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.

Daniel Spicer in JAZZWISE on 'Schweizer / Bennink

4 Star review JAZZWISE: Schweizer & Bennink

4 Star Review: Schlippenbach Trio - Features (John Fordham / The Guardian)

The Guardian / John Fordham

Schlippenbach Trio: Features (Intakt)

Improvised by master craftsmen

4 / 5 stars

The trio of Alex von Schlippenbach, saxophonist Evan Parker and drummer Paul Lovens are nowadays that enemy of free-improv purity: an institution (the three have played together for 45 years). But if they can almost unerringly read each other’s minds, their methods have never hardened into habit, and their work over the decades has immense variety. There are 15 numbered Features here, and they are tautly concise, and often defined by improvised openings by one or other participant that shape their developing character. Feature 1 begins very melodically, developing with logical rigour and ends on a haunting multiphonic sustained tone. Some pieces weave Parker’s nimble mid-range tenor sax lines through percussive backdrops of banging chords and Lovens’ light, scuttling patterns; some are soft and ballad-like. Feature 6 highlights Schlippenbach as a brusque romantic; Feature 8 sounds like jazzy call-and-response; Feature 11 is a tone poem for Parker’s remarkable textural palette. It’s unpremeditated music executed by master craftsmen.

SCHLIPPENBACH TRIO: 'Features' / Review JAZZWISE Aug 2015

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INGRID LAUBROCK ANTI-HOUSE: REVIEW JAZZWISE August 2015