New Releases
Chico Pinheiro - There's A Storm Inside
Label: Sunnyside
Distribution in France: Naïve
Release date: September 30, 2010
Brazil has given us some of the world’s best guitarists: from Laurindo Almeida and Baden Powell to Toninho Horta. Now, on his lovely Sunnyside debut There’s a Storm Inside, the Sao Paulo-born guitarist/arranger/composer/vocalist Chico Pinheiro presents a contemporary mix of jazz and bossa nova aided by some wonderful contributions from the golden voiced Dianne Reeves and master saxophonist/bass clarinetist Bob Mintzer.
Cheikh Lo - Jamm
Label: World Circuit
Distribution in France: Harmonia Mundi
Release date: July 24, 2010
‘Jamm’ is the first new album in five years from one of Africa’s great musical mavericks, Senegalese sufi troubadour Cheikh Lô. This is his most distinctive and personal album since his groundbreaking, Youssou N’Dour-produced debut ‘Ne la Thiass’ in 1996. The dreadlocked singer’s signature blend of semi-acoustic flavours – West and Central African, funk, Cuban, flamenco – has been distilled into his most mature, focused, yet diverse statement to date. And his husky, sensual voice is sounding better than ever.
Kenny Werner - No Beginning No End
Label: Half Note
Distribution in France: Naive
Release date: July 24, 2010
The recording of « No Beginning, No End » has won Kenny Werner the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship Award in 2010. Kenny Werner’s magnum opus with voices and strings is a deeply personal tribute to his daughter Katheryn. Classical and jazz, composed and improvised, performed by close to 100 musicians with highlights created by the saxophone of Joe Lovano and the voice of Judy Silvano. “No Beginning, No End” is a milestone composition as much for its creative reach as for the emotional terrain it examines. “The best music I’ll ever write” is how the artist puts it. (source Amazon)
The Golden Gate Quartet - Incredible
Label: Dixiefrog
Distribution in France: Harmonia Mundi
Release date: October 07, 2010
Céline Bonacina - Way Of Life
Label: Act Music
Distribution in France: Harmonia Mundi
Release date: June 17, 2010
To play with immense complexity whilst, at the same time, always maintaining the “grounding” in a strong groove with enthralling, almost danceable rhythms – this is the appeal and the emotion of the music on Way of Life. Bonacina acquired this musical ability particularly during her seven-year-stay on the French Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean and her contact with the music of this region. The driving funk of “Wake Up”, the Afrobeat pulse underlying “Ekena” and a bouncy dub and reggae “Course pour Suite” determine the rhythm of this album. When united to an irrepressible joyfulness in music making and energy the result is a refreshing renouncing of understatement at a time when a certain melancholy is creeping into jazz.
Magnus Lindgren - Batucada Jazz
Label: Enja
Distribution in France: Harmonia Mundi
Release date: May 24, 2010
Recently Magnus has spent some time in Brazil writing and playing with excellent South American musicians. He has recorded 12 new songs for an album named ’Batucada Jazz’ to be released in the spring of 2009. It features Kiko Continentino on piano, Leonardo Amuendo on guitar, Armando Marcal and Pirulito on percussion with a guest spot by Nils Landgren.This selection is inspired by the samba orchestras that rehearse all year to appear at carnival time.
La Caravane Passe - AHORA IN DA FUTUR
Label: MAKASOUND
Distribution in France: PIAS
Release date: May 03, 2010
We had left LA CARAVANE PASSE in their imaginary village of Plèchti (last CD « Velkom Plèchti » in 2008). Since then, the band has been touring all across France and the old Continent. For their 3rd release, La Caravane has taken on a new look, electrified and transformed into a machine to zigzag through time and space. Directed this time by Camille Ballon (No One is Innocent, Java, etc.) the group has taken a few clandestine travelers on board: Rachid Taha, R.Wan, Erika Serre, Marko Markovic, La fanfare Ziveli – a bright and varied bunch ready to embark for another journey into a multi-coloured neverland: singers, electric guitars, bass and keyboards mix with gypsy guitars, brass and mandolins, producing “chanson française”, gypsy sounds, rap/world, Balkan ska and electro rock. That same adventurous mix can be found in the lyrics, with a homemade and world-inspired slang combining French and English, Serbian and Spanish, Romani and German. A trans-European melting pot telling of journeys beyond borders, of cultures and people. And if our cyber nomads were just shaping the future “homo Europaneo”?“Steam punk” and “retro-futurism” come to mind – and all of it can be found on stage where the band travels through the centuries in their costumes, creating a festive, crazy and timeless spectacle.
