The Listening Guide
🎶 The listening guide: five albums, released during the past twelve months, chosen around a weekly theme 🎶
This week’s theme is duos. Legendary saxophonist Archie Shepp forms a terrific duo with pianist Jason Moran on the album Let My People Go, performing spirituals and standards with honesty and feeling. Vocalist Damsel Talk creates era-spanning spontaneous compositions on her collaborative album with pianist Nicolás Boccanera, entitled Peppermint. Ed Jones and Emil Karlsen’s tenor sax and drums album for FMR records features improvisations recorded during late 2020, and perhaps somewhat reflects the mood of that time. Saxophonist and composer Josephine Davies is joined by pianist John Turville on Talking Amongst Myself, which comprises five compositions written in the months before its release. The late pianist Keith Tippett performed several piano duo concerts with Matthew Bourne between 2017 and 2019. Recordings from those performances are collected on the fantastic new album Aeolian for Discus Music. You can find and support all of these projects on Bandcamp!
Archie Shepp & Jason Moran – Let My People Go
Damsel Talk & Nicolás Boccanera – Peppermint
Ed Jones and Emil Karlsen – From Where Light Falls
Album of the Week
Our NQ Jazz album of the week is Swiss bassist and composer Heiri Känzig’s new album, Travelin’. The ten-track album features Känzig’s own compositions and one traditional piece, performed by an array of talented musicians including the virtuosic oud player Amine Mraihi, who shines on the title track. Matthieu Michel is on flugelhorn, Veronika Stalder on vocals, Lionel Friedli on drums, and Marc Méan on piano. The album is out now on Universal Music and you can find it via several outlets, below.
Classic Album
Our NQ Jazz classic album this week is a landmark recording in the history of British jazz and is also an international affair, emphasising the importance of migration and collaboration. Hum Dono was recorded at London’s Lansdowne Studios in February and March, 1969, and features five compositions from guitarist Amancio D’Silva—who had arrived in London in 1967, having been inspired to pursue jazz as a teenager in India—plus one short piece from saxophonist Joe Harriott, who had come through Kingston’s Alpha Boys School and migrated to London in the early fifties. Such greats as vocalist Norma Winstone, bassist Dave Green, and trumpeter/flugelhorn player Ian Carr feature on the record, which showcases Winstone’s wordless vocalisation, Harriott’s incredible tone, the fiery drumming of Bryan Spring, and D’Silva’s facility for writing and soloing. Ballad For Goa, referencing D’Silva’s parents’ home region, encapsulates everything that’s brilliant about the record. You can find it on streaming services, with a few reissued physical copies still available too.