De ses collaborations avec, entre autres, le Vienna Art Orchestra ou l’Orchestre National de Jazz, Franck Tortiller a gardé le goût de l’écriture pour grands ensembles. Comme pour son précédent hommage à Led Zeppelin, il affirme une nouvelle fois son goût pour la pop. Entouré d’une bande de jeunes et talentueux musiciens fraîchement sortis du conservatoire, il présente une version jazz des musiques (et plus particulièrement des chansons) de Frank Zappa. Et cela reste, malgré le temps, d’une musicalité et d’une actualité brûlantes.

Husband and wife pianists Robin Holcomb and Wayne Horvitz team up with Vancouver quartet Talking Pictures on this album that defies easy categorization. As the title suggests, there’s a lesson of sorts being expounded. There’s certainly something archaic about it, almost as if these songs had already existed as prototypes in another time and place, a lost America of long ago. Yet this music is very much about now, a symbolic distillation of the present.

A playful excursion into the possibilities of sound influenced by the visual arts … a fascinating electro-acoustic effort and Malaby's most personal and adventurous recording to date. Tony Malaby made a name for himself as one of the most versatile jazz musicians working in New York City. In his Cello Trio he engages with two like-minded sonic explorers, omnidextrous New York drummer/percussionist John Hollenbeck and genre-hopping Chicago cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, to create this collection of highly integrated, multi-faceted avant-jazz. The music’s richness also has a lot to do with Malaby’s interest in painting, photography and film, and the way he draws on these art forms to think graphically and texturally, visualizing new musical structures through juxtaposing images, colours and forms.

Waxwing (formerly Wilson/Lee/Bentley) unites three of Vancouver’s premier jazz musicians in a program of original compositions and improvisations that combine delicacy and strength, melodic beauty and textural sophistication. This is chamber jazz that moves between highly structured and freer playing but is always strong on form and direct emotional appeal, whether driving or more contemplative. The musicians often swap roles within pieces, exploiting the full range of expression for this unusual combination of instruments. Cellist Peggy Lee is a member of Wayne Horvitz’s Gravitas Quartet as well as his new Some Places Are Forever Afternoon project, also released this month. Audiophile (24/96) recording has great transparency.

Award-winning New York drummer Harris Eisenstadt’s long-running group returns with its 4th and most accomplished record yet, a thoroughly entertaining, provocative program of original compositions that blends swinging modern jazz and spikier, off-center avant-jazz styles. The band’s idiosyncratic sound world features close percussive/textural interplay between gorgeous vibist Chris Dingman and Eisenstadt, who leads from the kit almost like a modern-day Art Blakey. Frontline soloists Nate Wooley (whom Dave Douglas has called “one of the most interesting and unusual trumpeters living today”) and tenor saxist Matt Bauder (who recently toured for a year with Arcade Fire) play the whole jazz/improv tradition with great verve and character, and have their own following as leaders.

Vancouver string virtuoso Grdina's new project includes searching, delicate duets on oud or guitar with famed NY bassist Helias, expanding to a quartet with Kenton Loewen and Tony Malaby to create denser, more energetic spaces. Grdina’s compositions range from tender ballads to angular, searing avant-jazz. Arab-flavored duos with oud provide a subtle world music dimension similar to Grdina’s Think Like the Waves release with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian. Dynamic, textured audiophile recording.

The album is a constant exercise in exchange between the human and the mechanical, the traditional and the cutting edge, the frightful and the bittersweet, aimed at achieving a certain flowing equilibrium … explores the cycles of life with a ceremonial air that is deeply forceful.

Composer, keyboardist, producer Wayne Horvitz’s new project celebrates American poet Richard Hugo (1923-1982), and is performed by a hugely talented septet combining his working ensembles Sweeter Than the Day and Gravitas Quartet. Hugo, a Seattle native, spent years rambling throughout the Northwest; that and his love of music (jazz in particular) inspired Horvitz’s interpretations of 11 Hugo poems, which are included in the booklet along with beautiful photos of places Hugo wrote about. Horvitz’s instrumental songs, which reflect Hugo’s love of nature as well as his frequent bouts of depression and loneliness, combine elements of the blues, jazz, folk and contemporary classical and feature deeply felt improvisations by the whole band. Audiophile production enhances the impact.

This project came about when Ken Pickering, artistic director of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, programmed a duo concert at the 2011 festival. Houle, based in Vancouver for almost 25 years but originally from the Montreal area, and Wiik, Norwegian but living in Berlin, had performed together before a few times before: Francois had played with members of Atomic and with Ken Vandermark’s Free Fall Trio, and sat in with Havard’s own trio at the 2009 Vancouver festival. But this was their first program as a duo. They both brought new compositions to the project, as well as playing a number of free pieces and one by pianist Benoît Delbecq. The result, according to Pickering, is “an incredible set of music, a triumph”.

On harpsichord, Akiko Kuwagata pays tribute to the German Baroque composer and keyboard virtuoso Johann Jakob Froberger. Kuwagata devotes his performance on this album to historical accuracy and respect to Froberger's original musical intentions.

Tio 3 played five evenings together with pianist Geri Allen in the New York jazz club Birdland, paying homage to the jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams. They presented fresh and individualistic interpretations of some of the most beautiful pieces of the 'First Lady of Jazz'. Intakt has recorded these evenings.

Stephan Crump, Ingrid Laubrock and Cory Smythe – this trio consists of three innovative improvisers and jazz musicians of the younger Brooklyn scene. An intense and extremely relaxed encounter in the recording studio led to this outstanding album.

Malamute is Jim Black’s latest gathering of like-minded musical souls. The band toured Europe for the first time in May 2015 performing sketches of the music to be, experimenting with different ways songs and structures could be recombined to reflect on each of their musical voices, distilling a band sound from their chemistry.

The source material for the inspired, all-covers Black Pearls album was popularized strictly by women. It's an unsurprising concept, given that Will Downing made his 1987 solo debut with a version of Deniece Williams' "Free" and went on to cover classics by Rose Royce and Aretha Franklin. The singer's first album for the Shanachie label, this features updates of well-known songs, mostly ballads, that originated in the late '70s and the early '90s.

Smooth Urban Jazz superstar whose crossover appeal and dynamic performances have placed him among the elite in his field. This album contains amazing remakes of smash hits by such artists as Sam Smith, Janet Jackson and DeBarge and 7 brilliant Kim Waters originals including the smooth jazz radio hit "Bring It." Co-produced by Chris "Big Dog" Davis. "His exquisite tone and lyrical phrasing place him among the very elite." - JazzTimes