or you’ve just left, The Bottle Rockets’ new album absolutely nails a sound and a vibe with a palpable sense of place. Lean Forward is suffused with the determination and resilience of their distinctly midwestern roots; theirs is a celebration of pragmatism and tempered optimism, not the delusions and exhortations of glassy eyed zealots—they aren’t going to fall for that. Oh, it’s a flat out, smoking rock record, too.
Lean Forward continues the Rockets’ creative resurgence ignited by 2006’s Zoysia. Reunited with producer Eric “Roscoe” Ambel (who ran the knobs on the Bottle Rockets’ seminal albums The Brooklyn Side and 24 Hours A Day), the Bottle Rockets do what no other band does better — look into the hearts and minds and faces of the dying small towns in America and crafts populist anthems with the sympathetic eye of Woody Guthrie and sonic stomp of Crazy Horse. They are songs that demand the windows be rolled down and the volume turned up. And with the hooks, you’ll wonder how they make such problems sound so good …
Lean Forward is stacked with a sharp lyricism and gritty fatalism that looks off the front porch for inspiration, and has the locked down groove of a band on top of its game. “The Long Way” looks on the bright side of the path not intentionally taken and works into a joyous song-ending jam. Songs like “Done It All Before” and “Get on the Bus” shine with an irresistible buoyancy, as does “Shame on Me” which gets to the meat of the relationship matter that, despite our best intentions, we’re all gonna screw up. “Hard Times” whips up a ZZ Top-inflected boogie with effortless mastery and a dual guitar attack that’ll put some much-needed flare back in your jeans.
On “Kid Next Door,” the lyrics bypass protest in favor of simple commentary on a war coming home, making it a far more powerful song no matter where one stands on the issue. It’s a stone cold classic and handled with the deftness and conviction that speaks to the Rockets’ sober-minded realism. To see that they’ve still got scruffy punk moxie to spare, look no further than “The Way It Used To Be” and the channeling of Bo Diddley via the Stooges on “Nothing but a Driver.”
With their 15th anniversary now in the rear view mirror, the Bottle Rockets show no signs of letting up. Lean Forward is an album that celebrates the forces of erosion not earthquakes, of the marathon not the sprint. Honed in their towns and on their back roads, it is distinctly the Bottle Rockets. Rather than be confining, this identity broadens the appeal and strength of their music far from their backyards into our own. Their specificity speaks universally and the message is a simple one: Lean forward, man, because it beats falling back.
Jen Chapin - Revisions ( Songs of Stevie Wonder )
I’m happy to announce that I have a new album, entitled ReVisions: Songs of Stevie Wonder. Happy, but also a bit conflicted, as I had expected that my next release would be made up of my own new songs rather then more beloved classics from the past. But an opportunity arose to make this album, thanks to the good people at Chesky Records, so here it is. ReVisions was produced by David Chesky and also features Stephan Crump on acoustic bass and Chris Cheek on tenor, soprano and baritone saxophones.
Some notes:
Over the past forty years, Stevie Wonder has written the soundtrack for this very moment in history. "Master Blaster (Jammin)", illuminates 2008's election night festivities around the world and the promise and redemption that 2009's inauguration holds. "Big Brother" and "Village Ghettoland" channel his outrage about the bitter truths of poverty and isolation which afflict more and more people every day. "If it's Magic," holds up our delicate hopes, "You Haven't Done Nothin'" spits out our betrayal. I had to sing these songs again, now, in the age of Obama. * While it may seem an odd choice to perform this rich, multi-layered music as a sparse trio without chords, it made sense to me on several levels. First of all, Chris Cheek and Stephan Crump are two of my favorite musicians in the world. Then there is the trio ensemble itself; a three-legged stool where each leg has to hold strong to keep things standing. I like the trio's intimacy and the fact that it leaves nowhere to hide and everywhere to lead. And of course, these are times where each of us in all our flaws must stand up to help each other, learn to rely on each other, maintain strength of purpose, and move forward.
We recorded live over 2 days last November at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in New York City.
Jen Chapin
The Waifs - Live From The Union Of Soul
“Intimate, heartfelt songs that move at the speed of a road trip.”
- ROLLINGSTONE.COM
“Perhaps the most popular and successful independent band in Australia.”
- The Washington Post
“Blues, country, early rock and new-wave pop, and presenting it all with a cool sophistication that carries plenty of heat.”
- The Nashville Scene
Singer-songwriters Donna Simpson, Vikki Thorn, and Josh Cunningham make up Australia’s folk-rock band The Waifs. Their 2002 radio smash “London Still” was followed by a tour with Bob Dylan and ARIA Awards including Best Independent, and Best Blues And Roots Release. While each album they record—from 1996’s self-titled debut to 2008’s acclaimed SunDirtWater—has found the Waifs maturing as writers and performers, it is on the concert stage that they truly connect with their audience.
