Ayn Inserto and the WDR Big Band: Jagged Edges & Elegant Lines
On Jagged Edges & Elegant Lines the Singapore-born, Boston-based composer Ayn Inserto presents a career-spanning selection of compositions along with a newly written suite for guest trumpeter Sean Jones. Joined by the virtuosic WDR Big Band, she reveals a sophisticated yet deeply expressive musical world, where intricate writing and emotional immediacy coexist. For 25 years, Inserto has developed her own jazz orchestra while collaborating with major international ensembles, including the Frankfurt Radio Big Band. In 2024, the WDR Big Band invited her to present an evening devoted to her compositions. Alongside selected pieces from her earlier work, she created a new suite dedicated to Jones, whose presence gradually becomes the album’s central thread.
The title, Jagged Edges & Elegant Lines, perfectly captures Inserto’s aesthetic. Her music moves through shifting rhythms, fragmented patterns, harmonic tensions and flowing lyrical passages, constantly balancing complexity with clarity. The arrangements may be dense, but they never feel static. From the opening Eshel Sketch, the WDR Big Band plunges into this world with remarkable energy. Intricate rhythms and interlocking countermelodies create a continuous sense of tension and release, culminating in a striking contrast: after the brass erupts, Billy Test’s piano quietly delivers an unexpected eight-bar ending, like a breath after the storm.
La Danza Infinita offers a more spacious and lyrical atmosphere. Originally recorded by the Colours Jazz Orchestra in 2015, the piece gains new depth through the WDR Big Band’s elegant interpretation, allowing its harmonic richness to unfold naturally, BJ’s Tune, composed by Jones and rearranged by Inserto, leads directly into Suite For Sean Jones, the album’s centrepiece. Across its four movements and 22 minutes, Inserto avoids a conventional biographical portrait, instead translating different facets of Jones’s personality into sound. His trumpet moves between fire and introspection, while the ensemble constantly shifts around him. More than a tribute, the suite becomes a musical conversation between two artists. It is this balance between composition and improvisation, structure and freedom, tension and lyricism that gives Jagged Edges & Elegant Lines its distinctive character.
Discography
Eshel Sketch; La Danza Infinita; Vinifera; Down A Rabbit Hole; Mr. Jones And Company; BJ’s Tune; Suite For Sean Jones: I. The Artist; Suite For Sean Jones: II. The Educator; Suite For Sean Jones: III. The Husband And Father; Suite For Sean Jones: IV. The Human Soul (79.00)
Inserto (comp, cond); Sean Jones, Wim Both, Rob Bruynen, Andy Haderer, Ruud Breuls (t); Johan Hörlén, Pascal Bartoszak (as, cl, f); Paul Heller, Ben Fitzpatrick (ts, cl, f); Jens Neufang (bar, bcl); Ludwig Nuss, Raphael Klemm, Tim Hepburn (tb); Mattis Cederberg (btb); Billy Test (p); John Goldsby (b); Hans Dekker (d). Cologne, Germany, 2026.
Summit Records, reviewed by Emma Forestier
Andrea Goretti and Sivan Arbel: Bazrima
Bazrima, a Hebrew word meaning “in flow” is above all the story of a meeting between jazz pianist Andrea Goretti and Sivan Arbel, an Israeli singer, composer and arranger whose artistic universe extends from jazz to world music, driven by a deeply expressive and sensory approach. The album’s title perfectly captures the musical relationship between the two artists: a natural and organic exchange in which composition and improvisation constantly respond to one another with remarkable fluidity. Born from a long-distance collaboration between two musicians who were, not long ago, still strangers, the project is built on mutual trust and a shared fascination with the many voices of the world’s soundscapes.
