The Listening Guide
🎶 The listening guide: five albums, released during the past twelve months, chosen around a weekly theme 🎶
This week’s theme is solo piano albums. Kirk Lightsey, an 84-year-old Detroit native who has recorded with Chet Baker and Sonny Stitt amongst others, returns to solo piano for the first time since his acclaimed mid-eighties trilogy on his new album I Will Never Stop Loving You. The album’s title track is its only original composition, with other pieces including John Coltrane’s Giant Steps and three Wayne Shorter classics, amongst others. South Africa’s Abdullah Ibrahim is equally renowned for solo piano playing, and reminds us why with his new album, Solotude. Containing twenty original compositions, the album was recorded at ​​Hirzinger Hall in Riedering, South East Germany, in place of his annual solo piano concert, which wasn’t able to happen due to COVID-19 restrictions. The well travelled pianist and composer Julia Perminova aims to take the listener around the world on her album Imagination, which hears the classically-trained jazz enthusiast performing pieces inspired by her hometown of Tyumen, the Caribbean, and many other places she has visited. Icelandic musician Ingi Bjarni reflects upon the lessons that 2020 taught him on his first solo piano album, a ten-track LP that contains both improvised and meticulously composed music. South African film composer and pianist Kyle Shepherd works melodies from Desert Monk, Zikr, and other notable tunes into his flowing solo piano work After the Night, the Day Will Surely Come, which aims to banish the darkness brought about by the pandemic. You can support all of these albums on Bandcamp!
Kirk Lightsey – I Will Never Stop Loving You
Album of the Week
Our NQ Jazz album of the week is is Searching for the Disappeared Hour, a duo album from pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and guitarist Mary Halvorson. Following on from their 2017 collaborative album Crop Circles, this LP features music expressly composed for this duo, with both musicians reflecting on the strange passage time during the pandemic. Both writers add darkness to uplifting melodies and demonstrate that the guitar and piano can blend beautifully under the right conditions. The album is out now via Pyroclastic Records and you can support it on Bandcamp!
Classic Album
Our NQ Jazz classic album this week is saxophonist and composer Archie Shepp’s 1972 album for Impulse! Records, Attica Blues. With a title referring to the 1971 Attica Prison riot, describes as the bloodiest in US history, it deals with the absurdity of the events that unfolded, the shooting of George Jackson as he attempted to escape from San Quentin State Prison earlier that year, and Shepp’s disillusionment as a result of such events. The music is powerful, accessible, and diverse, with passages of poetry, soul numbers, and mellifluous big band jazz pieces. Clifford Thornton, L. Shankar, Marion Brown, James Garrison, and Jo Armstead were just some of the many musicians and vocalists who contributed to the recording. You can find the album on streaming services, with reissued physical copies available on various platforms.