Jazz in Elsewhere
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DAVE LISIK INTERVIEWED (2012): The mothership takes flight
21 Jan 2013 | 2 min read
Canadian-born and US-educated Dave Lisik is one of the more innovative composers at work in New Zealand today. And also highly prolific. A scan back through Elsewhere's files shows him working with electronic-meets-jazz for Colin Hemmingsen's Fate and the Processor, a not dissimilar approach using taonga puoro (traditonal Maori instruments) played by Richard Nunns on Ancient Astronaut... > Read more
Ebony and Moonlight
Tania Giannouli, Paulo Chagas: Forest Stories (Rattle)
21 Jan 2013 | 1 min read
Although not on the Rattle Jazz imprint, these eight diverse, melodic and mood shifting pieces are pure improvisations for piano (Giannouli) and saxes/flutes/clarinets (Chagas) and evoke something of the timelessness, emotional space and natural power of the forests of the title. Without much difficulty -- and let's be honest, pure improvisation along these lines can be hard going for most... > Read more
This Beautiful Hard Way
PALLE MIKKELBORG PROFILED (2013): Another man with a horn
7 Jan 2013 | 1 min read
The curious thing about the career of Denmark's acclaimed jazz trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg is that after 25-years as a professional -- and at the top of his game -- he came to wide international attention only in '84 with a suite which was performed by another trumpeter. That music, which subsequently appeared on the album Aura in '89, was played by and written in honour of Miles Davis... > Read more
White (by Palle Mikkelborg)
STEPHAN MICUS PROFILED (2013): Music of the spheres and beyond
1 Jan 2013 | 1 min read
Take a deep breath because here’s a partial list of the instruments German multi-tasker Stephan Micus has played on recent albums: Bavarian zither, tin whistle, sattar, steel guitar, Japanese flute (shakuhachi), tuned flowerpots, Egyptian flute (nay), steel drums, Indian sarangi, dulcimer -- and lots I can’t even pretend to know about like bolombatto, sinding, dilruba, doussn’... > Read more
Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Live (ECM/Ode)
1 Jan 2013 | <1 min read
A previous album by this often melodically minimalist, rhythmically propulsive and effervescent group around keyboard player Bartsch -- Llyria -- was singled out as one the Best of Elsewhere in 2010 and this double live disc recorded at various venues between 2009 - 2011 confirms that they are something special. And different. Young, vigorous and playing with a constraint which sometimes... > Read more
Modul 17 Tokyo
DAVE BRUBECK (1920-2012): Standing the test of Time
7 Dec 2012 | 4 min read
Time. It marched on. Dave Brubeck lived to a fine old age in jazz where unemployment, insolvency and lifestyle usually takes its toll much earlier. In his obituaries Brubeck could reasonably expect tributes for popularising jazz with American college students in the Fifties, appearing on the cover to Time magazine in 1954, releasing one of the most durable and popular jazz albums of all time... > Read more
The Harvest: Page/Brown/Psathas (Rattle Jazz)
26 Nov 2012 | 1 min read | 1
This two-part album -- The Harvest Suite in eight sections, Like Picking Fruit in nine -- features Adelaide-based expat Kiwi saxophonist Adam Page, guitarist James Brown and producer John Psathas on pieces where the raw sounds of sax and guitar are looped and electronic effects employed to create textural swathes and moments -- as on The Couple's Prelude on The Harvest Suite -- which come off... > Read more
Condense
Jarrett, Garbarek, Danielsson, Christensen: Sleeper (ECM/Ode)
4 Oct 2012 | 1 min read
By my exceptionally crude count, pianist Keith Jarrett's name (as leader of a group or solo) is on at least 65 albums -- and some, indeed many, of those are double albums, triple sets or large boxes. I guess saxophonist Jan Garbarek wouldn't be too far behind (although he generally limits hmself to single discs) and bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Jon Christensen are no slouches when... > Read more
New Dance
Jasmine Lovell-Smith's Towering Poppies: Fortune Songs (Paint Box)
26 Sep 2012 | 1 min read
Lovell-Smith is an expat New Zealander currently living in New York after having completed her music degree at the School of Music in Wellington. After nine years in the capital -- playing alongside Norman Meehan, Paul Dyne, Reuben Bradley and others -- she upped stakes for the tougher climate on the Big Apple. On the evidence of this modest, often cautious but always melodic outing with... > Read more
Lover's Knot
Marc Johnson, Elaine Elias: Swept Away (ECM/Ode)
23 Sep 2012 | 1 min read
Longtime followers of the ECM label will register that this one ticks any number of the right boxes: the line-up of pianist Elaine Elias, bassist Marc Johnson, drummer Joey Baron (a working trio in their own right) and tenor player Joe Lovano is one of those modest "supergroup" aggregations of talent which the label does so effortlesly. This is unashamedly lyrical, melodic music... > Read more
