The album Who We Are is the first studio recording of the collaboration between pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and saxophonist/composer Marius Neset. They are joined on the record by flautist Ingrid Softeland Neset and cellist Louisa Tuck. The music, composed by Neset, was recorded at Oslo's Rainbow Studio in the course of three days in December, 2023.

This is the repeated call and the rallying chorus of the nearly 40-minute centerpiece to composer and percussionist Asher Gamedze’s new album Constitution. The expansive double album, a minoritarian fellowship in breath, is Gamedze’s follow-up to 2023’s Turbulence and Pulse (IARC0057/M3H013), and his first with The Black Lungs, a ten-piece ensemble. The album – recorded in one day at Cape Town’s Sound and Motion Studios – is an elaboration of the possibilities of autonomous constitution in and through polyrhythmic, modal, large ensemble music.

This perfectly harmonising duo focuses on strong contrasts and thrives on empathy and intense exchanges. – Deutschlandfunk. Having previously joined forces on several Louis Sclavis recordings for ECM, including the clarinettist’s last album Characters On A Wall, in recent years Sclavis and pianist Benjamin Moussay increasingly focused on their two-way communication, playing expansive and well-received concerts throughout Europe. Now, in a programme of originals – two-thirds from the pianist’s pen, the remaining third by the clarinettist – the French duo dreams up a world of chamber conversations that juxtaposes lyrical contemplation with whimsical inventiveness in a joyous, concentrated collaboration. Thoughtfully, the duo envelopes delicate themes in warm improvisations that never rush, but patiently explore the written material with rare creativity and in fluid dialogues. Recorded at Studios La Buissonne, Southern France in March 2024, Unfolding was produced by Manfred Eicher.

“Pure beauty is the common tone of Trygve Seim and Frode Haltli. There is something folk-song-like in this music – intersections where secular and sacred music meet to dance”. This is what the German weekly paper Die Zeit said on the duo’s debut release Yeraz back in 2008 and while the statement still holds up today, the rapport between the saxophonist and the accordionist has grown even more fluid in the meantime. On Our Time Trygve and Frode exchange counterpuntal glances, lyrical swells and textural explorations with grace, eloquence and utmost nuance, presenting a programme of originals, improvisations and evocative recastings of traditional folk songs from Ukraine and North-India. Recorded at the Himmelfahrtskirche in Munich, in 2023, and produced by Manfred Eicher, on Our Time the saxophonist and accordionist’s tones meet in a surreal and magical dance.

Idiosyncratic, large-scale and in its fundamental disposition one of a kind, Florian Weber’s Imaginary Cycle, conceived for the unique instrumentation of brass ensemble and piano, is a hybrid of multiple musical languages that seamlessly blends the harmonious with the oblique.

On his new solo album, Drømmene (The Dreams), Henrik Pultz Melbye explores different places where dreams unfold, what emotions they evoke in us and what they remind us of. While dreams take place during our sleep, we often find ourselves daydreaming but often unconsciously, affecting our emotional state. This album serves as an output for all those intense emotions we experience.

A requiem mass for drums, electronics and choir, 'The Undreamt-of Centre' is Laurence Pike's most ambitious solo album to date, pulling from Ligeti, Jon Hassell and Midori Takada in equal measure.

This Friday Sept 6 we’re releasing a session we recorded named ‘Infrared’. This was a fully improvised recording of drums, sax and taishokoto in a studio wired with overwhelming reverb pumping back at us. The recording was also captured in a beautifully processed film shot by Lisa IndigoBurns Wormsley.

Over the course of his brilliant and groundbreaking quarter-century career, Grammy Award-winning alto saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón has reveled in doing the hard work, whether he was transforming Puerto Rican plena into a vehicle for improvisation or writing a body of tunes inspired by the history of the American continent. But no project he’s tackled has involved the kind of intensive, granular research required by Golden City, a sweeping suite inspired by the demographic and political evolution of San Francisco, from the pre-colonial period to the contemporary tech-dominated era. His 17th album as a leader, Golden City is slated for release August 30, 2024 via Zenón’s Miel Music label.

‘I keep thinking about how to lead a band from the drums in a way that gives the instrument a central role, but one which is more about shaping the music than displaying virtuosity,’ says Wolfgang Haffner. This way of working, a common thread throughout his career, is a key factor in ‘Life Rhythm’, his tenth album for ACT. Haffner may shun the virtuoso drummer/ bandleader stereotype – and do so intentionally – but ‘Life Rhythm’ nonetheless has the drums at its very heart. Back in 2022, Wolfgang Haffner was given the opportunity to play the first solo concert of his career, an event that started the sequence of events which have led to this album. He remembers: ‘That was an insane challenge. I had a decision to make: was I really going to play a drum solo … for a full hour? Of course not.’ This reflection encouraged Haffner, who has habitually composed his music at the piano, to make use of the drums in his songwriting process.

You can't claim to know anything about Danish jazz unless you know the great and beloved tenor saxophonist Jakob Dinesen - also known as Dino.

27-year-old Tomin Perea-Chamblee is a brass- and reed-centered multi-instrumentalist, the composer and arranger of pieces with excellently thorny harmonies, an at-times reluctant musicker and enthusiastic Brooklynite (born and raised, so his admiration primarily concerns the borough’s pre-gentralification qualities), who, by day works as a bioinformatician. If you're in New York, there’s an OK chance that you’ve heard him play before, with young (jazz-adjacent) bands and musicians of some renown. Flores para Verene / Cantos para Caramina introduces Tomin as an individual artist to the wider public, and is in many ways a tribute to family and heritage. It’s music grounded in clear purpose and a gravity seemingly beyond his youthfulness, yet coloured with unexpected hues, engaging a newness and hope that lies beyond tradition’s solemnity.

GleAM Records is proud to announce the release of XENYA, the surprising debut of the collective made up of five of the greatest Italian jazz talents, available on CD and digital download / streaming from 18 June 2021.

Spirit Stronger Than Blood pays homage to some of the recordings that shaped my musical-spiritual aesthetic: Charles Mingus’s Changes 1&2, Booker Little’s Strength and Sanity, Pharaoh Sanders’s Peace and Love, Clifford Thornton’s Gardens of Harlem, Alice Coltrane’s Ptah, The El Daoud. Each of these artists, as different as they are from each other, shared a commonality of intention that set me on my life and career path. Their music is spiritual, political, romantic, at turns angry and peaceful, and inspires us to transcend and challenge the inequities of quotidian existence in order to make the world a better place, to heal the broken world (tikkun olam).

Second release from the outstanding Runar Norsett Trio on Losen Records, Endless Journey features the trio with special guests Randy Brecker on trumpet and Ada Royatti (Randy's wife) on tenor saxophone. Featuring original compositions by Norsett that range from upbeat swingers to thought provocking and melencholic ballads, this is a worthy follow up to the trio's highly recommended album, My Funny Quarantine (LOS2572).