Evan Parker / Barry Guy & Paul Lytton on INTAKT, The Wire 4-18

THE WIRE, 4-18

DON CHERRY & IRENE SCHWEIZER: MUSICAL MONSTERS (INTAKT)

 The Guardian - 9th September 2016

Jazz

Don Cherry / Irène Schweizer: Musical Monsters review – technical class and experimental appetite

3 / 5 stars

(Intakt)

Marking history … the Swiss piano virtuoso Irène Schweizer, who called for the release of the Willisau tapes for Musical Monsters. Photograph: Markus di Francesco

By John Fordham

This encounter between world-jazz trumpet legend Don Cherry, Danish-American alto saxophonist John Tchicai, Swiss piano virtuoso Irène Schweizer, bassist Léon Francioli and percussionist Pierre Favre had been buried in the vaults since the original performance at Switzerland’s Willisau festival in 1980. Schweizer recently heard the tapes and called for their release as a unique document in the story of European free jazz. Loosely based on sketchy arrangements the five cooked up in a pre-gig chat, it’s blustery, exhilarating music, in which minimal trumpet patterns become genially wayward Ornette Coleman-like motifs and fast bass-walks spark avant-swing sprints. Over these, Tchicai’s eerie violin-like alto soars, or the horns tussle above Favre’s hustling drums and Schweizer’s streaming runs. There’s a good deal of manically abstract vocalising as well as strutting slow marches like Albert Ayler band numbers. The track Musical Monsters 3 is approximately and unexpectedly danceable, and the unaccompanied solos demonstrate both the technical class and experimental appetites of all the players. It’s one for the free-jazzers, but a rare one.

JAZZ: Sylvie Courvoisier, Mark Feldman, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori - Miller’s Tale / 4 Star review John Fordham THE GUARDIAN

Sylvie Courvoisier, Mark Feldman, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori: Miller’s Tale review – mesmerising free improv

The partnership of Swiss pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and American violinistMark Feldman has spanned most variations of sharp-end jazz over the years, but the quartet on this all-improv session is one of their loosest, featuring British sax innovator Evan Parker and Japanese electronics artist and percussionist Ikue Mori. There are four group pieces, and five for various duets. The opening Death of a Salesman’s creaking-door sounds mixed with straight-violin delicacies and agitated free-percussion takes no prisoners, but the flighty dances of Parker’s soprano sax with Feldman’s spinning falsetto lines and the thriller-movie poundings of the finale are lyrical and dramatic. Quiet piano-string pluckings shadow rapturous slow-bowed tones; piano improv hurtles over whooshing, rustling percussion; dreamy violin arias are swept into free-sax meditations. Feldman’s duet with Mori’s twinkly electronic tones, Parker’s jazzy tenor-sax dialogue with Courvoisier and the latter’s delicate finale with Mori are duet highlights of a set that shows just how sonically mesmerising and musical free-improv can be. JOHN FORDHAM

fROOTS 4-16 review of Keita, Brönnimann & Niggli album (INTAKT)

DAILY TELEGRAPH: The best jazz albums of 2016 (so far)

Daily Telegraph:

The best jazz albums of 20166: ALY KEÏTA, JAN GALEGA BRÖNNIMANN, LUCAS NIGGLI: KALO-YELE  (INTAKT RECORDS)

What would the combination of two Swiss jazz musicians and an African musician from Ivory Coast lead to? A limp specimen of flavourless “world jazz”, would be the sceptical response. In fact this CD is a delight. Clarinetist Jan Galega Brönniman and drummer Lucas Niggli were actually born in Cameroon, and seem to have a natural affinity for the idioms of African music. Aly Keïta plays the balafon, a kind of West African xylophone, and the kalimba, a tuned row of flexible metal plates plucked with the thumbs, known in the West as a ‘thumb-piano’. 

