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Europe Jazz Media is a group comprising a greater number of Jazz Magazines, Jazz Websites and critics all across Europe. Monthly each of its members nominates an album deserving extra attention. From these choices the monthly chart is made up. As a founding member of the group I make my choice every month now for more than a decade. I allow myself to present my choices and the complete chart also here. My choice for November 2024 is

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SUN-MI HONG BIDA ORCHESTRA – Invisible Ropes (Bimhuis Records)

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Sun-Mi Hong’s Bida Orchestra is a six-piece raw energy unit unleashing exceptional dynamics that convenes ferocious attacks and wild outbursts with classy horn lines as mighty as elegant in utmost thrilling , mutually feeding dialectics. Old contradictions are abolished, overcome and playfully transformed to a higher fully prospering level. With its deeply reaching resilient agility the group creates an increasingly strong unifying thread. It is ferocious, full of unbridled and intelligent joy of playing, reaching into realms of  touching beauty. The music designed and lead by exceptional female drummer Sun-Mi Hong fully triggers and unfolds the potentials of her high class international line-up with Mette Rasmussen (as), Alistair Payne (tr), John Dikeman (ts, bas-sax), Jozef Dumoulin (keys) and John Edwards (b). Sun-Mi Hong, a risen star from Amsterdam, is one of the internationally busiest and successful young musicians of the 30s generation. She can a.o. be seen with Bida Orchestra at this year’s Jazzfest Berlin on Thursday, October 31st. 

Here’s a YOUTUBE link to the live concert at Amsterdam Bimhuis the album is drawn from. You can find the album on BANDCAMP.

Es regnete Hunde und Katzen, und als die Kneipe endlich öffnete, sprang ich aus meinem Toyota gagenüber und war rasch drin, Tisch 10. Die Ruhrnachrichten hatten diesen „Vodcast 462“ als öffentliche Veranstaltung oegansiert, und ich hatte mich rechtzeitig, aus Matala (!), angemeldet. Es war ein besonderer Gast angekündigt, für die Gesprächsrunde mit Sascha Staat, und einmal im Leben lag ich mit meinem Tipp richtig, als wir an Tisch 10 spasseshalber rateten.

Thomas Broich! Tatsächlich tauchte er nach einer halben Stunde auf, aber wegen Soundunzulänglichkeiten verzögerte sich die Talkrunde etwas. Ich gab den Lautsprecher vom Tisch 10, un dging einmal nach vorne, um von dem Bassgewummer von Saschas Stimme zu berichten. Und es war hochinteressant, wie Thomas Einblicke gab in die vielen Facetten der Jugendarbeit, in der wuch die alte Tante Persönlichkeitsbildung auch nicht zu kurz kommt. Es lohnt sich, die Zeit zu nehmen und gut zuzuhören:

HIER (ab ca. 18.00 Uhr, 12.11.) läuft die „youtube-Fassung“.

Die Aufgaben sind dermassen komplex, dass bestes teamwork verlangt ist. Also spitzten wir die Ohren und wurden mit neuesten Forschungsansätzen und „basics“ bekannt gemacht. Sagen wir mal, es ist ein „sehr weites Feld“. An unserem Tisch wurde die Stimmung auch immer besser, und plötzlich fragte mich ein gewisser Rainer, noch bevor es losging, ob ich Michael Engelbrecht sei, er kennne meine Sendungen vom Deutschlandfunk, und er treffe nur selten Freunde von Brian Eno. Eine amüsante Randepisode.

Thomas Broichs Ritt im Galopp durch die Jugendarbeit war swhr spannend, erforderte aber volle Aufmerksamkeit. Aktuelle Themen wie Emre Cans sinndfreise Rot-Foul spielte nur am Rande hinein. Sascha Staat ist einer hervorragender, auch humorvoller Moderator, klug assisitiert von Cedric Gebhard. (Überhaupt haben diese RN-Experten von Sascha bis Cedric und Jürgen Koers, von Thomas Pinnov bis Altemeister Dirk Krampe (my generation!) etwas Angenehm-Unarrogantes, was in diesem Job beileibe nicht alltäglich ist. Diskurskuktur der Extraklasse.) Leider musste Rainer früher gehen, weil sein Kumpel akut erkrankt schien. Gute Besssrung an dieser Stelle.

