Fulfillment
…g on KM projects. Neel’s own work about the Komagata Maru [on which Chris and André also play] is sublime.” “I hope listeners are moved emotionally by the subliminal message of how important it is that we as a society must listen to each other. Even in intense and dense situations the best music is the result of skill and empathy so that everyone is…
Tenebrae
…musical zone, transcended his compositional devices, and come back to us with some compelling gems. This is some of the most beautiful music I’ve heard in a long while.” – Cuong Vu, trumpet player and Chair of Jazz Studies, University of Washington Being based in Vancouver, Songlines has always had an eye on the Seattle scene. Our second release, B…
Shores Against Silence
…on first prize in the first BMI/Thelonious Monk Institute composers competition in 1993. Like most of the other pieces on the record it adapts and layers techniques that Zimmerli had analyzed in his studies of twentieth-century composers such as Bartok, Boulez, and Milton Babbitt. You can hear these ideas in the often strange intervals, exotic-sound…
Alleviation
…ahogany body and top – most Gibson guitars from that time [around 1945] were with spruce tops which have more high end, but this guitar produces a subtle beautiful high end too. To me it sounded like no other guitar I had played before, I would describe the sound as warm, ringing and very balanced from top to bottom. It’s clear to me that the wood h…
The Tiny Bell Trio
…ost inventive young drummers on the scene, co-leads Human Feel, and performs in Tim Berne’s Bloodcount as well as groups led by Ellery Eskelin and Ben Monder (both Songlines), among many others. Jim and Brad are also founding members of Pachora, a group which explores new approaches to Greek and near eastern traditional musics. **** “An outstandin…
Simon Millerd
…http://simonmillerd.tumblr.com…
Flux
…h bleed into the firm commentary by [bassist Drew] Gress. [Jim] Black’s drum parts are splendidly tough and propulsive, rattling around unexplored parts of the kit but never surrendering a beatmaster’s taste for velocity. To counter the hard-hitting parts, Monder includes three meditative solos, ending on the slow whirl of ‘Propane Dream’. — Penguin…
New Nectar
…th its own informing ethos and set of musical values (for example, freedom of individual expression within a complex and highly controlled social organization of sound). New Nectar is a major contribution to this ongoing cross-cultural experiment; it can equally be appreciated for its inclusive approach to forging a new music of substance and deligh…
Hive
…the Shakespeare song “Full Fathom Five” by British guest composer Alec Roth, composed in 1983 when he was studying in Java, in a haunted arrangement for a dual-voiced (female-male) Ariel. The whole record is a creative exploration of musical multiculturalism that honors its roots: educated but far from academic, it invites the listener into a sonor…
Crowd Theory
…technical ability and musical empathy that elevates them far above mere sidemen to equal partners in Granelli’s musical vision. The majority of the album is spent expertly treading a line between group improvisation and exacting composition. Many of the tracks find the theme prefaced by an extended improvisation by some or all of the players and ext…
