The Listening Guide
🎶 The listening guide: five albums, released during the past twelve months, chosen around a weekly theme 🎶
This week’s theme is big bands and jazz orchestras. Jazzmeia Horn’s first big band album hears the award-winning vocalist, composer, and arranger working with a 19-musician ensemble, including string players and a large horn section. Entitled Dear Love, the album incorporates poetry and spoken word alongside Horn’s beautiful singing, whilst embracing the time-honoured styles of big band arrangement alongside contemporary styles. Vocalist and composer Sarah Buechi works with her septet Contradiction of Happiness and the Jena Philharmonic (conducted by Simon Gaudenz) on her new album for Intakt Records, entitled The Paintress. The album combines jazz singing, rhythmic vocalisation, and classical arrangements to wonderful effect. Drummer, composer, and bandleader Jared Schonig gave eight of the compositions featured on his quintet album Two Takes Vol. 1 to arrangers including Alan Ferber, Miho Hazama, and Darcy James Argue, who arranged them for a large ensemble, leading to the companion record Two Takes Vol. 2: Big Band. Schonig’s big band includes Donny McCaslin, Quinsin Nachoff, Nir Felder and many other talented players. Saxophonist and composer Julian Siegel brings together Jacquard, music from a 2017 Derby Jazz commission, and several original compositions repurposed for large ensemble, on his Jazz Orchestra album Tales From The Jacquard. The Jacquard cards that controlled the looms in lace factories like the one his parents once co-owned were a key inspiration in the writing of the music, giving Siegel rhythmic ideas and melodic ideas based upon the configuration of punched holes present on the card. Conductor and composer Miho Hazama’s new album for Edition Records, entitled Imaginary Visions, was recorded with the Danish Radio Big Band and features seven of Hazama’s original compositions. You can support Jazzmeia Horn’s album on several platforms and find the other four albums on Bandcamp!
Sarah Buechi – The Paintress
Jared Schonig – Two Takes Vol. 2: Big Band
Album of the Week
Our NQ Jazz album of the week is the new live album from trumpeter and flugelhorn player Enrico Rava. It hears the ECM artist and composer leading a sextet that includes Francesco Bearzatti on tenor saxophone, Francesco Diodati on guitar, Giovanni Guidi on piano and guitar, Gabriele Evangelista on bass, and Enrico Morello on drums. You can find the album below.
Classic Album
Our NQ Jazz classic album this week is a 48-minute live recording captured in Paris, France, in 2016 and released on the now dormant Improvising Beings label. It finds renowned vocalist Linda Sharrock leading a group which features Mario Rechtern on baritone, soprano, and sopranino saxophones, Itaru Oki on trumpet, flugelhorn, and flutes, Lucien Johnson on tenor saxophone, Claude Parle on accordion, Yoram Rosilio on double bass, and Makoto Sato: drums. The continuous free jazz piece features Sharrock’s raw screams, howling saxophones, lightning-fast accordion notes, and plenty of fascinating textures in its swirling soundscapes. You can get the digital album via Bandcamp.