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In many respects, this latest project is the inverse image of the Monk project, a reappraisal of Ornette Coleman’s 1959 landmark The Shape Of Jazz To Come by a quartet which, as you might have guessed, prominently features a piano. Very much a joint venture with arrangers Laurent Courthaliac and Daniel Yvinec, they were seeking to uncover hitherto concealed harmonic possibilities within Coleman’s classic material. It is also the first recording from an impressive new quartet which features rising star Carl-Henri Morisset (piano), the ever-dependable Thomas Bramerie (bass) and Elie Martin Charrière (drums), a group that has been touring since 2019.

Aside from preserving the original running order and a not too subtle nod to the original cover art, the arrangements cleverly interpolate Coleman’s music rather than recreating it in any literal sense. Inserting a piano into Coleman’s famously non-chordal music instantly changes the rules of engagement, something which is immediately apparent on the intro to ‘Lonely Woman’. In another context the spare arrangement could be a prelude to ‘Harlem Nocturne’, and although Pédron’s spine-tingling alto reveals a flash of Coleman’s distinctive vibrato, his angular solo develops into something altogether more contemporary. The frenzied melodic loop which announces ‘Eventually’ is almost as unexpected as Morriset’s stride piano break, though the eternally beautiful ’Peace’ is taken rather more slowly, Bramerie’s ruminative solo interlude sustaining an atmosphere before Morriset and Pédron enter to raise the stakes.

Elsewhere the bold staccato theme of ‘Focus On Sanity’ is cleverly concealed within a deep blue ballad, while the first section of ‘Congeniality’ finds Pédron at his fiery best, mining a modal ostinato before the brilliant Morriset then branches out into an Afro-Cuban tour de force. Closing out with ‘Chronology’, it is played with a freedom more redolent of the late ‘60s New Thing than Coleman’s relatively conservative experiments of a decade earlier, and Charrière is particularly impressive as he stokes the flames.

If musical homages can often be something of a curate’s egg – a disappointing substitute for original material – Pédron has an uncanny knack for squaring the circle. An album imbued with Coleman’s fearless spirit, but ultimately it’s also a great example of Pédron’s own considerable originality.

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Incredibly Kühn is now an octogenarian, and perhaps chasing the thrills and spills of yore he now returns to Siggi Loch’s ACT Music with what is perhaps some of his most challenging music for decades. Dubbed the French Trio, the press notes explain that the name is intended to convey that their music is played “the French way, with lightness, speed and elegance”. His collaborators were both handpicked with a specific approach in mind – Thibault Cellier (bass) is best known for his work with Papanosh and Novembre, while Sylvain Darrifourcq (drums) is associated with one of Kühn’s recent collaborators, saxophonist Émile Parisien. Convening at Kühn’s Ibiza home and studio in June 2023 for rehearsals and recordings, the pianist describes the resulting tapes as representing “how I want to sound now”.

Opening brightly with Ornette Coleman’s “Homogeneous Emotions”, a piece that Kühn often returns to, the spirit of both Kühn/Humair/Jenny-Clark and his late ‘60s Paris sessions for BYG looms large. Coleman’s playful theme quickly dissolves as the trio launches into a searing double-time improvisational rush, the brilliant Darrifourqc constantly stoking the flames. The fourteen minute title-track is credited to all three musicians, a frantic rubato intro cueing a searching bass solo before Kühn re-enters sparks a fresh conflagration. The transition from turbulent free improvisation to elegant classical counterpoint at the end of the piece is truly sublime, and it typifies the way that this trio is constantly building and replacing structures. “Go Süd” is by some distance the most reflective piece of the set, an open textured free-ballad with ample space for the three musicians to carve their individual filigrees, while the closing “Supertonic”, a semi-abstract burnout, finds the trio unleashing wave after wave of life-affirming energy without ever losing sight of its very musical core.

If there’s an obvious difference between this trio and Kühn/Humair/Jenny-Clark, other than the facile explanation of “different people, different times”, then it is surely that they favour long-form development over rapid turnaround. All told it’s simply stunning piece of work, and a powerful reminder that Kühn is still a vital force at the music’s cutting-edge.

