*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* This is the long awaited release of one of Dreyblatt’s most personal and major extended works. Created in 1991, it combined documentary photographs, films, texts and sound materials selected from archives and private collections with original music and was a landmark in multimedia opera production, touring a dozen cities and winning the Philip Morris Art Prize in 1992.Featuring Dreyblatt’s Orchestra of Excited Strings, three speakers and the charismatic voca…
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Jazz legend Karl Berger is best known for his vibes and piano playing and for founding, with Ornette Coleman and Ingrid Sertso, the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY, in 1972. He has also had a full career in the classical realm, earning a doctorate in musicology, serving as professor of composition at Frankfurt Hochschule, and as chair of the music department at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Strangely Familiar: 17 Miniatures for Piano Sol…
*2022 stock* Two obscure albums by Basso Valdambrini Quintet originally released for TV and Radio Shows on Usignolo Series by Fonit Cetra. Now available for the Basso-Valdambrini's lovers.
*2022 stock* Helen Merrill has done something very few others have done in the world of jazz for, just with one record, she has come to be considered one of jazz’s greats. Usually a budding new star has to do quite a bit of waiting before he or she can be acclaimed. It all depends on the public’s opinion of the musician’s merits. Sarah Vaughan—amongst the singers —and Julian “Cannonball” Adderley—among the instrumentalists—have had to take their place in the queue awaiting the people’s favourabl…
*2022 stock* It is quite rare to discover on the Italian Jazz scene a successful ensemble, which passed unscathed through years. Bands are usually weakened or put in crisis, most of the times caused by sudden changes in line-ups.
The “Quartetto di Lucca” is a band of young players which formerly were part of the amateurial “Hot Clubs” and some years ago debuted among the pros.
The quartet of Lucca, however, has a peculiarity of its own, the ability to defend the results and the continuity of a f…
*2022 stock.* Inspiration in jazz has many sources. Who would have thought that British prisons could have inspired a Belgian-born composer, arranger, co-leader of a truly international band? The fact is that when the Clarke-Boland band came to this country at the beginning of 1969 for their memorable booking at the Ronnie Scott Club tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin was, to quote the sleeve “whisked off to Pentonville”. It was nothing worse than a question of outstanding income tax from a previo…
*2022 stock* Remastered from the original master tapes with superior sound quality, replica of the original RCA 10"(with bonus CD) in a limited edition of 500 copies. This is one of the most important albums in Umiliani’s career. There are ten original tracks, an ambitious project that surprises and captures jazz lovers. The reviewer of Musica Jazz magazine, who usually writes about American artists, in the issue no. 11 dated November 1957 writes: “I can’t remember what other ambitious and succe…
*2022 stock* 24 hours in the life of an Italian lawyer in a livid and exhausting Los Angeles. His encounters with his compatriots, the raising consciousness about a society obsessed with the myth of success. More than the action and characters, here are the anguish and troubles of the main character that matter. One of the best scores signed by Piero Umiliani, a unique soundtrack settled in an immense Los Angeles as it has never been shown in an American movie.
Piero Umiliani was contacted in 19…
*2022 stock* “There is a two-fold pleasure in listening to the leader of a big band play in a trio setting. First, there is the satisfaction of hearing a voice that is normally in the background being brought to centre stage. As a composer and arranger, Francy Boland typically spoke with many tongues. Like Ellington, he wrote with specific players in mind and so, as with a playwright, we usually hear his thoughts interpreted and given utterance by others. The big band format allows the band-lead…
*2022 stock* The Kenny Clarke-Fancy Boland Ensemble has its headquarter and management in Cologne. Many international recordings and releases presents the lineup of the Clarke-Boland in trio, quartet, sextet and in bands with 13 and 21 musicians from all over Europe. This time, they were a sextet that traveled to Rolandseck, a German ensemble with no Germans.Kenny “Klook” Clarke is one of the heads of the bebop movement. He was also one of the founders of the Modern Jazz Quartet and he is consid…
*2022 stock* It all started with a scratchy, somewhat surfacenoisy tape early in 1966.There were a few Italian words scribbled on a piece of paper – and someone called Guido Manusardi playing a whole lot of piano. Well, Sweden is fairly used to Italian musicians traveling the hotel and restaurant circuit. But Italian jazz musicians in the business – that was a novelty. Even more so since signor Manusardi appeard to be ready for a wide audience.In fact, not even that first and badly balanced do-i…
Rearward presents Eraldo Volonté, “My Point of View” – remastered. All the tracks, recorded - from May to November 1963 - at Durium Studios, Milan are now released with liner notes by Arrigo Polillo.
