Europe Jazz Media Chart – Augustus 2024

Regularmente Irregular – André Murraças (Roda Music)

Nuno Catarino, Jazz.pt (Portugal):

Saxophonist André Murraças makes his debut as a leader on this album, the 20th edition of the Roda Music catalog. The album “Regularly Irregular” brings together a set of original compositions by the saxophonist, assuming the will to affirm his individual voice. On this recording, he is accompanied by three proven musicians: João Carreiro on guitar, Francisco Brito on double bass and Luís Candeias on drums. An album full of good ideas, full of contrasts, where Murraças asserts himself not only as an competent instrumentalist but also as a fine composer. Read more (in Portuguese)…

Outerstate – Kessoncoda (Gondwana Records)

Dick Hovenga, Written in Music (Netherlands):

Based on the first tracks released from West London’s Kessoncoda, you wouldn’t exactly have the idea that this was just a duo. Together, drummer Tom Sunney and keyboardist Fil Sowa create a grandly ambitious sound that is as cinematic and atmospheric as it is dynamic. Sunney and Sowa have worked hard on their sound over the past few years, in Sunney’s little house in the garden. It is particularly clever how Sowa builds up his keyboard parts layer upon layer and lays down that wall-to-wall sound. At the same time delicious and ironclad how Sunney lays down his rhythms under and over those rich keyboard parts. Outerstate is nicely in line with what we hoped to expect based on previously released splendid tracks like X Is Closer to A, Greyscale and Hammers. Sunney and Sowa have created an album whose musical adventure seeking takes on an interesting ambitious color. Their compositions are also captured in a fantastic sounding way. Outerstate is an overwhelmingly good debut. Very convincing in tracks as in variety and coherence. And when the tones of the incomparable album finale Amaya (these are really just two musicians!!!) die away, you immediately get a very serious urge to listen to it all again right from the beginning. Great album. Read more (in Dutch)…

Voiceact – Gadt, Kordiak, Grzywacz, Zagajewska (Fundacja Słuchaj)

Krzysztof Komorek, Donos kulturalny (Poland):

Four individualities of Polish vocalism met to record an album devoted to the art of the voice. Voiceact, which is music of the vocal avant-garde, hides many layers, revealing references and inspirations that accompanied the vocalists during the recording of the material. Although this may just be an unmasking of the paths that the listener’s imagination follows. We move here from ancient music to modern contemporary classics. We look into folk. We follow a showcase of vocal styles and possibilities. A performance about Voice, and not just with the Voice in the lead role. A vocal act that is unusual and fascinating. Read more (in Polish)…

Caught in a Rug – Stephan Stadtfeld Large Ensemble (XJAZZ! Music)

Jacek Brun, Jazz-fun.de (Germany):

This album confirms Stephan Stadtfeld’s extraordinary talent and offers music full of warmth and energy. The individual compositions are brilliantly orchestrated and not without exciting improvisations. The bandleader gives the whole band a lot of space. Great compositions, beautiful (sometimes even hit-like) melodies and the creative ingenuity of all members of this great ensemble make this album something very special that you can’t pass by indifferently! Read more (in German)…

INTEGRATION! – Vadims Dmitrijevs Quintet (Jersika Records)

Kaspars Zavileiskis, Jazzin.lv (Latvia):

Vadims Dmitrijevs is a Latvian jazzman of the new generation, who has already announced himself as a convincing and attractive trombonist, as well as a composer. He spent three years studying in Hamburg, where he got to know great young talents from other countries and together with them created the original music program Integration!. It turned into his debut album, which was recorded analogically in the leading Riga’s jazz club M/Darbnīca, and released on vinyl by the Latvian jazz label Jersika Records. Catchy bop groove, finely crafted themes and fresh energy are the main values of Vadims Dmitrijevs debut record. An album that will make the heart of every music lover who loves quality modern live jazz beat faster. We’re looking forward to the sequel, and we already know there will be one.