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This duet with Swedish / Ethiopian-born singer Sofia Jernberg is no exception, and the music, recorded in Stockholm in September 2023, has its roots in a 2016 encounter at an improvised music ‘Meeting’ at Amsterdam’s Bimhuis. Both artists share a longstanding interest in Ethiopian music, Hawkins via his lengthy association with Ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke and Jernberg both through her cultural bonds and her collaborations with keyboardist Hailu Mergia. Yet great improvisers are rarely constrained by genre, and Hawkins and Jernberg tap into a variety of traditions to create a music that is unmistakably their own. David Toop’s thoughtful liner-notes explain that “Musho” is an old Amharic word describing songs of mourning, sometimes involving socio-political commentary. He invites us to reflect on the themes of displacement, home and cross-cultural seepage, and in many respects this music is a living embodiment of those eternally relevant
questions.

Drawing on folk songs from Ethiopia, Armenia, Sweden and England, but whatever the milieu Hawkins and Jernberg invariably discover the connecting threads. The songs are frequently riven with anguish, and Jernberg’s extraordinary vocal range and extended techniques take free rein as she explores their every nuance. Hawkins matches her every move, his dark chords creating instant gravity on opening “Adwa”, a battle song celebrating the repulsion of Italian colonisers from the town in 1896. As Jernberg’s cries become ever more passionate, the intensity of the unfolding drama is as exhilarating as it is crushing.

“Mannelig” by contrast takes us to Sweden to re-tell a dark folktale, and the juxtaposition of Jernberg’s crystalline melodic purity and Hawkins’ fractured accompaniment is utterly spellbinding. “Gigi’s Lament” has a crepuscular feel, the soft piano preparations setting the mood before Jernberg’s splintering voice pushes the music towards more abstract realms. “Groung” is a relatively conventional lament, a haunting piece from Armenia, and as Toop explains it is evidence of a long tradition of cultural exchange between Ethiopia and the West Asian territory. The echoes of the blues on the deeply spiritual “Y’shebellu” introduces a whole new raft of trans-continental connections, while Jernberg’s “Correct Behaviour” oscillates between serenity and something altogether more raw, her shattering birdsong raising hairs on the back of the neck.

The brevity of “Willow, Willow”, an old ballad from Elizabethan England, is more than outweighed by its emotional heft, while the closing “Muziqawi Silt”, an Ethio-jazz classic forever associated with Girma Bèyènè, positively bristles with energy and movement. As the duo’s free exchanges dissolve into a ghostly prepared piano coda, it is the perfect ending to a wonderfully inventive and sui generis collection.

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Norris is a particularly refreshing voice on the alto saxophone, and one who largely avoids pervasive influences to follow a more individual path. Alexander Hawkins’ perceptive album notes speak of the combination of the long melodic arcs of Lee Konitz, the tonal sweetness of the Benny Carter school (via Art Pepper) and the music’s rhythmic debt to hip-hop. Sometimes redolent of Greg Osby and the M-Base school, I also hear echoes of Coltrane and the finely balanced passion and poise of under-sung West Coast masters such as Warne Marsh and Anthony Ortega.

Joining Norris are Jay Verma (piano), an old pal from his Nottingham University days, Will Sach (bass) and Harry Ling (drums), whom Norris and Verma met during their respective studies at the Royal Academy and the Guildhall. Together they form an incredibly tight unit, their familiarity with the material going some way towards explaining the great composure evident throughout the recording. Many of the pieces were inspired by Norris’ life studying and working in London, and to extend Satie’s conceit yet further, they often blossom out of the smallest musical kernels and ideas.