Composing honours are shared among all three, but the natural joyousness of Keïta’s pieces make them instantly recognisable as his. The two melody players swap roles constantly, first one supplying the repeating pattern underneath the melody line, then the other. Niggli’s drumming is so deft he often creates the illusion of shadowing the melodic patterns. It’s a proper meeting of equals, which is what makes this unlikely album so successful. ★★★★☆ IH]

THE GUARDIAN: Aruan Ortiz review

Jazz

Aruán Ortiz Trio: Hidden Voices review – bracing contemporary jazz

3/5stars

    

(Intakt)

 Percussive dynamism … Aruán Ortiz

John Fordham

Thursday 21 January 2016 19.00 GMTLast modified on Thursday 21 January 201619.02 GMT

Cuban pianist Aruán Ortiz caught the ears of UK jazz listeners with US sax star Greg Osby a few years back, and his growing reputation is confirmed by this New York recording of tautly percussive originals and a couple of Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk covers, on which Ortiz is partnered by bassist Eric Revis and one of jazz’s sharpest drummers, Gerald Cleaver. Ortiz belongs in the ballpark of time-bending piano experimenters such as Vijay Iyer, David Virelles and the late Paul Bley, but his group plays with one mind. Coleman’s Open and Close and The Sphinx tumultuously merge with percussive dynamism, there are almost pure-rhythm exercises of steady drum-hits and ticking repeat notes, abstract-improv snickerings. Monk’s Skippy hides in a swirl of collective free-playing, and Rafael Ortiz’s Uno, Dos y Tres, Que Paso is a meticulously slow-moving remake of a Cuban traditional classic. It’s bracing contemporary jazz, and the trio is due to visit the UK with it in April.

WADADA LEO SMITH & GÜNTER SOMMER. Morning Star / Features

JAZZWISE review: Fred Frith & Barry Guy / Fred Frith & Lotte Anker

JAZZWISE - 4 out of 5 Star review SCHWEIZER / WICKIHALDER - SPRING

JAZZWISE, Februar 2015

TELEGRAPH Review: TRIO 3 & VIJAY IYER

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, UK / 10th SEPTEMBER 2014

Trio 3 & Vijay Iyer, Wiring, album review

Trio 3 are joined by Vijay Iyer, that intellectually self-aware pianist, on their new jazz album Wiring

Trio 3 + Vijay Iyer are Olive Lake, Reggie Workman (below left), Andrew Cyrille and pianist Vijay Iyer Photo: www.intaktrec.ch

By Ivan Hewett, Jazz Critic

2:20PM BST 10 Sep 2014

The incandescent free jazz of late John Coltrane and Albert Ayler lives on, in Trio 3. In recent years, they’ve released a number of albums on the Intakt label with pianists who share their free spirit. On the latest they’re joined by Vijay Iyer, that intellectually self-aware pianist who unites a reverence for the American tradition with memories of his Indian parentage.

Iyer embraces to the visionary aesthetic of the Trio, which means he’s had to rein in his fascination with pattern and number. However it peeps out here and there, particularly in the repeating bass patterns of Slimm, the first movement of the Suite for Travyon (and Thousands More).

You’d expect anger in a piece in memory of the black teenager Travyon Martin, shot by a neighbourhood watchman in a case that’s still unresolved.

In fact it’s movingly restrained, and has a tone of stoic dignity. In Reggie Workman’s Willow Song Iyer often shadows Oliver Lake’s saxophone melody, before spinning off into some free-wheeling idea of his own. The effect is of something so big it casts a soft-edged shadow. As always with this trio, the blues is never far away, and the pull between that earthiness and the music’s freewheeling impulse is fascinating.

Trio 3 & Vijay Iyer: Wiring (Intakt Records)

THE GUARDIAN: review HARRY SOKAL DEPART

Harry Sokal: Depart Refire CD review – the kind of dynamic jazz that creates converts

(Intakt)

• 
• • John Fordham
  • The Guardian, Thursday 4 September 2014 21.05 BST
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Indecently funky … Harry Sokal. Photograph: Francesca Pfeffer

For anyone familiar with Swiss label Intakt’s frequently cutting-edge output, this trio set by Austrian saxophonist Harry Sokal might seem indecently funky. But Sokal, who played in star American trumpeter Art Farmer’s group for 20 years and is a key figure in the Vienna Art Orchestra, plays a very capricious kind of what he describes as “groove music” on the latest from his 30-year-old Depart trio. Seven of the 13 tight pieces here are by Sokal’s longtime bassist, Heiri Känzig, and the prodding bass riff, in 5/8 time, and wah-wah-assisted sax of the opening Talking 58 is typical of the pair’s direct-sounding but seductively knotty music. Chambers’ Room sounds like bebop over a rocking jazz-funk riff, but played on a bowed acoustic bass. Funky Straight has a catchy, twisting melody against Martin Valihora’s slamming drums. The folksy Erzherzog-Johann-Jodler, meanwhile, could almost be a Sonny Rollins feature – but one delivered in electronically generated sax chords. On the gently curling Peace on My Mind, Sokal shows what a subtle player of an unadorned acoustic ballad he can be. It’s the kind of dynamic jazz set that creates converts.

