Europe Jazz Media Chart - February 2024

Що й святоє… (Shcho i Svyatoye…) literally refers to something sacred, and that's how the title of ShchukaRyba's new album sounds like. The group, made up of young folk enthusiasts, is all about keeping Ukrainian folk music alive. They not only sing but also organise events to bring people together. This album is a celebration of family gatherings, the coziness of home, and the joy of sharing music with loved ones. It features folk songs that Ukrainians traditionally sing during Christmas and other winter celebrations. But this isn't just about old tunes—ShchukaRyba teamed up with the electronic music project Bunht and guitarist Yevhen Pugachov, known as one of Ukraine's promising musicians of young generation, who blends jazz with other genres to create his unique sound. The mixture of "white voice," electronics, improvisation, and modern jazz harmony in this album is something special. ShchukaRyba successfully brings traditional folk music into the modern world, showing how these old tunes can still vibe with today's sounds. Personally recommend to check out the video clip to the second song from the EP.

It took five years with for listeners to wait for the Follow Dices’ second album. The break was rewarded with extremely interesting and varied music. “Tenderness” is listened to with great pleasure.  The group interestingly exposes the individual skills of the artists.  But the album also provides satisfaction in the visual layer. t is worth mentioning the well-thought-out editorial side of the release, which perfectly corresponds with the musical content.

The Flemish jazz scene remains a super inspiring one. Headstrong top talent has been bouncing off the rooftops there for years. Over the years, pianist Bram de Looze has developed from that scene as one of the leading European keyboardists with original and adventurous playing. His new album Spotting Gateways is a fascinating development in that. Nothing more than a grand piano is all de Looze needs to completely enchant with powerful playing and peerlessly strong and beautiful compositions. Departing from classical structures, de Looze dives with virtuoso playing into full jazz adventure through his sharply toned compositions. At times beautifully melodic then again transverse and challenging, always intriguing. 

One of Clean Feed's most surprising proposals is the meeting between Fritz Hauser (percussion) and Pedro Carneiro (marimba). "Pas de Deux" is a challenging album, with the Hauser/Carneiro duo developing a meticulous percussive clockwork of detail. In the austerity of its limited instrumental spectrum, we have here an atypical sound object that requires investment and concentration on the part of the listener, but which will be duly rewarding.

“One of the best guitarists in the world” (Pat Metheny). "I never wanted to be a star, just a highly respected musician like John Etheridge." (Sting). John Etheridge is an iconic figure in British jazz. He has led an organ trio with stable personnel (Pete Whittaker on organ and George Double on drums) for twenty years. It is a context where the guitarist leads, plays solistically, rocks out, but this world-class band has never made an album until this recording of a live date in Nottingham. Glorious.

This project represents a beautiful fusion of the tropisms of the Copenhagen, Oslo and Cologne jazz scenes. The ethereal trio (a brand new one) is made up of the fiery, busy, Oslo-based Danish saxophonist Amalie Dahl, Lithuanian pianist Gintė Preisaitė, whose improvisations pepper the Copenhagen scene, and Cologne-based German drummer Jan Philipp, who was also at the mixing console for the recording. The music is that of a confluence of additional currents, forming an impetuous continuous flow that takes you far away.

Thanks to his instrument, Renaud Garcia-Fons is both a magician and an explorer. The sounds he develops are inspired by landscapes, journeys and multiple mirages. Listen ad libitum. (Jean-Pierre Goffin)

Latvian singer Santa Šillere has released her debut album but has been an active musician on the Latvian jazz scene for several years. Other Ways feature almost exclusively Santa’s original music. The recording was made together with music academy mates from Katowice – flexible musicians who catch the nuances of the singer’s intended sound. The album is full-blooded already in the opening section, when Santa is singing one of the two songs included in the disc in her native language – Rotājas debesis (The Sky Decorates), in which, in addition to Polish guitarist Jakub Mizeracki, pianist Franciszek Raczkowski, double bassist Pawel Zwierzyński-Pióro and drummer Stefan Raczkowski, Toms Rudzinskis, one of the brightest Latvian saxophonists, also participates. The album preserves an airy jazz feeling with a physically felt presence of freshness, sticking to the old tradition with one hand, as in the strongly swinging song Two Smiles, and groping for new forms of expression with the other. The surprise is the arrangement of Bach’s music combined with the lyrics by the legendary Latvian poetess Aspazija in the song Ziedonī (In Bloom).

Un Ruido de Agua is the new work by Buenos Aires pianist Nataniel Edelman, accompanied by Michael Formanek on double bass and Michael Attias on sax, with several free collective improvisations in which Edelman and Attias freely develop all kinds of tensions between piano and sax focused on abstraction and play with a minimalist sense of composition and sound.