“The Fulcrum” opens with an attractive series of repeating cells and motifs, Norris’ pellucid tone feeling its way into the theme before venturing further afield. By three minutes into the piece the trio is already disrupting the flow, coaxing some of Norris’ most fiery moments of the set. “The Bright Winding Path” and “Chorale” are short chamber-ish interludes, programmatically significant buffers between the more heavily improvised pieces. “Glacial” captures that simultaneous sense of restlessness and serenity of the bast Coltrane ballads, “Azazello” nods to its literary inspiration with an unresolved sense of unease worthy of the best antagonist, and the dance-like theme of “Un-ravel” quickly unfurls into a complex multi-sectioned piece. The curious call and response between Norris and Verma during the the enigmatic intro to “Dark Satellites” presages some lively exchanges between Sach an Ling, and Norris’ rubato balladry on the closing “Lamentation” almost imperceptibly morphs into a slow-burning ‘Tranish mid-section and another cleverly constructed solo from the mightily impressive Verma.

All told this is a debut album of considerable maturity and subtlety, and in an age where instant gratification is becoming the expected norm Norris makes a persuasive argument for the longer game.

Small Things Evolved Slowly is due for release on the Resonant Postcards label on 30 August with a launch at the Vortex the previous evening. Other confirmed tour dates for the Sam Norris Quartet are as follows:

4 September — Cherry Reds, Birmingham
3 October — Hot Numbers, Cambridge
4 November — The Parakeet, London
1 April 2025 — Fringe in the Round, Bristol. 

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The music of Finnish pianist Iiro Rantala can sometimes be difficult to place within the canon. Equally at home tearing it up in a small intimate jazz club as performing with an orchestra in a prestigious concert hall, he will often thread together musical styles as diverse as Baroque, soul jazz and Latin within the course of a single piece. Back home in Finland he has presented comedy shows on TV, and his ear for the absurd often reminds me of another great musical individualist, the late Frank Zappa.

This new trio, formed shortly before the pandemic, is Rantala’s first conventional piano trio since the demise of the much-loved Trio Töykeät in 2006. Taking its name from the IATA code for the international airport where most of Rantala’s musical journeys begin, the original lineup featured Rantala (piano) with Anton Eger (drums) and former E.S.T. backbone Dan Berglund. When Berglund’s impossibly busy diary prevented him from making it to the warm-up dates, Eger suggested the UK’s very own Conor Chaplin (bass) as a replacement. The two are of course regular bandmates in Marius Neset’s group and have a well developed musical understanding, and crucially they’re both sufficiently quick-footed to follow Rantala’s mercurial moves.

Fans of Trio Töykeät will enjoy hearing “Met By Chance” and “Gadd A Tee” re-worked as “Cabaret Perdu” and “Tee Four Three”, while the bright and bouncy title-track is itself a reference to Gadd and Tee’s early-‘80s super-trio Stuff. Rantala’s cascading solo leans heavily into the bluesy gospel stylings of hero Oscar Peterson, Eger’s complex rhythmic divisions probing all the while at Chaplin’s solid groove. The carefully choreographed fight scene of “Tae Kwon Don’t” suddenly breaks out into a tango, and almost as incongruous is the clash of explosive off-kilter rhythms and fast be-bop on “Will You Be My Bop?”, a virtuosic performance that recalls Chick Corea’s Akoustic Band at their best.

Yet the album is not without its reflective moments – the melancholia of “Stockholm Syndrome” salutes Rantala’s lost friend Esbjörn Svensson, its suggestive title and slightly clichéd tropes hinting that it may be time for a generation of players to escape the late pianist’s grip. The irony-free romanticism of “Second Date Waltz” and “A Lotta Love” (written for his wife) find the leader digging deep into his emotional reserves, and they’re a brilliant reminder of the largely self-taught Rantala’s strengths as a story-teller. Closing out in party style with a cover of Jaco Pastorius’ funky “Liberty City” from the bassist’s 1981 album Word Of Mouth, Mathias Heise (harmonica) joins the fray to turn the trio into a quartet. The ease with which he fits into the ensemble suggests further collaborations might follow, but for the time being Tough Stuff is a triumphant return for Rantala to a classic format.