Built around 10 compositions, Bazrima explores the contrasts of contemporary life, moving between fragility and serenity, tension and tenderness. Each piece embraces the shadows of human experience while searching for a sense of unity, light and fulfilment. On Ocean Song, the music becomes a deep breath. Sivan Arbel’s voice and Andrea Goretti’s piano meet in a dialogue of remarkable delicacy, inviting the listener on an inner journey, like a peaceful drift across an endless ocean where thoughts dissolve into the gentle movement of the waves.
Perpetuum Mobile offers another defining moment of the album. Its title, borrowed from Latin and evoking the idea of perpetual motion, reflects the inner energy that runs through the music. The piece brings to the surface buried emotions and fragments of memory, revealing the childlike part that remains within each of us, the part that continues to wonder, feel and dream.
Throughout Bazrima, piano and voice develop an intimate conversation, two worlds intertwining with such subtlety that they seem to exist in a state of delicate balance. Goretti and Arbel create a soundscape that is both unpredictable and luminous, where airy textures meet subtle, almost shimmering layers. Beneath each arrangement lies an essential melody, like a hidden presence moving freely between phrases, silences, and breaths. With Bazrima, Andrea Goretti and Sivan Arbel deliver a work built on listening, trust and movement. An album where music becomes a space of connection, a continuous flow linking two artistic sensibilities and two personal journeys.
Discography
The Void, Pt. I; The Void, Pt. 2; Ocean Song; Between Us, the Sky; Adama Ayefa; Mantra; Perpetuum Mobile; Angels’ Light; The World of the End; Ballada (35.04)
Goretti (p); Arbel (v, p). Cavalicco (Udine), Italy, 8-9 September 2025.
Dodicilune – ED611-7, reviewed by Emma Forestier
Evening Sky: Meeting Of The Four
Evening Sky is a quartet from Rhode Island, USA. With Meeting Of The Four, they create a musical landscape where boundaries seem to disappear. Jazz, Americana, soul, country, folk, rock, funk and reggae cross paths without ever colliding. Instead, everything seems to flow naturally, as though these different traditions had always belonged to the same landscape. From the opening track, For Ernest, Evening Sky establishes this distinctive atmosphere. Reggae-inflected rhythms meet echoes of tiki music before settling into a loose, sun-drenched groove. Nothing feels showy: influences emerge, interact and then quietly recede with remarkable ease. The band is not interested in displaying its references, but in making them come alive.
Gino Rosati’s guitar lies at the heart of this particular alchemy. At times clear and melodic, at others more adventurous, it unfolds with a freedom that owes as much to jazz as it does to the wide-open spaces of America. Beneath it, Joe Potenza and Eric Hastings shape a rhythmic landscape in constant motion: a laid-back groove can suddenly gather momentum, take on a funkier edge or open into more abstract territory. Hammond organ textures and Moog tones add further shades to the mix, like successive brushstrokes on an already shifting canvas.
Perhaps this is where the real beauty of Meeting Of The Four lies: in its ability to bring together musical worlds that might, on paper, seem far apart. Here, jazz is not a boundary but a starting point. Each track opens another window, revealing another influence, another texture, another way of allowing improvisation to converse with the roots of American music. The album never reaches for easy surprise. It favours continuity over shock, suggestion over display. The tracks unfold with a certain serenity, like a conversation you have no desire to interrupt. And the further you travel into the record, the more those initial boundaries begin to dissolve.
Listeners looking for jazz firmly rooted in tradition may find themselves slightly disoriented by this freedom. But for anyone willing to let the genre breathe, to follow its detours and winding paths, Meeting Of The Four offers a particularly rewarding experience. Evening Sky reminds us that jazz can also be an open territory, capable of embracing folk, country, reggae and soul without losing its instinct for improvisation.
Discography
Bad Choices; Mysterious Wisteria; Coffee Monster; Ballz Out; Excellent Question; Wanskuckin’; Blue Leisure Suit; Sunday Afternoon (42.17)
Chris Brooks (pedal steel); Gino Rosati (g); Joe Potenza (b); Eric Hastings (d, pc, org, Moog). Rhode Island, USA, 2026.