JAZZWISE Review: HALVORSON & CRUMP - SUPER 8

JAZZWISE, JULY 2013

JAZZWISE: Schlippenbach plays Monk

Review JAZZWISE: Alexander von Schlippenbach plays Monk (INTAKT)

CONCERT: AKI TAKASE and HAN BENNINK plus Paul van Kemenade

TAKASE & BENNINK in LONDON, 9 December 




The fantastic duo of Japanese pianist AKI TAKASE & legendary Dutch drummer HAN BENNINK with guest Paul van Kemenade (saxophone) will play at The Vortex, London, on 9th of December, 8:30 pm. More information: vortexjazz.co.uk

Listen to:

CD: Aki Takase / Han Bennink: Two for Two (Intakt CD 193)

further information: www.intaktrec.ch
press photos: http://www.intaktrec.ch/photogallery.htm

INTAKT 202: MAYA HOMBURGER / BARRY GUY: TALES OF ENCHANTMENT

MAYA HOMBURGER / BARRY GUY:

TALES OF ENCHANTMENT 

INTAKT RECORDS 202

Maya Homburger Baroque violin

Barry Guy Bass

1 Veni Creator Spiritus (Hymne 9th century and improvisation) 2’02
Barry Guy “Hommage à Max Bill” (2–8)
2 Field on Thirty-Two Parts in Four Colours I 2’27 | 3 Enclosed Nucleus II 0’34
4 Two Surrounded Squares III 1’30 | 5 Nine Accentuations IV 0’44
6 Quiet V 1’54 | 7 Construction in Black VI 1’08 | 8 Condensation towards Yellow VII 2’20
9 H. I. F. Biber (1644 –1704) Mystery Sonata No 6 “The Agony in the Garden” 7’59
10 György Kurtág “Hommage à J. S. B.” 2’25 | 11 H. I. F. Biber Mystery Sonata No 9 “The Carrying of the Cross” (with introduction and interlude by Barry Guy) 8’04
12 Barry Guy “Going Home” 5’25
Barry Guy “Tales of Enchantment” (13 –19) for Elana Gutmann
13 Promise I 2’55 | 14 La Bella Fortuna II 2’07 | 15 Proximity III 4’11 | 16 Reflection IV 2’20 17 Whistling V 1’54 | 18 Shadow VI 1’05 | 19 Hero VII 2’25
20 H. I. F. Biber Mystery Sonata No 15 “The Coronation of the Virgin” (Canzona and Sara- banda) 5’04

Recorded by Peter Laenger, December 13 – 15, 2011, Propstei St. Gerold, St. Gerold, Austria. Recording produced by Peter Laenger and Barry Guy. CD produced by Intakt Records. Intakt CD 202 EAN_7640120192020 

Maya Homburger and Barry Guy span more than a millennium to join ”Veni Creator Spiritus,” the 9th Century hymn Mahler appropriated for his epic eighth symphony, and Guy’s seven-part tribute to Max Bill, a founder of the concrete art and design movement. What Homburger and Guy achieve is rather stun- ning, as they seamlessly bridge an ethereal paean to the Holy Spirit and a vividly abstract contemporary composition inspired by an artist who sought to create works free of symbolism – and sustain a reverent tone throughout the sequence.

These exchanges between past and present – and between media – are parenthetical to the album’s framing tale, Homburger and Guy’s ongoing exploration of the dynamism between composi- tion and interpretation, a journey for which they are uniquely cre- dentialed. Between them, they have performed with most of the principal ensembles of the period instrument movement, which led them to outlier views about the applicability of Baroque-era thinking about articulations, colorations, and pitch relationships to contemporary music. 
                                                                                   Bill Shoemaker, from the liner notes 


Daniel Spicer, The WIRE, Dec 2012:

further information: www.intaktrec.ch
press photos: http://www.intaktrec.ch/photogallery.htm