David Virelles: Mbókò - Sacred Music for Piano, Two Basses, Drum Set and Biankoméko Abakuá
With Mbókò, pianist-composer David Virelles – based now in New York but born and bred in Cuba – has taken the folkloric rhythms of Afro-Cuban religious ritual and transmuted them into a 21st-century music resonating with mystery and meaning. The main title, Mbókò, can mean “fundament” or “sugar cane” or “The Voice,” not the human voice but The Voice that is believed in Abakuá culture to be the voice of a spirit, or spirits. Sound is an element revered in this culture, and that idea – the worship of sound itself – was a shaping force in the performances of Virelles’ compositions on Mbókò. The album’s subtitle – “Sacred Music for Piano, Two Basses, Drum Set and Biankoméko Abakuá” – indicates both the ritualistic intent of the 10 pieces and their sound, with piano as lead voice alongside dual bass drone and the polyrhythmic percussion of a traditional trap set and the all-important four-drum biankoméko kit, manned by Román Díaz. Virelles has tapped into a mu sical impulse that is simultaneously ancient and modern, communal and personal, meditative and propulsive. Mbókò casts a spell.
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Marcin Wasilewski Trio w/ Joakim Milder: Spark Of Life
The fourth ECM album for the Wasilewski Trio adds a special guest, the lyrical Swedish saxophonist Joakim Milder, whom the Poles came to know through performances with Tomasz Stanko’s Litania project. Amongst other affinities, the players share a love of Krzyzstof Komeda’s music, and Komeda’s “Sleep Safe and Warm” theme, written for Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby makes a reappearance here. As ever, the Wasilewski group balances original material – intensely melodic new tunes by Marcin (including two variations of the beautiful title track) – with a daring range of covers, embracing Herbie Hancock, the Police’s “Message In A Bottle” and Slawomir Kurkiewicz’s arrangement of a composition by Grazyna Bacewicz, and reinforces its status as one of the most resourceful groups around. This is the trio’s second ECM appearance this year, following on from sterling work as Jacob Young’s rhyth m section on Forever Young. Spark of Life was recorded in Lugano in March 2014, and produced by Manfred Eicher.
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Album trailer for Spark Of Life
The Hilliard Ensemble: Transeamus
Having recorded more than 20 albums for ECM since the mid-’80s, the Hilliard Ensemble caps its discography before retirement with a final release: Transeamus, a collection of polyphony – in two, three and four parts – from 15th-century England. The British vocal ensemble’s very first ECM recording included music from the court of Henry VIII, and Transeamus brings their odyssey through the ages full circle. The album includes many of the group’s favorite pieces from this era, including previously unrecorded items from its concert programs by the likes of John Plummer, Walter Lambe and William Cornysh. More of the album’s works are by composers rendered anonymous by time, yet all of this music is rich with enduring personality. Tenor David James says: “The sweet harmonies might appear uncomplicated, but this transparency of sound creates a cumulative effect that is mesmerizing. The album ends with ‘Ah gentle Jesu.’ We know the composer’s name, Sheryngham, but virt ually nothing else. On paper, it is a simple dialogue between Christ on the cross and a penitent sinner; however, the intensity of the music is so overwhelming that, from our experience in concert, both listener and performer are left in stunned silence.”
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Kate Moore/Saskia Langhoorn: Dances and Canons
Dances and Canons is the debut ECM recording of both composer Kate Moore and pianist Saskia Langhoorn. Moore was born in England in 1979 and lives now in the Netherlands (where she studied with Louis Andriessen). However, it is Australia, where she grew up, which has left the strongest impression on her creative imagination, its teeming natural soundscapes transmuted in her music of hypnotically-swarming pulse patterns and shifting, layered planes of sound. In Dutch pianist Lankhoorn (also born 1979), Moore has a dedicated and resourceful interpreter. “It’s impossible to listen to this music,” writes George Miller in the liner note, “and not wonder about the enormous technical demands it makes of the performer.” Moore and Lankhoorn have collaborated regularly since 2003. As well as compositions for solo piano, the programme includes pieces for two pianos, four pianos and multiple pianos, realized in the Auditorio svizzera, Lugano, with Manfred Eicher as producer.
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Konstantia Gourzi: Music for piano and string quartet
Athens-born and Munich-based composer Konstantia Gourzi makes her ECM New Series label debut. “What historical voices commingle in the current idiom of a composer whose cultural roots lie in the birthplace of rhetoric, but who emigrated to take a musical apprenticeship in European constructivism?” asks Ingrid Allwardt in the liner notes. “What wordless airs, echoes of past ages, thread their way into the present day of her instrumental songs?” Music for piano and string quartet, supplies the answers. With the exception of the early „noch fürcht’ ich”, composed in 1993, all the music is of recent vintage. It includes a number of piano miniatures, pieces dedicated to Lachenmann, Kurtág, Raue, Abbado, Barenboim and Rexroth, two string quartets, and works for string quartet and piano. Pianist Lorenda Ramou and the Ensemble Coriolis deliver committed performances. The album was recorded in Munich’s Himmelfahrtskirche in 2012, and produced by Manfred Eicher.
