The beauty of this music is its sweet melancholy and gloomy atmosphere that is able to lure you deeper into the mix. Scottish pianist and producer Ricky Reid has assembled jazz and classical musicians in a remote place in the Scottish highlands and came up with this über-cinematic collection of songs. The vibrant drums on…
Singer Sheila Jordan posted a comment on Facebook after the death of the legendary Jon Hendricks, saying that “Jon was the first rapper on the scene.” And of course he was one of the very few who could set lyrics to difficult melodies (and it always matched) and he could perform them so gracefully and…
Those were his words describing his band and what was going on on stage. “insane, out there, weird, spacy”. Indeed, the opening number was an atmospheric track right out of space, with a heavy and thick keyboard curtain from his Korg Kronos. It was the first time that I saw the keyboard maestro with his…
It’s Thanksgiving week and we were supposed to be in New York right now. But Airberlin unfortunately had other plans. So we’re going to prepare a turkey ourselves here. And it is also the start of the holiday music season. This year again, a few interesting Christmas albums have been released. Smokey Robinson has come…
Run N’ Fly is a new music collective under the direction of guitarist Sandro Albert. Helping out with the lyrics is Brazilian artist Manu Lafer and for all those out there studying the liner notes and personnel on all of your records, the group consists of session musicians and singers who have appeared on thousands…
It was an interesting coincidence to open her act with “Got To Love”, a song about gentrification and about her old Brooklyn neighborhood being transformed over the years, in a new boutique hotel right in the middle of Kreuzberg’s Oranienstrasse (yes, the same street where we ended up partying all night long in the early…
I bought Will Downing‘s first LP in May, 1988. His version of “A Love Supreme” with Stanley Turrentine on sax still resonates. Other cuts like “In My Dreams” or the cover of the Deniece Williams classic “Free” have become soul standards. 20 albums and almost 30 years later, you really can call him a soul…
Danish singer Sinne Eeg opens her new album “Dreams” (her ninth) with the seductive, bluesy, exhilarating “The Bitter End”. The color of her strong voice and her perfect pitch match well with the piano solo by Jacob Christoffersen and the forceful guitar of Larry Koonse. Joey Baron accompanies on drums majestically and Scott Colley’s bass…
After the wise and successful move to Kreuzberg’s Lido for the first two nights of this year’s festival, the remaining four days were staged at the traditional, main venue, the Haus Der Berliner Festspiele (and various club/church locations again). Friday night was the most difficult one for me. It turned out that the concert…
After the very fitting move to Kreuzberg’s Lido on the first two days, Jazzfest Berlin moved to its home location at Haus der Berliner Festspiele for the first of four concerts of artist-in-residence Tyshawn Sorey. The multi-instrumentalist is not really using a regular drum set, but rather a gigantic smorgasbord of various percussion instruments plus…