News
…The website is a work in progress. For example we still need to add review quotes for many of the more recent releases, and organize touring info. We welcome your feedback, questions, and suggestions for improvements at info@songlines.com, or send us a message on the contact page. …
Magic Numbers
…ion to touring and recording with several Toronto or New York-based groups. For more information: www.jimblack.com, www.markhelias.com, www.nathaliebonin.com…
Looks like it’s going to snow
…to conceptualize the music and the approach of the band. Freedom and composition work in tandem and in juxtaposition. The melody sings a delightful song and then disappears, leaving the field for Arntzen and Turner to set out again on the paths their imaginations unfurl. They do so in the lockstep of seamless parallel lines and by ricocheting off e…
Equilibrium
…make the trumpet sound more like a flute or a shakuhachi…[Here] I try to see if I can find my way to a sound on my instruments that is close to the human voice.” Sissel adds: “I’ve often been told that I sing through the sax and play my voice like an instrument. To me it’s just two voices, and I feel they are very closely related in this airy organ…
Safar-e-Daroon
…nted, this is one of New York’s best bands, bar none. And [Ejdeha, 2018] is one of the half-dozen best albums released this year so far in any style of music.” – Delarue, Lucid Culture Here is the second release by The Marrow, Grdina’s Vancouver/New York project adapting Arabic and Persian forms to a jazz approach and ethos. For Grdina there is noth…
Everything Forgets
…s music makes a true statement of its own. More info: joachimbadenhorst.com, simonjermyn.com, willfulmusic.com [Jeff Williams], joesmithmusic.com….
Deviantics
…tifully, which is the unique gift of a good free musician…[The Balkan] thread is most apparent on the song ‘East Europe Rundown. This song is a beautiful combination of Eastern scales and a gypsy beat that branches out into freer jazz…’Reconnoiter” starts of with a tight 9/4 groove under a unison sax/trumpet melody that brings to mind Bill Bruford’s…
The Book of Hours
…omposers Collective; Arabesque, 1998). Among his more than 100 compositions are two piano concertos (both premiered by the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra and to be recorded by them); a string quartet; Concerto for Tenor Saxophone and Orchestra; and Waves, commissioned and recorded by the French jazz ensemble Kartet. He received the 2003 Gil Evans F…
Dreams and False Alarms
…sing those things in creative and personal ways, is to me [a] humbling and inspiring thing….” Dreams and False Alarms was recorded in the recital hall of UBC’s School of Music in Vancouver. In such a venue “there’s room to explore the entire range of the piano, because the instrument and the natural acoustics of the room dictate the dynamic range of…
Speak to It
…Alone” where they’re joined by vocalist Holly Palmer. The feel moves in and out of time (from jazz-rock to free, polyrhythmic and vamp to rubato), while the shifting textural/melodic interplay demonsrtates their commitment to collective improvisation. As critic Louisa Hufstader remarked about their 1994 New World/Countercurrents release, “You can he…
