As evening blurs into night, technicoloured lettering slithers around the concrete bulk of LOCH in Wuppertal. A sandwich board crouches in the shadow of the club’s graffitied façade. "Seid bitte leise." Please be quiet. It’s a call for discretion from the venue’s visitors on 26 October. Inside, band Kaisa’s Machine is delivering 90 minutes of suitably subtle sound.
Finnish bassist Kaisa Mäensivu is the Machine’s operator. Her band has existed for nearly 10 years, with members changing for each studio session or show. For this night shift in north-west Germany, she’s joined by fellow Finn Max Zenger on alto saxophone and Danish pianist Rasmus Sorensen, with Spanish drummer Andreu Pitarch. The production plan features nine pulsating-but-patient compositions from her 2023 album, Taking Shape (Greenleaf Music).
It...
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The Melbourne International Jazz Festival aspires to be recognised as a world-class jazz festival. This year, it got it mostly right. The artistic direction – 10 days of concerts across a range of venues...
John Stubblefield was of a jazz generation that was thoroughly grounded in the music’s values yet open to new developments, in his case with particular reference to what was once known as the avant-garde.
This book has been written and compiled by...
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2R+2B: Live At The Tbilisi Jazz Festival 1978
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