Toine Thys/Orlando: Orlando (Hypnote/digital outlets)

 |   |  1 min read

Toine Thys/Orlando: Orlando (Hypnote/digital outlets)

It's a wee bit confusing: It seems this jazz quarter called Orlando but it is lead by saxophonist Toine Thys who also gets his name on the cover, but on digital outlets the album title is Orlando so . . . 

And while this came out digitally late last year we bring it to attention now because the French-Belgian group just won the Octave de la Musique jazz award in Belgium, and only now can get behind it by touring.

Of course they won't be coming to New Zealand but here's a chance to hear what goes on in European jazz.

And this is very tasty in a meditative, consider way by this excellent band of Thys, drummer Antoine Pierre (who has played with Joshua Redman), French acoustic bassist Florent Nisse and pianist Maxime Sanchez (Magic Malik, and those household names Flash Pig).

Thys – sometimes on bass clarinet which brings a dark woody tone to proceedings – is unhurried and drummer Pierre sets the appropriate tempo leaving plenty of air which none of the players rush to fill.

The result is classic, mainstream jazz with just enough tension behind the romantic but never saccharine balladry.

In that regard, Virginia Woolf whose novel of the same name gave its title to this album/group wrote, “Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.”

And on material like the slightly moody and bluesy Gospel Simple and the especially appealing Angel de la Guarda lead in by pianist Sanchez and allowing bassist Nisse to step forward, you really do understand that sensibility.

Award-winning jazz from our friends in the north.

Well worth checking out.

.

You can hear this album on Spotify here





Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Jazz at Elsewhere articles index

Mike Nock: An Accumulation of Subtleties (FWM/Rhythmethod)

Mike Nock: An Accumulation of Subtleties (FWM/Rhythmethod)

This quite exceptional double disc by New Zealand-born pianist/composer Nock arrives with the advantage of great timing: Norman Meehan's fine biography of Nock, Serious Fun, has just been published... > Read more

PAT METHENY INTERVIEWED (2020): The confounding career of Pat Metheny

PAT METHENY INTERVIEWED (2020): The confounding career of Pat Metheny

For more than 45 years, over as many albums and 20 Grammy awards, 65-year old Pat Metheny established himself as the pre-eminent guitarist of his generation. That he's not a household name isn't... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

Jessi Colter: Diamond in the Rough (1976)

Jessi Colter: Diamond in the Rough (1976)

The sassy Jessi Colter was married to the late Waylon Jennings and was something of a rarity in the Seventies, she was a woman (and a confident, songwriting woman at that) and part of the almost... > Read more

THE SIXTIES by JENNY DISKI: What a long strange trip . . .

THE SIXTIES by JENNY DISKI: What a long strange trip . . .

Has any decade been more feted, essayed and mythologised than the Sixties? The flowers in hippies’ headbands had barely wilted when the analysis began, and since then many of those who were... > Read more