A few nights ago, I had a dream. I was at a festival. Not a specific one, but a jazz festival and I was walking around and ran into producer Joachim Becker and we chatted amicably, while continuing to walk. Then I was suddenly in a venue and on stage was Abdullah Ibrahim, singing, behind the piano. Beautiful how his voice was clear and filled the silent room. Then he got up and played a bit of harp and pocket trumpet, like the one Don Cherry used to play. While doing so, he morphed into Archie Shepp … and then I woke up. Kind of strange, but really something special in the way Abdullah sang, touching and soothing. I have no idea what all of this means, beside that I dream of jazz as well as living it, but I enjoyed that musical dream and hope for a repetition.
A blog I wrote back in 2013 titled ‘The Sound Of Next’, about a campaign we ran for new artists on OKeh Records that year, got over seven hundred views recently and I have no idea why. All of these actually coming from Indonesia. If anyone knows why especially this piece of writing was of interest in that country in the last few months, please be so kind and let me know.
2021 is coming to an end – the first year in over 50 when I didn’t see one live concert!!!! Feels kind of weird writing this, but it is true. Even so there were a few gigs in Madrid in the second part of the year, I didn’t go, as I wasn’t prepared to venture into a closed space with people not wearing masks. The recent increase in infections confirmed to me that I had been unfortunately right.
I have spent a big part of the year writing my chronicle, which I hope to have finished in the early part of 2022. Therefore, I didn’t spend much time to review all the music that artists, labels and PR people had sent to me and I am sorry for not having found the time to do so, as among these were great recordings like
- Matthew Shipp’s outstanding solo effort ‘Codebreaker’
- Mike Casey’s captivating ‘Law of Attraction: The Remixes’
- Florian Arbenz’s 4th part of his adventurous ‘Conversation’ series: ‘Vulcanized’
- Lionel Loueke / Reuben Rodgers / Eric Harland – ‘Close Your Eyes’
- Eliane Elias – great duos with Chick Corea & Chucho Valdes on ‘Mirror, Mirror’
- Plus albums by Don MacDonald, singer Sheila Simmenes, sax player Benjamin Deschamps, guitarist Oli Astral, Alex Hitchcock, Sam Anning, the Australian Art Orchestra and a few more …
Sorry once again for not having gone deeper into these, but writing and correcting, editing, doing a bit more research on a topic, etc. is taking a lot of time, despite the fun I have doing so.
The twelve records I liked most in 2021 came from a variety of countries around the world and really stood out of the music I heard this year. Here they are in no particular order:
Florian Arbenz – his exploratory series of collaborations ‘Conversations’ 1 to 4!!!
Sachal Vasandani feat. Romain Collin – ‘Midnight Shelter’. A rare vocal beauty!
Tania Giannouli – ‘In Fading Light’
Marc Johnson – ‘Overpass’. Solo bass improvisations.
James Brandon Lewis – ‘Jesup Wagon’
Dave Holland / Kevin Eubanks / Obed Calvaire – ‘Another Land’
Hakon Kornstad – ‘For You Alone’
Julian Lage – ‘Squint’
Gretchen Parlato – ‘Flor’
Kurt Elling – ‘SuperBlue’
Nils Petter Molvaer – ‘Stitches’
Ketil Bjornstad – ‘Flagstad, The Opera’
Which leaves me to wish you all the best for the New Year. May it be much better than the last two ….
Love, Jazz and Happiness to all of you
Wulf's Music + Blog 