*2022 stock* "I remember standing at the bar,' he recalls, 'and seeing Johnny Griffin arrive. He said to me, 'Gigi, you're going to hear some strong shit tonight.' And he wasn't kidding. The band was so powerful and driving, so together, like one tremendous all-purpose instrument." Gigi Campi "It was marvellous. People used to applaud in the middle of the arrangements – showing their appreciation of some of the tutti or soli passages. It was really one of the greatest musical experiences of my l…
*2022 stock* In every artistic field it is hard to understand how critically important first impressions are. I am talking about those quick and uncontrollable connections, like an electric shock, that originate from the direct proportion between the work of art standing before us (a picture, a poem, a piece of music) and our feelings. The critical judgement as such requires a deep meditation and the artistic work in question should be examined probably in the microscopic detail of the cultural …
*2022 stock.* Here is music for your strange mood. The piano starts the first track, slow tempo beat, a strict beat, a swinging beat. Lillemor—here minor harmonies give the tune a rural, romantic feeling of some place in Spain or France. The tempo changes to medium fast—the flute solos. Light phrasing contrasts beauti¬fully to the earthy, swinging beat of the rhythm section and the repeating piano figures. The trombone adds a new color, a counterpoint of sound and phrasing, backed by the pulsati…
*2022 stock* Gianni Basso represents one of the most solid institutions of the Italian jazz. He has been like this since the beginning, when he appeared in Milan after some years abroad. At that time he already had a long story behind him as an activist jazz musician: he started playing during his childhood in his hometown of Asti (where he was born in 1931) and then in Belgium, where his father emigrated with his family to work in the mines. It was there that he discovered the jazz music at its…
*2022 stock* There is a school of thought which maintains that it is something of a tragedy that Benny has had to earn his living and play his trade as an American emigre in Europe, far from the centre of major jazz activities in his native United States. His contribution, they argue, would have been so much larger and much more widely appreciated. He may have won more polls, true. But the personal contentment which life in the more relaxed atmosphere of Western Europe has supplied probably more…
*2022 stock* The opinion of jazz musicians concerning Charles Mingus’ compositions and his protean musical world is that for a long time they represented an area that should be avoided or, at most, dealt with care. Just a few years after his death, of which his thirtieth anniversary occurs this year, they started to look deeper into his repertory, except for a part of which had been proposed in the past (Goodbye Pork Pie Hat was the most largely used).
Just like Duke Ellington various projects w…
*2022 stock* This reissue is great news for the jazz-loving community. The multi-national Golden Eight ensemble assembled by Gigi Campi featured Kenny Clarke and Jimmy Woode (USA), Francy Boland and Chris Kellens (Belgium), Dusko Gojkovic (Yugoslavia), Raymond Droz (Switzerland), Derek Humble (UK) and Karl Drevo (Austria). And it was the forerunner of the legendary Clarke-Boland Big Band. Seven of the eleven pieces in the album are distinctive originals by Boland, the remaining four tracks being…
*2022 stock* 2008 Release. This record is the fruit of five months of hard work in the recording studio, rehearsals and even sacrifices as told by Enrico Intra and I am obviously satisfied with it. But I sure don't want to consider it a goal. I feel like I'm going toward the right direction and I hope my next work is further confirmation of the effort, seriousness and true passion I've put into my music. Those who know Enrico Intra remember his face like a baby always living in cloud-cuckoo-land…
*2022 stock* Three – instead of – four this figure can mean a whole different world, when it comes to beats. Whereas the even number lets you march straight, turns right-angled, divides itself symmetrically, the odd rhythm goes around in circles and whirls. One heavy step, followed by two light ones, that can not go straight, that has to turn and turn and turn. The old Vienna and its young people was once ruled by “Waltz speeding” as today the beat shakes up even country dancefloors. Yet, that c…
*2022 stock* They called him the “Little Giant” long ago in Chicago – they still call him so. In order to understand why “Little” you have to see him – it’s enough to hear him to understand why “Giant”. But just to listen to him means missing out on so much. “I just look at Johnny and feel the power of positive swinging”, the “producer” says.