Jacky Terrasson - Push
Label: Concord Jazz
Distribution in France: Universal
Release date: April 26, 2010
Jacky Terrasson’s new album features a new working trio that includes recent Thelonious Monk Competition winner Ben Williams on bass, Jamire Williams on drums and a handful of special guests . “It’s definitely a turning point for me,” says the Berlin-born, Paris-raised, New York-based master of the keys. “I’m with a new label, so that made it important to me to do things differently. I wanted another sound, and I wanted to explore what I’ve been going through personally over the last few years. There are different grooves, beats and vibe.” And like the album title suggests, the music is driven by an inherent thrust forward. Terrasson explains, “Push means to make things happen, to push into new directions. That’s what this album is all about.” Part of this advance includes the pianist making his vocal debut on two songs. “I know I’m not a singer,” he says. “But I’ve been hearing that in my head for years, so I figured why not.” He laughs and adds, “I pushed for it.” Push features seven new Terrasson compositions as well as a sampling of fresh spins on standards, including two Monk tunes and a Cole Porter beauty as well as a version of the timeless melody “Body and Soul” melded with “Beat It,” Michael Jackson’s Thriller hit.
Sylvain Chauveau - Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated)
Label: Type Recordings
Release date: April 01, 2010
Five years have passed since Sylvain Chauveau’s last new album. Of course there have been re-issues since ‘Down To The Bone’, as well as more than a few collaborations and soundtrack appearances, but Sylvain has purposefully waited to allow his ideas to come to fruition. The Depeche Mode songs he had explored on ‘Down To The Bone’ had given him ideas he felt he needed to explore, and ‘Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated)’ is his attempt at an album of ‘songs’. In many ways, ‘Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated’) is constructed the way albums used to be – it is compact and filled with vocal hooks and melodies, yet Sylvain has deconstructed the musical forms he grew up listening to and reduced them to their base level. Vocal snippets fall through the stereo field and his signature piano motifs splutter and cough through processed digital hiccups. As Carsten Nicolai and Ryuichi Sakamoto deconstructed classical music, Sylvain attempts here to study and dissolve the roots of popular music. Each piece feels like it could have started as a three-minute pop sing-along before the accompaniments were stripped away and the component parts reduced to merely a backbone, leaving an album that is stark and incredibly beautiful. It is an album rooted in a love of art and music, both minimal and mainstream.
Jacques Coursil - Trails of Tears
Label: Universal Jazz
Distribution in France: Universal
Release date: March 01, 2010
August-December 1838: 15,949 Cherokee Indians (and slaves) were forced to leave Georgia for Oklahoma, west of the Mississippi, to occupy land that had been “reserved” for them. For those who chose to take the northern road (over 900 miles), it took 153 days to complete this Way of the Cross; a Cherokee Iliad, to which they ultimately gave the name Trail Of Tears. 4000 of them never made it to the reservation.
Like Clameurs (released in 2007), this new Jacques Coursil project has its roots in a profound quest for meaning. Using the terrifying tale of the Cherokee nation’s long and arduous battle as its argument , the music of Jacques Coursil calls on the fundaments of Afro-American history, one of whose most important expressions is represented by jazz. Coursil, musician and academic, specifically questions colonialism and the moment in history when two worlds – the Old and the New – multiplied trails of suffering: those Trails Of Tears echoed by both Glissant’s poems and his tout-monde “all-world” concept.
With this in mind, Jacques Coursil invited two ensembles to join him:
CADENCES LIBRES (Jeff Baillard, Alex Bernard and José Zébina) provide a suite of compositions recorded in Martinique.
FREE JAZZ ART (Sunny Murray, Bobby Few, Alan Silva, Mark Whitecage, Perry Robinson) propose the oratorio part recorded in Paris and New York.
Strictness of form and raw emotion. The project had to be accessible away from of all elitism; it had to address, with humility, everyone for whom artistic stakes rejoin those of the world.
