The Seed is guitarist Thomas Mitrousis’ debut album, featuring Kostas Yaxoglou on the piano, Paraskevas Kitsos on the double bass, and Dimitris Klonis on the drums. The Seed was recorded in May 2021 at Antart Studios, in Greece, by Nikos Kollias and Yannis Damianos, and it was self-released on March 21, 2022.
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Secular Psalms is an album by trumpeter Dave Douglas, featuring Tomeka Reid, Berlinde Deman, Marta Warelis, Frederik Leroux, and Lander Gyselinck. The compositions are inspired by Jan van Eyck’s “Ghent Altarpiece,” as well as music by 15th-century Flemish composer Guillaume Dufay. Secular Psalms was recorded separately by each musician between May 2020—August 2021, and it was released on April 1, 2022, by Greenleaf Music.
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Hemligheter på vägen is the first release by ORD, a jazz quintet formed a few years ago and led by pianist Karin Johansson–who also acts here as composer and arranger. The album was recorded in 2019 by Oskar Johnsen Rydh in Sweden and released by Havtorn Records on March 21, 2022, which was World Poetry Day.
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On April 30, International Jazz Day will be celebrated all over the world, and the host city this year is Cape Town, South Africa.
April is also the start of a busy period when a lot of heavy jazz albums get released, so there’s lots of good times ahead of us!
To start the celebration here is an amazing April 2022 Selection of albums that have already been released or will be released this month. These albums got our full attention and should be worth your time.
The albums are listed in order of release date.
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1959 was without a doubt the best year in jazz history. Even if we were to add “so far” to the end of that statement, it still wouldn’t make sense, as the revolution to come will be grounded in the roots of 1959 anyway—or it will get a new name, other than “jazz.”
John Coltrane, Paul Chambers, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Blue Mitchell, and Lee Morgan were just amazing. These names alone should give you an idea of how important the records of 1959 were when you think that they are not even the leading musicians of the following releases. These albums were made for eternity, and their creators even more so.
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Making a list called “The Three Greatest Jazz Albums of All Time” can raise the question, “Why three? Why not five, 10, or 50?”
It is because these three records are so good, so evidently beautiful, and are forever the foundation of jazz as we know it. If we were to add two, seven, or 47 albums for a more in-depth list (which we will soon do in another post), we would underemphasize how important the three following records were, are, and will be for many decades and maybe centuries to come.
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Two Duos is an album by cellist Okkyung Lee, in duet with Jérôme Noetinger on Revox B77 for the first track, and with Nadia Ratsimandresy on Ondes Martenot for the second. It was recorded live at Cafe OTO, one of the best jazz clubs in London, England, on March 28 and 29, 2019, by Paul Skinner and Shaun Crook, and it was released on February 25, 2022, by Otoroku.
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Summer Tree is a solo album by trumpeter and composer Natsuki Tamura. For the first time, Tamura overdubbed himself on this album, thereby creating “dense, richly textured pieces.” The album was recorded by Natsuki Tamura at his home in Kobe City, Japan in August 2021, and it was released on February 11, 2022, by Libra Records.
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Poetry of Storms is an album by tenor saxophonist Sylvain Cathala’s new quintet, with trumpeter Olivier Laisney, pianist Benjamin Moussay, bassist Fred Chiffoleau, and drummer Maxime Zampieri. It was recorded by Stéphane Seddoh at Le Triton in Les Lilas, France, on December 4, 2022, and it was released on January 28, 2022, by Le Triton.
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Space is the first release by the trio of Lisa Ullén, Elsa Bergman, and Anna Lund, after they met as part of the Anna Högberg Attack’s sextet and released the excellent Anna Högberg Attack (2016), followed by the fabulous Lena (2020), which was indisputably a must-have album of 2020. It was recorded by Mats Äleklint on January 13, 2021, at Fylkingen, in Stockholm, Sweden, and was released by Relative Pitch Records.
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