Like most small people (let’s not exaggerate the “small” – he’s not exactly a dwarf) Johnny appears to have been blessed with an extra portion of energy. H…
**2022 stock** Originally released by Armando Sciascia on his Vedette label, it also features Sante Palumbo, Oscar Rocchi, Giorgio Azzolini and Tullio De Piscopo. Telling Oscar Valdambrini and Dino Piana's story could be pointless for those who have been dealing with Jazz for years here in Italy. They are two of the most esteemed senators in our Jazz scene; two musicians who could cut a fine figure anywhere. The older is Valdambrini (turinese, born 1924), who was first noticed as a valued trumpe…
*2022 stock* Had it not been for the post-war migration of many top American jazz musicians to Europe, it is quite likely that the legendary Clarke-Boland Big Band might never have come into existence. As it happened, when Gigi Campi set up the first big band record date in Cologne on December 13, 1961, (Jazz Is Universal for the Atlantic label), he was able to call upon such distinguished self-exiled jazz stars as Benny Bailey (originally from Cleveland, Ohio), Sahib Shihab (Savannah, Georgia),…
*2022 stock* Jazz music has more than its fair share of overshadowed figures that whilst contributing much to the music have little presence in its collective conscious. One such musician is the talented multi-reedist, Sahib Shihab.
Born Edmond Gregory, as he was known before he adopted the Muslim faith in 1946, Sahib Shihab’s music background shows a deep and significant evolution, influenced by Thelonious Monk, Dizzie Gillespie (his experience in Dizzie’s band marked Sahib’s switch to Baritone…
*2022 stock* Myths take a long time dying, especially in jazz where the ability to confuse fact and fantasy has marked several generations of both critics and listeners. Perhaps the great Buddy Bolden could be heard for 14 miles on a clear night, but those who still believe that old one deserves to be interned in the same kind of institutions that housed Buddy in his latter days.
The European jazz musicians, despite years of recorded evidence stretching right back to the wonderful Django Reinhar…
*2022 stock* One of consolations of the electronic age is that those great moments in music which once were ephemeral and irretrievable can be faithfully captured, preserved for all time and savoured over and over again. Thus, some of the great musical peaks in the ten-year lifespan of the great Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band are stored for posterity on more than a score of albums. Despite writer Bob Houston’s urgent appeal for a conservation order to be put on this improbable aggregation o…
*2022 stock* Climate- atmosphere is what we say. Soul with beautiful expression, is what they say in the modern jazz scene in the US. It’s a necessary component for good jazz, as well as for swing. But to achieve an organic atmosphere which is therefore vital and alive, a relationship of intentions and views, and a congeniality of thoughts are needed. When Tommasi was in Rome for a few days and had Santucci and Scoppa listen to the latest pieces he had composed, the three musicians ideas, …
*2022 stock* A rare bit of 'early' free jazz from Italy – featuring a group led by soprano/tenor sax player Eraldo Volontè, and featuring trumpet, trombone, drums, and a piano-less double-bass rhythm team that gives the record a really unique sound! At some level, the feeling of the material is like ESP avant jamming – except for the fact that the freedom of the players is also firmly tethered to an ability to swing, as one of the bassists always seems to be working the rhythm, even when the oth…
*2022 stock* It was a really great idea to search for pieces, with the taste of a collector, and to produce this compilation, with jazz pieces and pieces extracted from refined sound tracks which have a subtle and intelligent taste, among the production of some of the biggest Italian composers in this sector. It is a piece that has never been reedited and it is of great taste, and consequent will to give works to an audience that otherwise are difficult to discover. And therefore has taste for …
*2022 stock* «Crucial moment» the title assigned by Giorgio Azzolini. And as a fact, jazz in the past years has been going through a crucial, decisive period. On one side the conservation of traditional values of the language and its well-known inspiring of the cause; on the other side the intentions, sometimes only foolish aspirations, of subversion and reorganization, on quite different bases, of jazz expression. The transformed historical – environmental conditions in which the American jazzm…
*2022 stock* Gianni Cazzola confesses that he would have never expected that an one of his albums from the late sixties would be re-discovered and re-issued. Thirty years after its release people are again talking about “Abstraction”. Recorded in November of 1969 in Milan, “Abstraction” is Gianni Cazzola’s first record as a leader, with Oscar Rocchi on the piano and composing and Cornelio Dattoli on the electric bass. The album was born from an idea developed in a jazz club in Milan.