Hinterher gab es noch, wie es sich für Fussballkultur im Kreuzviertel gehört, eine tolles Schaschlik, und eine Alternative für Vegetarier. Sehr spendsbel, liebe Ruhrnachrichten! Am Ende schnackte ich noch etwas mit Sascha, er war heilforhm dass es mit dem Sound noch klappte, und ich erzählte ihm, wie ich einmal lachen musste, als er, in einem früheren Vodcast, im hochgeschätzten „Vorgeplänkel“, kundtat, dass er weder Joni Mitchell noch Kate Bush kenne. Er sei so schlecht in Musik, sagte er. Nein, nein, erwiderte ich, das ist einfach eine Frage der Generationen! Gerne demnächst wieder!

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Here is something about and from a contemporary young artist from Beirut, Lebanon. Nour Sokhon is a truly multidisciplinary artist creating dynamic sound spectra of strong undercurrent expressiveness. I saw her several times performing live (at Punkt Festival, Gaudeamus Festival, Hennie Onstage Center) and worked with her (at Schwere Reiter, Munich). For me she is a forceful and imaginative multi-dimensional, multi-layered creator of sound visions permeated by social and political tissues and realities. .

Daily life in urban chaos from relative peaceful times to times of catastrophe and horrible war have their significant sounds people are surrounded by and taken in and lived by, sounds that resonate in their feeling and memories. Human voices in various modes mingle with it and our memory speaks in inner voices and images.

Beirut Birds طيور بيروت, created by multidisciplinary artist Nour Sokhon, is a sonic memory capsule honoring (inter)personal stories of migration, displacement, and the cyclical turbulent circumstances in Lebanon. 

Nour Sokhon has undertaken and recorded interviews with diasporas and repatriates to commemorate, share, heal, and envision. These source materials become the album’s core elements that loop, narrate, and return throughout time, with herself responding with both instruments and her voice. Chanting in dialogue with the interviewees, crafting near-mantras, she further congregates these materially-rooted sound-scapes by including field recordings that she gleaned during 2018–2021 in Lebanon and her subsequent move to Berlin. 

The pieces contain manipulated sounds from objects that symbolize migration, such as office bells, a luggage wheel, car parts, and bureaucratic paperwork interwoven with and carried by Nour Sokhon’s enriching improvisations on classical piano, electronics, synthesizers, violin, and various percussion instruments.

(text adapted from bandcamp where you can have a listen to the music)

get Bandcamp

Fairouz is a very famous Lebanese singer and I’ve been listening to lots of different tracks of hers over the past few years. But there’s some really great ones on this album, and it inspired my most recent record – not in a direct way, just that when you listen to something a lot, it gets in your head. This record took on a funky sound, which I think was a shift for Fairouz, as she started working with her son. The song “Li Beirut” is very moving to me right now, because of what’s going on in Lebanon. It’s like her love song to Beirut, written during the civil war, and it’s kind of devastating.

Julia Holter

(After the interview with her, thanks to Olaf for support, I looked out for this album, and though it cannot measure it with an immaculate Western production, such little limititations are easily transcended by the beauty and the power of the music.)

Quincey Jones hat das Zeitliche gesegnet, und es gibt reichlich Gründe für Lobeshymnen. Q hat Dinge miteinander zu verbinden gewusst und ein bewundernswertes lebenslanges offenes Interesse an den Tag gelegt. Bis in das neunte Jahrzehnt seines rührigen Lebens. Chapeau! Sein respektvolles, einladend schmunzelendes Lächeln galt auch immer jüngeren Generationen wie etwa das folgende Bild von Q mit Vokalistin Sanem Kalfa beim Montreux Festival 2011 zeigt. Sanem gewann damals den Vokalwettbewerb.

Ich will den vielen schönen Nachrufen keinen weiteren hinzufügen, sondern möchte Questlove (von The Roots) das Wort geben.

QUESTLOVE : „Wanted To Reflect On The Hundreds Of Things He Taught Me Throughout The Years. 10 Takeaways Quincy Jones would hammer home throughout the years I’d run into him. 

1. The importance of connecting to people (scoring/songwriting/business ventures) your song/message/product HAS to give goosebumps.