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Rhythm Dissection is something of a bridge between the two worlds, offering a more rubato style of improvisation where compositional boundaries are looser and rhythmic structures more fluid. All of the material was thoroughly road-tested before Reznichenko sat down at the historic 1920 Steinway D at Tonstudio Bauer in Ludwigsburg, and her album notes describe the trio’s approach to the material as “not completely free, but rather an expansion of the motifs”. Variously recalling Wollny’s trio with Tim Lefebvre and Eric Schaefer, Kit Downes’ Enemy and Julius Windisch’s trio with Igor Spallati and Fermín Merloa, the trio seem happier to roll the dice.

The whimsically titled opener “A Ballad For A Cowboy Who Is Yet To Find Out About Fear” exemplifies the new approach, the stiff formality of its seemingly immovable theme slowly eaten away from the inside by a constant churn of off-centre rhythmic crosscurrents. The tight unisons and appealing Corea-like theme of “Elegie” are dispatched in equally short order, while the somewhat nervous pulse of “Hopeful Anxiety” is subjected to even greater stress-testing by Stadtfeld’s disruptive accents. “Solaris”, inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s tense psychological sci-fi drama, underscores the trio’s abilities to create and sustain atmosphere and mood, and Reznichenko’s admiration for Ligeti and Xenakis really shines through.

Elsewhere the staccato post-rock attack of “Salty Drunk Fish” and “Trampelpfad” (“Beaten Path”) stand in marked contrast to the wistful slow-tempo brilliance of “Old Feeling”, the darting changes of direction on “Polyphobic Impromptu” are a masterclass in quick-fire thinking, and as the trio shift through the gears on the bustling title-track I’m reminded of Phronesis at height of their powers. It will be interesting to hear where Reznichenko takes this trio next, and something tells me that she won’t be short of options.

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Flexibly post-bop in orientation, the trio’s musical interests span traditional Swiss folk music, classic jazz, original composition and free improvisation. Their 2020 debut 1291 (Outnote Records) was one of the picks of the year, and in terms of its repertoire Our Way follows a similar path. Yet with many more hours of collective playing behind them, their musical conversations now seem broader and deeper. Along with fresh re-arrangements of classics by Ellington (“Creole Love Call”) and Monk (“Jackie-ing” and “Bemsha Swing”) there’s a riotous deconstruction of “Tiger Rag”, several short but purposeful collective improvisations, further pieces from the Swiss folk cannon and perhaps best of all new versions of two of Humair’s best known pieces, “IRA” and “Genevamalgame”.

Humair, now approaching his 86th birthday, is a musical painter and pulse-maker extraordinaire. It’s quite a revelation to hear him channeling Baby Dodds on “Jackie-ing”, and the eight roller-coaster minutes of “Genevamalgame” are a direct hit to the solar plexus. Känzig operates as both harmonic anchor and free agent, and his funky ostinato on “Heiri’s Idea” is the ideal platform for Blaser’s brilliantly fluid inside-outside blowing. It’s not all about ebullient high energy blowing though – the trio’s chilled arrangement of “Bemsha Swing”, the doleful “Mazurka” and deeply reflective “IRA” all reveal a quieter and more sensitive side.

Hearing Blaser in such an open setting is always a pleasure, and so often this music transports me back to the great mid-‘70s trios of Albert Mangelsdorff (growling multi-phonics, slick “doodle” tongued legatos and all). In many respects Blaser is the German’s spiritual heir, and the influence can also be heard in the two compositions that he brings to the set. “Root Beer Rag” is the kind of playful blues Mangelsdorff once made his own (think of “I Mo’ Take You To My Hospital And Cut Your Liver Out” or “Ant Steps On Elephant’s Toe”), while the more explosive “Hook” fizzes with free-spirited joie de vivre.

Surely one of the most satisfying blasts of old-school European free jazz you’ll hear this year, I can only imagine what a formidable force Helveticus must be when playing live.

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The project was hatched in 2022, Stahl and Schiepek handpicking a group of musicians to perform his compositions at a series of Summer concerts. Julius Windisch (piano, keyboards) is one of the most exciting prospects from the Berlin scene, Leipzig-based Lorenz Heigenhuber (bass) brings a huge woody tone, and Leif Berger (drums) is garnering a growing reputation as a powerful presence within the Cologne scene.