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Tourdates
With Mbókò, pianist-composer David Virelles – based now in New York but born and bred in Cuba – has taken the folkloric rhythms of Afro-Cuban religious ritual and transmuted them into a 21st-century music resonating with mystery and meaning. The main title, Mbókò, can mean “fundament” or “sugar cane” or “The Voice,” not the human voice but The Voice that is believed in Abakuá culture to be the voice of a spirit, or spirits. Sound is an element revered in this culture, and that idea – the worship of sound itself – was a shaping force in the performances of Virelles’ compositions on Mbókò. The album’s subtitle – “Sacred Music for Piano, Two Basses, Drum Set and Biankoméko Abakuá” – indicates both the ritualistic intent of the 10 pieces and their sound, with piano as lead voice alongside dual bass drone and the polyrhythmic percussion of a traditional trap set and the all-important four-drum biankoméko kit, manned by Román Díaz. Virelles has tapped into a mu sical impulse that is simultaneously ancient and modern, communal and personal, meditative and propulsive. Mbókò casts a spell.
ECMPlayer
Marcin Wasilewski Trio w/ Joakim Milder: Spark Of Life
The fourth ECM album for the Wasilewski Trio adds a special guest, the lyrical Swedish saxophonist Joakim Milder, whom the Poles came to know through performances with Tomasz Stanko’s Litania project. Amongst other affinities, the players share a love of Krzyzstof Komeda’s music, and Komeda’s “Sleep Safe and Warm” theme, written for Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby makes a reappearance here. As ever, the Wasilewski group balances original material – intensely melodic new tunes by Marcin (including two variations of the beautiful title track) – with a daring range of covers, embracing Herbie Hancock, the Police’s “Message In A Bottle” and Slawomir Kurkiewicz’s arrangement of a composition by Grazyna Bacewicz, and reinforces its status as one of the most resourceful groups around. This is the trio’s second ECM appearance this year, following on from sterling work as Jacob Young’s rhyth m section on Forever Young. Spark of Life was recorded in Lugano in March 2014, and produced by Manfred Eicher.
ECMPlayer
Album trailer for Spark Of Life
The Hilliard Ensemble: Transeamus
Having recorded more than 20 albums for ECM since the mid-’80s, the Hilliard Ensemble caps its discography before retirement with a final release: Transeamus, a collection of polyphony – in two, three and four parts – from 15th-century England. The British vocal ensemble’s very first ECM recording included music from the court of Henry VIII, and Transeamus brings their odyssey through the ages full circle. The album includes many of the group’s favorite pieces from this era, including previously unrecorded items from its concert programs by the likes of John Plummer, Walter Lambe and William Cornysh. More of the album’s works are by composers rendered anonymous by time, yet all of this music is rich with enduring personality. Tenor David James says: “The sweet harmonies might appear uncomplicated, but this transparency of sound creates a cumulative effect that is mesmerizing. The album ends with ‘Ah gentle Jesu.’ We know the composer’s name, Sheryngham, but virt ually nothing else. On paper, it is a simple dialogue between Christ on the cross and a penitent sinner; however, the intensity of the music is so overwhelming that, from our experience in concert, both listener and performer are left in stunned silence.”
ECMPlayer
Tourdates
Kate Moore/Saskia Langhoorn: Dances and Canons
Dances and Canons is the debut ECM recording of both composer Kate Moore and pianist Saskia Langhoorn. Moore was born in England in 1979 and lives now in the Netherlands (where she studied with Louis Andriessen). However, it is Australia, where she grew up, which has left the strongest impression on her creative imagination, its teeming natural soundscapes transmuted in her music of hypnotically-swarming pulse patterns and shifting, layered planes of sound. In Dutch pianist Lankhoorn (also born 1979), Moore has a dedicated and resourceful interpreter. “It’s impossible to listen to this music,” writes George Miller in the liner note, “and not wonder about the enormous technical demands it makes of the performer.” Moore and Lankhoorn have collaborated regularly since 2003. As well as compositions for solo piano, the programme includes pieces for two pianos, four pianos and multiple pianos, realized in the Auditorio svizzera, Lugano, with Manfred Eicher as producer.
ECMPlayer
Tourdates
Konstantia Gourzi: Music for piano and string quartet
Athens-born and Munich-based composer Konstantia Gourzi makes her ECM New Series label debut. “What historical voices commingle in the current idiom of a composer whose cultural roots lie in the birthplace of rhetoric, but who emigrated to take a musical apprenticeship in European constructivism?” asks Ingrid Allwardt in the liner notes. “What wordless airs, echoes of past ages, thread their way into the present day of her instrumental songs?” Music for piano and string quartet, supplies the answers. With the exception of the early „noch fürcht’ ich”, composed in 1993, all the music is of recent vintage. It includes a number of piano miniatures, pieces dedicated to Lachenmann, Kurtág, Raue, Abbado, Barenboim and Rexroth, two string quartets, and works for string quartet and piano. Pianist Lorenda Ramou and the Ensemble Coriolis deliver committed performances. The album was recorded in Munich’s Himmelfahrtskirche in 2012, and produced by Manfred Eicher.
ECMPlayer
Tourdates
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