modern composition
Meet: Inspirational electro-acoustic saxophonist Jason Sharp ahead of his upcoming UK/Eu solo tour.
You might have missed saxophonist Jason Sharp’s elemental and elevating album ‘The Turning Centre Of The Still World’ released as it was at the backend of the pandemic in August last year. His third release for Montreal’s mighty Constellation label marked an emboldened exploration of his craft, melding his sax playing with electronics using his …
Album review: Group Listening – ‘Clarinet & Piano: Selected Works, Vol. 2’: essential ambient reworkings with a real sense of place
GROUP LISTENING is a pairing of two very fine Welsh musicians: Cardiff’s Paul Jones, a deft jazz and experimental pianist and arranger who first worked with his partner on this project, Stephen Black, on the latter’s fine and wonky Sweet Baboo project (and is there any kind of Welsh indiepop that doesn’t espouse those two …
Track: Roedelius & Story show us the beauty of four hands working in empathy on the nuanced piano duet, ‘Ba’
PEOPLE can often bandy about terms such as legendary and scion with a carefree laziness; but, when it comes to German electronic and ambient music pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius, now into his eighth decade with us, those epithets are both wholly apt and richly deserved. And with something around the 90-album mark in his catalogue since …
Track: Vanessa Wagner presents the first ever acoustic interpretation of the Enos’ ‘Celeste’, with an album following in March for InFiné
BRETON pianist Vanessa Wagner, who began her long romance with the piano aged 7 and who, earlier in her career, released albums tackling the works of Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Scriabine and Mozart, came to something of a crossroads in her musical development in 2016; that year she recorded a collaborative album with Leaf Records’ Mexican electronicist …
News: Erland Cooper releases his chorally collaborative ‘Egilsay’ EP: see a making-of film and find out more about his debuting silent movie score performance
MAGISTERIAL Orcadian composer Erland Cooper has released his second choral collaboration with the Shards ensemble, an EP focussing on one of Orkney’s northern islands, Egilsay, featuring four tracks of and about the island with a population of 14. Here at Backseat Mafia we featured a track, the moving, almost holy “Glimro”, at the beginning of …
News: Hannah Peel announces a new work, ‘The Unfolding’, with Paraorchestra and Charles Hazlewood, out in April; see a teaser
ARTIST extraordinaire Hannah Peel, fresh from her reimagining and recasting of Delia Derbyshire’s library music work, Fir Wave, and her folksier collaboration with Philippe Cohen Solal, Mike Lindsay and others, Outsider, has announced details of a major new work, The Unfolding, in collaboration with the award-winning, premier British conductor Charles Hazlewood and his Paraorchestra; expect, from the …
EP review: Shida Shahabi – ‘Alvaret (Original Soundtrack)’: Stockholm composer soundtracks a short film of domestic tragedy with drone warmth and acuity
WE LAST encountered that Stockholm-based talent Shida Shahabi in these pages just over a year ago, when she released the soundtrack EP for Jennifer Rainsford’s subtle sci-fi short Lake On Fire; and rather a lovely thing it proved, seeing Shida step away from the piano with which she recorded her 130701 debut Shifts in favour …
See: The amazing short film about child refugees accompanying Hania Rani & Dobrawa Czocher’s autumnal duet, ‘Malasana’
INNER SYMPHONIES is the album that lifelong friends composer, pianist and singer Hania Rani and composer and cellist Dobrawa Czocher released in October for classical music imprint without parallel Deutsche Grammophon. Recorded together in their native Poland, this collaboration follows 2015’s Biala Flaga, but is their first album of original work; Hania and Dobrawa are …
News: Roedelius and Tim Story will enter into a four-handed piano conversation for Erased Tapes in January; hear ‘Spirit Clock’
A GENUINE, gilt-edged musical legend, German electronic and ambient music pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius, now into his eighth decade with us, is to enter into a two-way piano conversation with American composer and friend of 40 years Tim Story for Erased Tapes in January. The 11-track album, entitled 4 Hands, allows the pair to explore an …
News: Hugar announce a new album, ‘Rift’, for January; come explore the delicate, glacial pulsing of ‘volt’
HUGAR, the Icelandic modern compositional duo of childhood friends Bergur Þórisson and Pétur Jónsson, who we last examined in these pages in regard to their arthouse film soundtrack The Vasulka Effect (read about that, here), are set to return in the first, budding days of 2022 with an album entitled Rift: an album written with …