For those t…
*2022 stock* Giorgio Azzolini was never a front man bt played with the best Italian musicians of the day, as well as American Expats going through like Chet Baker or Bobby Jaspar. Here he has a trio which is amazing for 1966 in that it combines fuild renditions of standards like "When I Fall In Love" or Bill Evan's "Interplay" or Bird's "Moose The Mooche" but here with the along with Franco D'Andrea (who was pianist in the famous Basso Valdambrini Quintet and along with Renato Sellani the godfat…
*2022 stock* Night in Fonorama. And it was a night in the real meaning of the word, that the five jazzmen spent at the Fonorama, one of the most important studios in Milano. It was the night of May the 31st 1964. They met at nine o’ clock in the evening, and they saw the day-break on a working Milano while they still were trying to perfectionate the last tune.
We said they «met»: and no word is more significative to indicate the meeting of the five musicians at the studio. There was nothing deci…
*2022 stock* 1999 Release. A lost Italian gem from the 60s! Bassist Giorgio Azzolini was one of Italy's best players during the postwar years, and this handsome reissue brings to light one of his rarer sessions from the 60s. The record's a lyrical septet session, with Azzolini's warm round basslines right up front, and beautiful solo work by a young Gato Barbieri on tenor, Franco Ambrosetti on trumpet, and Renato Sellani on piano. The session has the warmth and sensitivity of some of Horace Silv…
*2022 stock* Remastered from the original master tapes with superior sound quality, replica of the original RCA LP (with bonus CD) in a limited edition of 500 copies. One of the best scores signed by Piero Umiliani, a unique soundtrack settled in an immense Los Angeles as it has never been shown in an American movie.Piero Umiliani was contacted in 1958 by Mario Monicelli to compose the soundtrack of the movie “I Soliti Ignoti” (Big Deal on Madonna Street). It was not the usual kind of soundtrac…
Edition of 300 copies. Lovely archival recording by this incredible due comprised of Midori Takada - percussion and Kang Tae Hwan - alto saxophone. Recorded live on the 14nd March 1995 at Café Amores, Hofu, Yamaguchi, Japan by Takeo Suetomi. Concert produced by Takeo Suetomi. Mastered by Arūnas Zujus at MAMAstudios. Photos by Akihiro Matsumoto. Design by Oskaras Anosovas.
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Born in Seoul and now a resident of Brooklyn, Ha-Yang Kim is a cellist, composer and improviser who has developed a unique language of extended string techniques and electronics. Drawing upon influences as far ranging as Balinese and Karnatic traditions, jazz, rock, western classical music and downtown experimentation, she has created an original music of imagination and passion. Her first CD features a startling solo piece, two pieces for her long running d…
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Ha-Yang Kim is a cellist and composer of striking originality whose musical influences draw equally from a range of western classical music, American experimentalism, rock, noise, and improvised music, to non-western musical sources from Bali, Korea and South Indian classical music. For her second CD on Tzadik she presents a major new composition for string quartet, performed here by the world renowned JACK quartet. Dedicated to Jewish poet Paul Celan, “Thre…
After the disintegrative period of my production (from “Symphony for a Genocide” to “Das Testament”), the purchase of a misanthropic echo-machine and the consequent decay of the electric-analogue machinery, my efforts was redirected to a pre-recording sound sublimation, so I started to re-compose the electronic metastasis of early times, filtering through dehumanizing effects of the echo-machine, keeping attention particularly to the explanatory process of my ancestral subjectivism.
- facts:the …