Zoe Pia & Mats Gustafsson - Rite (Parco Della Musica, 2025)

By Sammy Stein
Zoe Pia is a clarinettist and composer from Sardinia. She graduated from the Music Conservatory of Cagliari, where she specialised in clarinet. Later, she studied at the Conservatory of Rovigo in classical contemporary music, live electronics, and jazz. Pia has played with Franco Donatoni’s Hot, together with Marco Tamburini, Mauro Negri, Nico Gori, and Fabio Petretti. She gained experience at the ...

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Razor Sharp & Bone Deep

By Paul Acquaro
The trombone, simple to say, has played a crucial role in jazz history, from supporting instrument to prominent leading role and solo voice. Already in early jazz, the instrument's unique slides, growls and scoops added a raw, expressive quality to the music. Later, it showed off its more lyrical and smooth side, and in Bebop, it was as agile and expressive as any of the other...

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Amir ElSaffar & Lorenzo Bianchi Hoesch - Inner Spaces (Ornithology, 2025)

By Stef Gijssels
GijsselsWe have steadily reviewed American trumpeter Amir ElSaffar's work before on this blog, and always full of admiration for merging Middle-Eastern composition with jazz. Of Iraqi descent, ElSaffar integrated the musical legacy of his father into his Western musical education. On this album, he performs with electronic sound artist Lorenzo Bianchi Hoesch, who works for dance and theater, and who's also professor of Electroacoustic...

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Ada Rave

Ada Rave is an Argentinian saxophonist currently living in Europe. While Rave's music is grounded in jazz and free improvisation, she is constantly expanding it with inventive techniques. Her saxophone playing is striking, weaving classic jazz phrasing with unconventional textures and approaches. Rave has a recent solo album in search of a real world (Relative Pitch, 2024) and Un Segundo, Universo Infinito with pianist Paula Shocron (Doek, 2024). Here she is playing solo in April:...

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Joe McPhee- I’m Just Say’n (Smalltown Supersound, 2025)

By Martin Schray
Joe McPhee is not only an exceptional saxophonist and trumpeter, he has also been a man of words, a poet. On the one hand he can be a classical storyteller in the tradition of West African griots, musicians and historians of sorts who have preserved the oral tradition and cultural memory of their communities. These griots have played an important role in festivals and everyday situations, using...

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TORINO JAZZ FESTIVAL 23 - 30 APRIL 2025

By Ferruccio Martinotti
Edition number 13 of the Festival, this time in full coincidence with The Liberation Day (April 25th), the national holiday celebrating the 80th anniversary of the victory against nazi-fascists troops that were still occupying northern Italy. Torino and Piedmont were the fulcrum of the partisans struggle and paid a tremendous price in terms of dead or tortured people, mostly very young. As usual,...

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Jason Alder, Thanos Chrysakis, Charlotte Keeffe, James O’Sullivan – Inward Traces Outer Edges (Aural Terrains, 2025)

By Nick Ostrum
Inward Traces Outer Edges is the latest release from Thanos Chrysakis and his Aural Terrains label. On it perform label stalwarts such as Jason Alder (in an odd paring of contrabass clarinet and sopranino saxophone) and Chrysakis himself (laptop and synth) in addition to the British trumpeter Charlotte Keeffe and guitarist James O’Sullivan, both of whom have been distinguishing themselves in the London...

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Alexandra Grimal & Giovanni Di Domenico - Shakkei (Relative Pitch Records, 2025)

By Stef Gijssels
GijsselsFrench saxophonist Alexandra Grimal and Italian pianist Giovanni Di Domenico have performed and released albums over the years, in different ensembles. This is their fourth duo album, after "Down The Hill" (2020), after "Ghibli" (2011) and "Chergui" (2014), and it is an absolute winner. Recorded live in Ghent, Belgium in January 2023, the duo brings us five improvised pieces with Japanese titles. "Komori" means "a person...

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Sophie Agnel / John Butcher - RARE (Les Disques VICTO, 2025)

By Martin Schray
Music can be compared to radiation - analogous to descriptions by the German writer Ernst Jünger. In his diary entries of the same name, Jünger refers to light, but his observations can also be applied to the auditory world - especially that of improvised music. The musicians capture sound that reflects on the listener. In this sense, they perform preparatory work. The abundance of sounds must first...

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Matthew Shipp

This is a nice find ... music journalist Marc Masters sits down with pianist Matthew Shipp to discuss his new book, Black Mystery School Pianists and Other Writings, which came out last month from Autonomedia press. In the book, the prolific pianist offers a collection of essays, poems, tributes, and obituaries among other things. Listen here Since this new interview is a Podcast, and this is technically the Sunday Video post, here's a video of Shipp talking about his music, with cultural journalist Carlo McCormick. This one has been around...

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