NCM East Records, reviewed by Emma Forestier
Dalia Valančiūtė: One Or Two Things
With One Or Two Things, her second album following 2023’s Open The Door, Dalia Valančiūtė continues to explore a form of vocal jazz that is both intimate and deeply melodic. Originally from Lithuania and now based in Copenhagen, the singer has become part of the Danish jazz scene with an approach that favours attentive listening, subtlety and the inner movement of each song over sheer display.
Alongside her, Laurits Høgel on piano, Mariusz Praśniewski on double bass and Jesper Lørup on drums form a quartet whose cohesion is one of the record’s greatest strengths. The instruments never simply accompany the voice: they breathe with it, answer it and create space around it. Høgel’s piano shapes the harmony with a certain restraint, allowing the melodies to retain their fragility, while Praśniewski’s double bass provides the record with its depth and grounding. On drums, Lørup works more through suggestion than assertion, subtly sculpting the tempos and shifting the pulse without ever disturbing the balance of the ensemble.
There is something distinctly airy about this music. The arrangements seem to leave room for silence, breathing and the slightest shifts in tempo. Nothing feels overloaded, nothing demands attention. Even when the music gathers momentum, the quartet maintains a quiet elegance that keeps the voice at the centre without allowing it to become overwhelming. The contributions of Christian Holm-Svendsen on saxophone and flute, together with Malthe Kaptain on trumpet, occasionally broaden the sonic palette, like flashes of colour appearing at the turn of a phrase.
Yet One Or Two Things is not content to inhabit a single, hushed vision of vocal jazz. Its repertoire moves through different landscapes: swing, ballads, bossa nova and pieces with a stronger groove. This variety allows Valančiūtė to subtly reshape her approach from one track to the next. She can become lighter, almost playful, when the pulse tightens, before returning to a more stripped-back and contemplative line as the music slows. Throughout the album, her singing seems less concerned with displaying technique than with finding the right way to bring each melody to life.
At the heart of the record, Vėjas Man Pasakė occupies a special place. Sung in Lithuanian, it is the album’s only departure from English, bringing with it a different sonic texture and a different kind of breath. The sounds of her native language naturally alter the relationship between words and rhythm, giving the track a distinctive colour. It becomes far more than a linguistic detour: a bridge between the singer’s Lithuanian roots and her present musical life in Copenhagen.
Perhaps it is this coexistence of heritage and openness that gives One Or Two Things its particular character. Valančiūtė does not seek to distance herself from the tradition of vocal jazz; instead, she approaches it with enough freedom to allow her own journey into the music. Her choice of repertoire, her affinity for both ballads and more rhythmic forms, and her emphasis on dialogue with her musicians gradually reveal a distinctive identity.
Ultimately, One Or Two Things is an album of nuances: it moves through inflections rather than ruptures, through breaths rather than bursts of intensity. It is music that takes its time, allows its melodies to settle, and reminds us that, in vocal jazz, the power of an interpretation can sometimes lie precisely in what it chooses not to reveal.
Discography
On A Clear Day; Maybe You’ll Be There; Nobody Else But Me; Polkadots And Moonbeams; Vėjas Man Pasakė; Oh! Look At Me Now; Try Your Wings; In The Still Of The Night; Once I Loved; It Isn’t So Good It Couldn’t Get Better; This Time The Dream’s On Me; Too Late Now (52.03)
Valančiūtė (v); Laurits Høgel (p); Mariusz Praśniewski (b); Jesper Lørup (d); Christian Holm-Svendsen (s, f); Malthe Kaptain (t). Copenhagen, Denmark, 2026.
Independent, reviewed by Emma Forestier
Editor’s note – a plagiarism check suggests a large proportion of these reviews rely on AI content. They talk in general terms and don’t give much musical information or personal perception, for which apologies. It won’t happen again.
