White Paper’ is the story of a musical friendship that has only now, after twenty-five years, yielded a tangible result in the form of an album followed by a series of performances. The main protagonists are Finnish vocalist Anu Junnonen and multi-instrumentalist Tuur Florizoone. (Georges Tonla Briquet)

Rudenstrio is a new international project that brings together three great instrumentalists and composers. Each of them has composed three of the nine songs on the album. Apparently the chemistry between them works well enough for the new trio's debut album to still read as a single whole. The rather unusual instrumentation – clarinet played by Latvian Indriķis Veitners, vibraphone by another Latvian Ēriks Miezis and double bass by Canadian Andrew Downing – creates an unusual-sounding mix of cool jazz and chamber music. At times it goes in the direction of classical chamber music, at times in a distinctly jazzier mood, one aspect of which is comparable to Angelo Badalamenti's presence in David Lynch's films. However, the overall mood is rather light than darkly mystical. Even despite the fact that the trio's name is translated from Latvian as Autumntrio. The album's title, Gada Laiks (Time of the Year), is also intended as an ideological whole throughout the year, rather than a specific season. A refreshing soundtrack for lazy summer evenings, also intended to be released on vinyl.

Between jazz, impressionism, and contemporary music, Clara Vetter opens up a sonic space on What Dances Here that consistently resists simplification. Together with Phil Donkin on double bass and Fabian Arends on drums, she creates music that does not think in categories, but in movement, colour, and inner imagery. Clara Vetter, recipient of the Baden-Württemberg Jazz Award 2023, was recognized early on for her exceptional musical depth and versatility – and What Dances Here makes it clear why. Her compositions feel less written than discovered: an attempt to translate perceptions, moods, and inner processes into sound. Particularly fascinating is the synesthetic quality of this music. Colours, shapes, and movement seem to transform into harmonic structures, rhythmic shifts, and melodic fragments. The pieces evolve organically, almost like living processes that continuously change their form. Nothing here feels predictable. Conventional jazz patterns and familiar harmonic pathways are deliberately avoided. Instead, rhythmically complex, at times almost floating structures emerge, in which agogics, dynamics, and subtle tempo shifts play a central role. This is precisely where the album derives its particular tension. And yet, this music never becomes abstract for abstraction’s sake. Despite all its sophistication, What Dances Here possesses an emotional immediacy. One senses that the aim here is not to demonstrate complexity, but to seek a deeply personal form of expression. Crucial to the album’s success is also the trio’s exceptionally sensitive interplay. Phil Donkin and Fabian Arends do not simply follow Vetter’s vision – they expand it. With great attentiveness and distinct artistic personalities of their own, they help this music breathe, grow, and continuously open up new perspectives. What Dances Here is an album for attentive listeners – music that does not reveal itself immediately, but resonates all the more deeply over time. An independent, courageous, and remarkably fascinating statement of contemporary improvised music. An album of rare originality – full of curiosity, depth, and artistic freedom.

Juanma Trujillo, guitar, Albert Cirera, tenor saxophone, Miguel Villar, tenor saxophone, Masa Kamaguchi, bass and Ramon Prats, drums. The virtuoso and inexhaustible experimentalist has taken his art to new horizons. This meticulously crafted and highly expressive live album is another masterpiece from Trujillo, in a career already brimming with them.

A great cover art work. An intriguing album by the Polish drummer-percussionist Dorota Piotrowska with an international collective representing different cultures – three continents, seven countries. The drumming leader is joined by the American saxophonist (Greg Osby), Norwegian trumpeter (Hildegunn Øiseth), Lebansese pianist (Tarek Yamani), Indonesian bassist  (Ameen Saleem), Cuban congero (Barbaro Crespo „Machito”), Turkish vocalist (Sanem Kalfa), and on one track the Polish pianist Leszek Możdżer. What we get is a fantasy mix of hard-core American jazz, Polish lyrical mood, Norwegian soundscapes, Arabic scales, latin rhythms. An improvised dialogue where music is a universal language that breaks the barriers and builds bridges. A graduate of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and The School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York, Dorota Piotrowska has worked with such luminaries as Saskia Laroo, Nasheet Waits, Jeremy Pelt, Lonnie Plaxico, Dave Binney. She has performed internationally with the European constellation Sisters in Jazz. A striking debut under her own name.

Grażyna Bacewicz is remembered in the annals of music history primarily as an outstanding classical composer and violinist. However, few people know about her other artistic talents – she was also the author of a collection of short stories, as well as a novel and shorter novellas. In 2018, her crime novel "Sidła" (The Trap) was published. It was this work that became the inspiration for the creation of a jazz suite. Its author is Piotr Scholz, and the premiere of the piece took place in 2025, performed by the Jazz Orchestra of the Academy of Music in Łódź, conducted by the composer, with vocalists Anna Rybacka and Karolina Cegłowska taking part. Scholz has once again prepared a program structured for a jazz orchestra. And once again, he has surprised us with his choice of subject matter and the way he links the musical material to it. The composer also worked on the text, selecting fragments that made it possible to present the plot of the book. Anna Rybacka and Karolina Cegłowska present the text through recitation, vocalises, song, also fitting perfectly into the improvised sections, where the voice becomes another instrument.  "Sidła" is just over half an hour of artistic mastery. It perfectly combines musical and literary elements, transforming the atmosphere of the novel into a musical story. From a musical standpoint, it is an excellent presentation of the stylistic range that can be covered by the "jazz" label, and a brilliant showcase of the versatile capabilities of a large jazz ensemble. Most importantly, "Sidła" is a proposal of undeniable appeal – modern, original, and masterfully performed.