Following the success of these concerts, the group reconvened in May 2023 at the Kyberg Studio in Munich to record an album brimming with confidence and pleasingly free of cliché. At the centre of group’s dynamics is the constant push-pull between musicians and material, Stahl’s very open structures affording each musician generous space to breathe. The seventeen tracks are thoughtfully sequenced, never settling in one place for too long but moving in a very natural flow. Five freely improvised “episodes” and the five part “Traumsequenz” are scattered amongst Stahl’s longer-form compositions, and in a nicely self-referential touch the improvised episodes are drawn from rejected takes of “Procrastination Episode”.

From the opening bars of “Introducing” we are drawn into an inviting space, Stahl’s multi-sectioned pieces at once suggesting the angularity of Paul Motian and the dark, sinuous movements of Wayne Shorter. His forceful tenor solo on “Procrastination Episode” momentarily recalls Gary Thomas, but in the main it’s difficult to discern any overt influences in his playing beyond Shorter. Schiepek introduces his supple nylon-stringed guitar to the more open-textured “Salzweisen”, our first chance to hear the fabulously inventive Windisch at length, and the first of the dream sequences, “Lenticular Labyrinth”, is as disorienting as its title suggests, Stahl’s commanding tenor eventually finding the centre.

Elsewhere the atmospheric abstractions of “The Ominous” display a kinship to Motian’s mid-‘80s collaborations with Lovano and Frisell, and the choppy rhythms and evocative electro-acoustic textures of fifth dream sequence “Luxe Cache” make it one of the set’s most arresting pieces. Stahl switches to soprano for the pretty Shorter-esque ballad “Olivers Pensive”, both Schiepek and Stahl negotiate knotty post-bop terrain on the nearly swinging “Lonk”, and the closing “Aiglatson” even carries a faint whiff of nostalgia. For the most part Stahl’s gaze is fixed firmly on the future, but fleeting moments like these remind us he is part of a longer tradition.

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Assembling a very special twelve-piece ensemble for the occasion, Lockheart’s decision not to feature the piano has the effect of thinning out the sound-stage and places stronger emphasis his rock solid backline of John Parricelli (guitar), Tom Herbert (bass) and Dave Smith (drums). Lockheart wrote all of the charts and he solos liberally across the piece, while Rowland Sutherland (flute), Nathaniel Facey (alto saxophone), Laura Jurd (trumpet) and James Allsopp (clarinets) are among the featured soloists.

Opening brightly with the Afro-beat vibes of “Morning Smiles”, Paricelli’s choppy chords lock-in with bass and drums as the long serpentine theme unfolds. Sutherland’s darting solo is followed by some typically robust shredding from Paricelli and biting soprano from the leader. The interaction of the moving parts on “Back And Forth” is absolutely breathtaking, its complex linear theme, dissonant horn voicings and static rhythmic churn creating the most dramatic of backdrops for Facey’s angular excursion. “Western Shores” by contrast carries shades of David Lynch, a sort of haunted Americana which never quite resolves, while the multi-sectioned “Lunch With The Devil” toys furtively with a sense of impending danger.

Elsewhere “Wrap Me Up” is slow and lyrical, a very English ballad and strongly redolent of the sounds of ‘70s British prog. The relaxed funk of “Rapture Of The Deep” is brought to boiling point by Harry Maund’s rasping trombone, and the altogether more introspective “In Deeper” recalls Lockheart’s exquisite balladry on his 2009 album In Deep. Closing with full-length and radio edits of the hard grooving “I’ve Seen The Light”, its fast-paced and precision cut theme paints a mildly dystopian vision of the future. The contrast with the warmth of the slow blues passage which follows is striking, a timely reminder perhaps of the risk of humanity being swallowed whole by an age of machines.

All told Smiling is far more than just a salute to Britain’s jazz-rock pioneers. Tying together the many diverse strands of Lockheart’s long and adventurous career in a single and hugely enjoyable package, it is to my ears his strongest Edition release to date.

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