In Time, Hollow Oaks Become Chapels – Margaux Oswald’s Collateral Damage (Clean Feed)

Matthieu Jouan, Citizenjazz.com (France):

Seven variations on silence, all irregular. For Collateral Damage, Margaux Oswald’s septet, silence is merely raw material, a concept to be shaped; it has to be said that the young pianist didn’t build her orchestra with a chamber instrumental: two guitars, three double basses and drums played by the Danish Simon Forchammer. It’s enough to shake the tranquility. And yet: “Secilen” works a brutalist silence with great patience. The bow of a double bass fades into a few barely distilled sprays of piano, and a drum discreetly recedes. There’s no exaggeration, no clean break, just a few cracks in the electric guitars. This is groundwork, aftershocks of a deep earthquake that hasn’t hit the surface yet, but threatens to. Full, whole. Invisible. Sometimes it erupts, always in muted tones, especially when Oswald’s piano plows through the orchestral paste with a powerful left hand (“Clinese,” the most torturous track on this first album.
In time, hollow oaks become chapels expresses this music of the moment, the septet’s particularly successful chemistry. There’s something deeply animistic in Margaux’s work, a sap that nourishes a carnal, elemental music that has taken time to mature, where each sound has a meaning and proposes a deviation. (Franpi Barriaux)

All Of the Colours Are Singing – Jessica Ackerley (AKP Recordings)

Jan Granlie, Salt-peanuts* (Pan-Scandinavian):

Over the past decade, Jessica Ackerley has made her mark on the Canadian and American music scene as a unique and versatile guitarist, composer and bandleader. Born in Alberta, Canada, she now resides in Honolulu after nearly ten years in New York City. She has worked with musicians such as Tyshawn Sorey, Daniel Carter, Marc Edwards, Luke Stewart, Patrick Shiroishi and Jason Nazary, to name a few. And her latest release, All Of the Colors Are Singing, has become a brilliant, exciting, creative and delicious release that will stay with me for a long time.

MoonDial – Pat Metheny (Modern Recordings / BMG)

Patrik Sandberg, Jazz Orkesterjournalen (Sweden):

MoonDial features Methenys solo recordings in line with the beloved One Quiet Night (2003) and What’s It All About (2011). The album is a purely solo guitar record with no overdubs, using a custom nylon string baritone guitar. Metheny experimented with this new guitar while on tour last fall. Excited by the results he was able to achieve a lot of material each night.

Nothing Is As Real As Nothing – John Zorn (Tzadik)

Viktor Bensusan, Jazz Dergisi (Turkey):

This is an album having neither horn nor Zorn inside, with one of the best elegant guitar trios since that very Friday Night in San Francisco by Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucía. The trio of Bill Frisell, Gyan Riley, Julian Lage perform as one solo guitar and John Zorn overwhelms even with his absence…”

Adam’s Apple – Mateusz Smoczyński (Warner Music Poland)

Paweł Brodowski, Jazz Forum (Poland):

The Polish violinist Mateusz Smoczyński is best known as the pillar of the Atom String Quartet and at one time – for four years – a member of the Turtle Island Quartet, but he has also pursued a succesful solo career.

When pianist Adam Makowicz recorded his first American album back in the 1970s, it came out on CBS under the the title Adam. I remember I suggested it shoud have been called Adam’s Apple to signify his arrival on the New York jazz scene. It was explained to me that such a title had already been used by Wayne Shorter on his Blue Note album some ten years earlier.
Historical considerations were obviously not taken into account with Mateusz Smoczyński’s newest album whose title is a bow to the American classical composer John Adams (Smoczyński’s newest discovery and inspiration), but is also a reference to the Bible.

Released by Warner Music Poland, the album features two violin concertos: Mateusz Smoczyński’s “Adam’s Apple Concerto for Violin and Orchestra” (written in 2018) and Zbigniew Seifert’s “Jazz Concerto for Violin, Rhythm Section, and Symphony Orchestra,” written and performed by Zbiggy 50 years ago for NDR Hannover and never before published.
Supported by the Chopin University Chamber Orchestra, Mateusz displays his virtuosity, imagination and improvising zest. In Seifert’s “Concerto” he is additionally joined by an inspired rhythm section of jazz peers: Dominik Wania – p, Sławomir Kurkiewicz – b and Michał Miśkiewicz – dr. The first concerto is more classical, the second more jazzy. Overall, a powerful performance, a triumph!