When the Norwegian saxophone player Aksel Røed put the band, Røed Quartet, together, with his brother, Lyder Røes on trumpet, Ola Høyer on bass and Cornelis Nilsson om drums, for the Tedans festival (a festival I highly recommend) in 2024, he really hit the jackpot. Four innings and zero penalties. Because here he has found fellow musicians who are a perfect fit for him and his musical ideas. And one can only wonder what the Røed brothers had for breakfast growing up (probably something like the Agnas clan in Sweden had), to get two such perfect musicians from the same family is no coincidence. An excellent quartet that takes the legacy of the legendary band Ny Bris (also based in Bergen) several notches further. With four excellent musicians who really know this tradition. A great album!

Mattias de Craene continues to surprise us musically, whether with Nordmann or MDC III, or on his two solo albums already released. For his new album, he collaborated with Black Koyo, a Brussels-based band that plays gnawa, a spiritual musical style associated with West Africa. De Craene took this music and used it to create a completely new musical world. In recent years, De Craene has had to take a significant step back due to long Covid, which, sadly, he contracted right at the end of the pandemic. On top of that came a severe bout of depression. To channel his energy in the right direction, he bid farewell to the highly successful Nordmann and put his other major band, MDC III, on hold. Music proved to be his salvation in his quest to find himself again. As he puts it himself, he did so the hard way: not through meditation but through confrontation, and that turned out to be the right path. His travels to Morocco, and in particular to the town of Essaouira, brought him into contact with gnawa, a musical style he was already familiar with but only began to feel deeply there.

Giovanni Mirabassi, the last of the Romantics after Rachmaninoff and Evans, sings the anthem of Jazz As We Know. The same songs, the same style, new nuances, with a human touch on the piano (pun intended)... Sip your coffee or single malt, close your eyes and lend all your ears to the peaceful music (another pun strongly intended).

This collaborative album brings together pianist Clara Lai, saxophonist José Lencastre, and bassist/electronics artist Àlex Reviriego. Lai’s collaboration with Lencastre builds on previous work, including his ensemble Common Ground, reflecting an established artistic connection. On this recording, Reviriego moves from double bass to electronics, contributing ambient textures, drones, and layered sounds that reshape the trio’s overall sonic palette. The music unfolds calmly and cohesively, emphasizing dialogue, restraint, and attentive interplay rather than tension or chaos.

The music for this album was developed in the shape of palindromes - as in the album title PETSTEP - and was spurred on by the death of drummer Luke Bainbridge’s family pet. The interesting combination of trombone and vibes gives it an unusual character. Its a fine band, with Kieran McLeod on Trombone, Ralph Wyld on Vibraphone, Huw V Williams on Bass and Luke Bainbridge on Drums. The music, and the occasional rap, is sometimes intricate and complex, but always accessible and often witty.

Orchestra Omnitonal, led by reedplayer Per Texas Johansson, was formed in 2020. The origin was a desire to put together a larger ensemble of musicians with backgrounds in jazz, improvisation and classical music in order to be able to perform works where written and improvised music could be brought together in an intricate way. Inspiration from 20th century modernist art music runs as a common thread through these pieces. Overall, it can be stated that, thanks to the creative ability of the individual composers in collaboration with some of the country's foremost instrumentalists and soloists, it does not become conventional big band music.

Sometimes it takes a few months in the unforgiving New York to get it right. It sure happened for French vibraphonist Lexis Valet, who is an active musician on the jazz scene in Paris but a complete newcomer in New York. Inspired by the vibrant city he wrote some new music and on the top shelf, he soon found like-minded and virtuoso musicians living in the Big Apple: Dayna Stephens (ts), Aaron Parks (p), Joe Martin (b) and Kush Abadey (d). They went into a studio and recorded Valet’s groovy hard-bop-tinged music that has odd meters, references to hip-hop beats, Latin grooves and not to forget: melodies you can sing and swing that moves your body and soul.

As with everything, there is a duality—a hidden side, a dark side. Whatever you want to call it. Duality is the key. This album, Brest Blow, is a live recording of a concert by this flute duo (Mats Gustafsson and Delphine Joussein). In this exchange between the two, in this raw and electrostatic duality, the interaction is amplified by effects, and both Joussein and Gustafsson are capable of producing multiple simultaneous sound sources. The introduction hints at the diverse flutes in their simplest incarnation. They return at times, when the electronic and futuristic tide recedes. For the two musicians create a very explicit soundscape with their pedals and electronic effects. These are the atmospheres of fantasy films, somewhere between interstellar journeys and encounters of a different kind. Their voices in the flutes—far removed from Roland Kirk’s inventions—are like supposed alien languages. And little by little, they weave a vortex that sucks in everything within its reach, drawing us along with it. Then, their fingers return to knit a few lilting melodies, as if by chance.

If Rôles was a revelation, Perception confirms the enchantment created by the clarinettist’s music. (Jean-Pierre Goffin)