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Ada Rave & Marta Warelis: Peel/Mondo
by John Sharpe
On Peel/Mondo, two distinctive voices sport in adventurous communion. Polish pianist Marta Warelis and Argentinean saxophonist Ada Rave first met as part of the fertile Amsterdam scene. As a result, they know each other well, so the empathy and highly attuned responsiveness they display on these six collective inventions from a 2024 concert performance comes as little surprise. Rave's singular approach has graced outfits as diverse as the Kaja Draksler Octet, all-women supergroup Hearth and venerable Dutch punk ...
Continue ReadingThe Outskirts - Rempis/Flaten/Rosaly + Marta Warelis: Orbital
by Mark Corroto
The trio known as The Outskirts, comprised of saxophonist Dave Rempis, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and drummer Frank Rosaly, was formed during Flaten's three-year tenure in Chicago from 2005 to 2008. Since then, geography has scattered the group: Flaten moved on to Texas before returning to his native Norway, while Rosaly relocated to Amsterdam, where he has become deeply embedded in its creative music scene. During the trio's long hiatus, the three musicians continued to cross paths in other contexts, ...
Continue ReadingDave Douglas: Four Freedoms
by Glenn Astarita
Inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1941 “Four Freedoms" speech--articulating freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear--trumpeter Dave Douglas frames Four Freedoms as both political echo and musical proposition. Although the quartet is geographically dispersed--Marta Warelis, Nick Dunston and Joey Baron residing in Europe, Douglas based in New York--the album sounds anything but remote. Distance, instead, sharpens focus. What emerges is a newly formed working band whose cohesion rests on shared vocabulary and ...
Continue ReadingJohn Dikeman: Old Adam On Turtle Island
by John Sharpe
Committed improviser John Dikeman assembles a crack Amsterdam domiciled quartet to navigate Old Adam On Turtle Island, a song cycle that probes the intersections of colonization, religion, and their potential to inspire transcendence or tyranny. The framework is deliberately loose: a schematic more than a score, allowing the musicians to chart the course collectively. Themes emerge as insistent phrases rather than fixed melodies, serving as touchstones in a performance defined by ebb and flow. The first half moves ...
Continue ReadingAbdou - Gouband - Warelis: Hammer, Roll and Leaf
by John Sharpe
The multinational threesome of French saxophonist Sakina Abdou, French percussionist Toma Gouband and Polish pianist Marta Warelis establishes a striking group identity on Hammer Roll Leaf. From the opening track, “Roll," the trio's compositional instincts and collective discipline distinguish them from the crowded field of free improvisers. Warelis begins with cascading piano figures--robust, resonant and allowed to decay into silence. Abdou eventually enters, their alto saxophone lines darting and entwining with Warelis' lyric remnants, until they develop a dashing forward ...
Continue ReadingDikeman / Hong / Lumley / Warelis: Old Adam On Turtle Island
by Mark Corroto
The creative community centered in Amsterdam, Netherlands, can be seen as the modern-day equivalent of a city once known as New Amsterdam--a 17th-century Dutch settlement that would eventually become New York City. Just as modern jazz flourished in mid-20th-century New York, some might argue that today's hotbed of creative music resides in old Amsterdam. Evidence for this can be found in Old Adam on Turtle Island, a stunning musical creation by a multicultural quartet. Led by American saxophonist ...
Continue ReadingKlein / Rosaly / Warelis: Tendresse
by John Sharpe
Tendresse unites three talented improvisers residing in the cosmopolitan melting pot of Amsterdam in a low key frenzy of deep listening and inspired response. German reedman Tobias Klein has been an inhabitant in the Dutch city for over thirty years, while Polish pianist Marta Warelis and American drummer Frank Rosaly are more recent transplants. However, whatever their geographical origin they clearly share a taste for off-the-map excursions that build impact through the accumulation of small finely-judged details. ...
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