Vladimir Redzic: First Time Around
Chess-loving guitarist Vladimir Redzic makes some distinctive moves on his debut album, not least the insistence on spare, single-note lines. In numbers such as With A Song In My Heart he is almost content with stating the melody and its modest variations unadorned. Not that the guitar excursions lack feeling but after a while one craves chords, despite the early modern tradition of feeding out lead lines and licks as minimalist washing-lines. It’s almost as if the comping of the album’s inspiring pianist, Steve Ash, is sometimes an attempt to tease similar sounds out of the leader.
Serbia-born New Yorker Redzic opts for his customary instrument, a Daniel Slaman hand-crafted archtop. The metallic sound suggests a hybrid acoustic-electric that, if at its best singing praises as a horn might, is nevertheless surrounded by musicians whose playing seems routinely used to something with more depth and fire.
The album is thus an unhurried retailing of standards that makes a virtue of relaxation. That’s nowhere more typical than in the only appearance of vocalist Ale Nuñez on These Foolish Things. Redzic’s contrapuntal tendencies are productively enjoined with Ash’s in the guitar-piano treatments of Parker’s Chasin’ The Bird.
Rudimentary chord-striking marks the Redzic original Bishop’s Gambit. The chart is dedicated to the guitarist Ben Bishop, who has helped shape Redzic’s style, one evidently incorporating the influences of Grant Green and Kenny Burrell.
Redzic and Ash are accompanied on the first five tracks by drummer Steve Little and bassist Jonathan Meyer. Little drops out for the final five, on which Neal Miner replaces Meyer. All are at home with one another in conditions of unforced, if understated, intimacy.
Discography
I’ve Got A Crush On You; With A Song In My Heart; Blue Gardenia; Bishop’s Gambit; These Foolish Things; Chasin’ The Bird; How Long Has This Been Going On?; Thou Swell; I’m In The Mood For Love; I Didn’t Know What Time It was (50.10)
Redzic (g); Steve Ash (p); Jonathan Meyer, Neal Miner (b); Steve Little (d); Ale Nuñez (v). New York, 18 July/30 August 2025.
Independent
Bjarke Falgren: Turkis
Why did I suspect that Low Five, track eight on Danish violinist-composer Bjarke Falgren’s new album of originals, might be a pastiche of Paul Desmond’s Take Five? It was; but the album’s first two tracks might make you think this wasn’t a jazz record. Falgren says of his composing method “I listen. I wait. And when the wind turns, I follow.” This zephyr-powered pursuit of inspiration has led him here to a region served by Latin American flavours, soft-focus orchestral concepts, marshmallow harmonising, and a way of bowing the violin so seductive that it appears to claim a sonic category of its own. He says he works with the bow “the way others work with the voice.” He certainly plays jazz lines on the violin and is well supported by a group that sounds well versed in the style.
However, despite his background in jazz, folk traditions and “improvised music”, Falgren does seem susceptible to being blown off course by the anodyne sounds of the Palm Court, chivvied along a tad and spiced with that inventive use of the bow. Jazz can be lively, spontaneous and urgent when uptempo, often painfully but elegantly self-referential at slower speeds. These qualities don’t pervade Turkis but are evident in the lively and enjoyable samba Cigarillos Por Favor and the delicate, elegant pianism of Viola. Guitarist Jakob Riis Holm’s solo on Low Five also ups the jazz quotient, as does the modal swing of Vinden Vänder but they would have been welcome earlier in the set.
Discography
Embrace; Il Posto Del Padre; Cigarillos Por Favor; Viola; Tiden Står Stille Her; Rossignol; Rosas Forår; Low Five; Vinden Vänder; Hora Azul (47.35)
Falgren (vn); Heine Hanson (p); Morten Lundsby (b); Eliel Williams Lazo Linares (pc); Anders Holm Jensen (d); Jakob Riis Holm (g). Copenhagen, 11-13 December 2024.
Zack’s Music Falgren CD002
Christian Sands: Between Then & Now
New World meets Scandinavia is a familiar trope in jazz. American pianist Christian Sands was discovered on YouTube by the former musical director of Copenhagen’s Jazzhus Montmartre, and whisked to the Danish capital, where forebears Dexter Gordon and Ben Webster had hung out. Memories of them and of celebrated Danish drummer Alex Riel led to Sands, Danish bassist Thomas Fonnesbæk and Swedish drummer Rasmus Kihlberg being conjoined for this album by Storyville Records as the North Meets West Trio.
These are heavyweight musicians, and Fonnesbæk kicks off with a sinewy version of Grieg’s Til Ungdommen, played as a bass solo but sounding more like a solo for bass isolated from some never-to-be-relocated jazz ensemble. The recording is forbiddingly close, the playing lyrical and expressive. It augurs well. What follows is the first Sands composition – Hvor Børn Stadig Leger – in which the Connecticut musician combines sophisticated pianism with deeply etched phrasing and figuration. No part of the keyboard is foreign to him, and nowhere is the chart’s three- (or six-) to-the-bar insouciance obscured.
The album is notable for a few stand-out episodes. Sands’ Riel-dedicated A Giant Leaves is a conflation of Coltrane’s Giant Steps and Joe Kosma’s Autumn Leaves, taken at skittering pace by the pianist. Fonnesbæk urges caution before allowing Sands to scamper off again towards a kaleidoscopic riff backing Kihlberg at his boiling best. More footfall than leaf-fall, maybe, but none the less impressively secure. Another breath-stopper is Sands’ Where The Light Settles, a piano solo offering over seven minutes of sustained invention and refined harmonic sensibility.
Bobby Timmons gets two credits for his funky So Tired and for Cop Out, which gives Sands and company the opportunity to motor straightahead into the blue yonder. Along the way, they give full-bodied attention to Manhã De Carnaval.
Discography
Til Ungdommen (To The Youth); Hvor Børn Stadig Leger (Where Children Still Play); Searching In Sahara; Manhã De Carnaval; Til Ungdommen; So Tired; A Giant Leaves; Where The Light Settles; Cop Out (54.20)
Sands (p); Thomas Fonnesbæk (b); Rasmus Kihlberg (d). Copenhagen, 11-12 November 2025.
Storyville Records CD 1018546