B is for Butterfly
Enrico Rava: On the Dance Floor (ECM/Ode)
24 Aug 2012 | 1 min read
Of all the tributes to Michael Jackson, this -- by the great jazz trumpeter Rava -- would seem the most unexpected. If Miles Davis were still alive we might not have been surprised by such an exploration of Jackson's tunes, but European Rava admits he only ever had passing acquaintance with Jackson's music. It wasn't until a few days after the singer-writer's death that he came home from a... > Read more
Little Susie
Kim Paterson: The Duende (Sarang Bang Records)
1 Aug 2012 | 1 min read | 2
Auckland trumpeter Kim Paterson has been around for perhaps as long as most jazz listeners can recall but has been poorly represented on albums under his own name. In fact I'm scratching to think of even one . . . although he was on albums by such important groups as Dr Tree, Space Case and Jazzmobile of which he was a key member, and more recently has appeared alongside Gianmarco Liguori and... > Read more
Catharsis
Steve Kuhn Trio: Wisteria (ECM/Ode)
16 Jul 2012 | 1 min read
Elegance in piano playing is usually the description reserved for the exclusive use of reviewers about Bill Evans, but here Steve Kuhn makes a strong claim on thoughtful pieces such as the title track, Romance and the lovely Pastorale where (I am guessing, my CD came with no cover) bassist Steve Swallow plays a soft and enticing guitar-like melody. In fact, if it weren't for Joey Baron's... > Read more
Pastorale
John Surman: Saltash Bells (ECM/Ode)
29 Jun 2012 | <1 min read | 1
Sort of radio-without-pictures here from multi-instrumentalist John Surman who was scheduled to work with a photographer/filmmaker to document the area in Devon where he grew up. When that project didn't pan out Surman just continued to explore the idea though his music in pieces which reference specific places (Dartmoor, Plymouth Sound etc). With synthesiser frequently providing the... > Read more
Dark Reflections
John Abercrombie Quartet: Within a Song (ECM/Ode)
27 Jun 2012 | <1 min read
Although we look back on the Sixties as being a decade of remarkable invention and vibrancy in jazz -- through Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and into the early energy of free jazz -- here guitarist Abercrombie and his seasoned quartet pay a more considered and quiet tribute on material and ideas from that era. With saxophonist Joe Lovano,... > Read more
Interplay
Fly: Year of the Snake (ECM/Ode)
24 Jun 2012 | 1 min read
This sinuous, mysterious, rhythmic and back-to-the-bone album comes from a young trio which has impeccable pedigree. Saxophonist Mark Turner has played with numerous ECM artists (Dave Holland, Paul Motian) as well as Brad Mehldau, Billy Hart and James Moody; bassist Larry Grenadier came through Gary Burton's band to clock up work with Enrico Rava (he and Turner were on the... > Read more
Diorite
AUCKLAND'S FIRST JAZZ CONCERT, 1950: Shedding some bloody light
17 Jun 2012 | 5 min read
The words have written themselves into the history of great New Zealand phrases in the same way as Peter Jones' comment after the 1956 Springbok test, or prime minister Jim Bolger's dismissive words about pollsters after the general election in 1993. For those those who were there on the night though, Peter Young's first words through the microphone in the Auckland Town Hall Concert... > Read more
I Can't Get Started
Sheppard/Benita/Rochford: Trio Libero (ECM/Ode)
28 May 2012 | 1 min read
This elegant and sinuously lyrical album features two generations of British jazz musicians; saxophonist Andy Sheppard who came to prominence in the post-Marsalis years in the Eighties alongside Courtney Pine in the vanguard of UK scene, and drummer/composer Seb Rochford (interviewed here) whose geometric style comes full of odd angles and accents which launched him into the spotlight more... > Read more
When We Live On the Stars
Billy Hart: All Our Reasons (ECM/Ode)
7 May 2012 | 1 min read
Previously Elsewhere has sympathised with those for whom jazz can be a bewildering array of names, and specifically when it comes to groups on the ECM label who seem little more than temporary coagulations of talent. So this album which seems to appear under the name of drummer Billy Hart is just going to add to the confusion. Initially the group was named for the pianist (Ethan Iverson... > Read more
Nigeria
Nathan Haines: The Poet's Embrace (Haven/Warners)
4 Apr 2012 | 1 min read | 1
At the launch of this classy album recently, the graphic designer Andrew B White -- who had done the cover for both this and Kevin Field's Field of Vision -- made an interesting aside. He noted that Haines' new album -- all acoustic -- sounded more like Field's previous one Irony, and that Field of Vision -- with electronic keyboards and vocalists -- sounded like Haines' previous albums.... > Read more