Live From the Union of Soul is a collection of 14 songs recorded on the road during last year’s memorable and historic Australian Union Of Soul tour and features guest appearances from John Butler and Clare Bowditch. Widely known for their infectious shows and lengthy tours to all corners of the globe, The Waifs present new songs in acoustic mode, including classic covers of Frank Iffield’s ‘I Remember You’ (initially performed as a tribute at the Australia’s ARIA Hall Of Fame Awards, and becoming a popular addition to the bands live set list), and Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody’s “From Little Things”. They also perform a barn storming version of “When I Die” and of course there is plenty of Waif’s banter in between!
Live From the Union of Soul is imbued with all the energy, charisma, and earthy soul that have won the Waifs new fans from their native Australia to America, and beyond. Essential for both longtime fans and newcomers, Live From the Union of Soul perfectly captures the offhand charm and bluesy soul of Australia’s most successful independent band.
Cinzia Roncelli - My Shining Hour
Cinzia Roncelli, vocals;
Giovanni Mazzarino, piano;
Francesco Cafiso, alto sax;
Dino Rubino, trumpet & Flughelhorn;
Giuseppe Mirabella, guitar;
Marco Panascia, bass;
Paolo Mappa, drums.
Silence Please, Music is Talking....
Andy Middleton - The European Quartet Live
>"Andy Middleton is the kind of musician to keep your eyes and ears on..." - JOE LOVANO
"Here is the sax player with the courage to pursue his own voice ... improvising and writing in its best form - really pretty amazing!"
- MICHAEL BRECKER
"Andy Middleton represents the best of a new generation of jazz musicians."
- DAVID LIEBMAN
"Totally contemporary playing and writing with a real sense of the jazz tradition. Excellent!"
- JOHN ABERCROMBIE
“There is one soloist who truly stands apart from the rest of the crowd, and that is Andy Middleton …, a wonderful, ingenious, melodic musician….” - Saxophone Journal, USA
“Andy Middleton affirms himself not only as a saxophone player but as a first class composer/arranger.”
JAZZ Magazine
, France Award-winning saxophonist, composer, educator and bandleader ANDY MIDDLETON has been garnering attention for years for his imaginative, sincere, lyrical and adventurous solos which never resort to cliché or empty virtuosic display. Saxophone Journal explains that Middleton “is a great example of a ‘best kept secret’, a wonderful, ingenious, melodic musician whose playing is often ‘under the radar’ and under-recognized by the media”, while Jazz’n More of Switzerland has noted that “Each single tone comes from his heart”. In recognition of his compositional acheivments Jazz Times has written that “Middleton ... writes in a broadly euphonious harmonic language, with a natural tunefulness that engages the ear with exotic airs”, Minor7th.com asserts that “Middleton’s compositional skill is on par with Ralph Towner,” and JAZZ Magazine of France declares that Middleton is “a first class composer/arranger.” Time Out New York has written that he is “an ace saxophonist, a generously skilled arranger and a socially dedicated artist”, while the New York Times hails Middleton as “an accomplished composer as well as a smart post-bop tenor saxophonist.” After 20 years in New York City, Middleton has moved to Vienna, Austria, where he is the professor of Jazz Composition and Arranging at the Konservatorium Wien. Some other comments: By the way, I'm still listening to Nomad's Notebook a lot. It's one of my favorite CDs and I have a lot of CDs! It is possible that I listened to it more than anyone else! Something about it... - BARRY HARTGLASS, New York City-based composer, bassist, producer and recording engineer The best jazz is recorded live. I am loving your CD, thanks a lot!!! The cats are swinging their asses off (and I get tears in my eyes listening to Alan’s cymbalwork...) and you sound absolutely marvelous! Especially your soprano sound is absolutely killing. Great tunes, hip chord changes and beautiful melodic and rhythmic inventions. Their is really nothing left for me - that's how modern jazz should be! -
HEINRICH VON KALNEIN
Misha Alperin - Anja Lechner - Hans-Kristian Kjos Sorensen -Night
This cd has been the debut of a new trio with Ukrainian pianist Alperin, German cellist Lechner, and Norwegian percussionist Kjos Sørensen. "Night" is a recording of the group's very first performance, at the VossaJazz Festival in Norway in 1998. Misha Alperin, commissioned to write for VossaJazz, determined to go against the prevailing bombastic trends at the festivals. The music of "Night" is a suite composed by Alperin and is often of an intense quietude, with silences used tellingly. But the writing also leaves space for striking improvisation, mostly of a "non-jazz" variety: Alperin puts the 'classical' backgrounds of Lechner and Kjos Sørensen to good use. He is himself a musician between the genres, who came to jazz only after a long history of playing classical and folk musics.