2. “You can’t polish doo-doo”——the best singer can’t save a bad song. The most limited singer often make hit songs because limited musicians serve the song & virtuosos tend to let their ego show off too much. The song must resonate

3. Always record your music when your musicians are tired from 10pm-5am you’ll get the best results because Theta brainwaves are subconscious ———always use the “non overthinking” hours to let the magic in

4. My contact list is my most important instrument 

5. The importance of sequencing albums & shows——know how to balance your strong  material to your more experimental material.

6. Never look down on the generation that’s ahead of you. Never neglect the creations of the generations in your rear view mirror.

7. Study & master all arenas of creativity

8. You are never too old to achieve a new plateau or goal

9. Edit edit edit Less Is More

10. Pay it forward to the next person.

Quincy Delight Jones (1933-2024)

Hello, Jakob Bro!

Via Henning Bolte I discovered your  music around 2012, and since then I followed your ways. Gefion was my first album, and if I should take three favourites to the infamous desert island, they would be, in this moment of time, Returnings, Strands – and Taking Turns. 

So here come my questions. At the beginning of December I will review Taking Turns in the JazzFacts radio magazine, nearly 7 minutes long. The audio of my little feature  can be heard afterwards a very long time.  

I will cut and edit your answers, so you can make them  as long or short as you like. Maybe, it can all happen within 8 days… and after all this radio work will be done, I’ll be in my old town in Dortmund, on Dec. 4 to hear you with Arve and Jorge!

As a preparation for these questions, I listened twice to Taking Turns yesterday, and for a second time I saw the documentary Music For Black Pigeons. Well, it was a great afternoon. So here we go: 

• Produced in 2014, Taking Turns  was in some ways the follow-up of December Song, with Jason Moran instead of Craig, and Andrew Cyrille. At that point in time you had already made Gefion with Manfred, who, as I think, is not present during the Taking Turns recording. (Or was he?) Now, in retrospect, how do you look back on these one or two days of making the album in NYC with a line-up that, in this constellation, never met before or after again. Do the recordings of Taking Turns somehow exist in a bubble, do you see them as an extension of December Song? Or what makes this session  stand apart?

• How did the musicians of this one time band „learned“ the new compositions? With notation (there are often papers with notes in the documentary)? Have there been detailed notations with a bit of freedom to improvise, or how did you introduce these compositions to the band? 

• In the case of Lee Konitz: did he just got to know the basic melody, and then act as a free agent on the music played? His playing is simply wonderful.

• In the case of Jason Moran and Thomas Morgan: it is such a joy to listen to both of them  finding the right spaces / moments for their impacts… in the case of Jason, it sounds he is soloing and accompanying at the same time. Both musicians constantly surprise here. Not that i did expect anything else:) Can you remember a certain moment? 

• At one point in the film, Lee asked: well, are these pieces folk songs? Now looking at the titles, one  could really think of „folk tunes“ refering to different parts of the world? Even „Milford Sound“ refers to „a place in New Zeeland“….. How do you look at this choice of the seven compositions? Somehow i don‘t think they just lay around? Has there been a „landscape feeling“ in some of the pieces?

• Listening to the album, it is such a captivating melange of textures. As a listener you can let your attention be wandering to the single instruments, to the overall sound….   Now, most of these guys know your music very well. Anyway, it would not surprise me if you kind of announced to them something like: let the melodies be as important as the atmosphere!  (Or they know that anyway):) 

• On a piece like „Haiti“ there is this love for the simple melody, returning again and again… but so much happens between the beginning and  the end of that track, sometime it seems to be on the verge of „rocking“ and „grooving“…..can you give some insights into this piece?

• The last piece „mar de plata“ … the press info says: „On the concluding “Mar del Plata”, which summons memories of touring through Argentina, Morgan has a strong central role, endeavoring to invest each bass note with meaning, and sounding like a young Charlie Haden almost, as the music canters toward the sunset.“ When composing did you really have „Argentinian memories“ in your mind that somehow entered the music? Or did you find this coennection later, in the mixing process? And on this track Lee Konitz is not playing, the only time on the album…. Any reason for that? Some thoughts from the back of your mind about this track would be nice…and I know: it‘s been a long time ago!

Thank you for doing this, 

Thank you for the music,

Best wishes, Michael Engelbrecht!

REEL #3

_{To operate a REEL: zoom in by clicking on the ‘AMSONANZA’ mark when the reel starts. The ‘AMSONANZA’ mark also appears at the end a bit larger. When you click on it, the reel will be repeated.}