Souvenance (ECM) In the six tumultuous years since Anouar Brahem’s last album the Tunisian has watched his homeland explode amid the hopes and horrors of the Arab Spring. This double-album for quartet and string orchestra is his response. In no sense programmatic, it is rather the considered musical thoughts of…
Category: Album Reviews – Archive
Solo (ABC) You sense a depth here from the opening notes. Paul Grabowsky has never recorded a solo piano album before and you hear the resolve to make the opportunity count. His harmonic extrapolations on the delicate Angel are so rich and surprising it is like turning the pages of…
Made in Chicago (ECM) When jazz migrated north from New Orleans in the 1920s it slept on Chicago’s sofa before lobbing in New York, and the Windy City has remained a major jazz centre ever since. The 1960s were especially fertile: pianist Muhal Richard Abrahams’ ground-breaking Experimental Band led to…