…Listening to Living Being IV: Time Reflections, we are immediately struck by the range of dynamics, the intimacy and extroversion at play in every detail, the rich textures, and the arrangements that allow for riveting moments of surprise. It’s worth remembering that, from the outset with Living Being, Vincent Peirani brought to the fore the concept of chamber music: a small number of performers, with each one playing a unique part, but with the emphasis on the collective rather than the individual.
From the start, with ‘Le Cabinet des énigmes’, the melodic intelligibility is impressive. A sort of children’s song sublimated by the art of superimposing transparencies. Everything is played out in a myriad of details that create…
Tag Archive: ACT
Lumen is the deeply personal and introspective new solo album by pianist and composer Bill Laurance. Recorded in the stillness of night inside an empty church, the album captures a rare and intimate moment of communion between artist, instrument, and space. Though not religious, Laurance describes the experience as almost spiritual—guided more by the music itself than by his own intention, as if he were merely a vessel.
At its heart, Lumen explores the delicate balance between composition and improvisation. Some pieces follow meticulously crafted scores, while others are entirely spontaneous, born in the moment. It’s in the space between these two worlds, Bill Laurance suggests, that the true magic of music lies.
Pianist David Helbock and bassist/cellist Julia Hofer have things in common: a playful curiosity combined with the urge to try out new things and to have fun. Both of these Austrians are also perfectionists…and natural communicators…and that’s why their musical combination works so well. “I was looking for a new duo partner,” says David Helbock, “because although I am completely passionate about my ‘Austrian Syndicate’ project, it’s a really tricky thing to put together, a large band…lots of keyboards. Together with ACT CEO and producer Andreas Brandis, the idea of an acoustic duo reduced to its emotional essence was finally born – a format in which musical communication works more directly than in any other line-up. And I quickly came…
With “ok”, his new album and ACT debut, French trumpeter ‘daoud’ offers a quiet manifesto – a record shaped by contrast and contradiction, by collapse and the stubborn act of beginning again. Built around the idea of accepting what cannot be changed. He explains: “The whole record is built around the concept of reluctant acceptance of things that you can’t control. All right, fuck it, fine, I guess.” The album explores failure, loss, repetition, and the soft absurdity of pretending everything’s fine. Across 14 tracks, daoud weaves tragedy and humor, chaos and tenderness, melody and noise into a rich and emotionally charged soundscape.
At its core, “ok” is a jazz record treated like anything but a jazz record. The foundation of…
The more new discoveries you make, the more you go back to the beginning,” observes pianist Vincent Meissner.
The music on his third album, Eigengrau, is characterized by an inward gaze, by his reflections on experiences and encounters that have been meaningful to him. Together with his working trio, Josef Zeimetz on bass and Henri Reichmann on drums, Meissner has developed his own language, drawing inspiration from artists such as The Bad Plus, Esbjörn Svensson, Vijay Iyer – and his mentor, Michael Wollny.
“The word ‘Eigengrau’ describes a state of darkness behind closed eyes,” Meissner explains. “But once you rub your eyes, you see patterns. Everyone sees something different: structures,…
Four unique top-flight European jazz pianists, each with limitless freedom of expression. Limitless joy too for the audience in the completely full main hall of the Philharmonie Berlin. But perhaps there is also something even more im-portant here: music’s unique power to unite people.
It was this intense magic that brought the Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic series into being. At the first concert in 2012, there were three pianists: Iiro Rantala, Michael Wollny, and Leszek Możdżer. It all started as a one-off experiment, a specially curated jazz concert at the classical music temple, the Philharmonie Berlin. But that was just the start: this unique series of concerts and recordings has gone from strength to strength.
More than a decade later, Rantala, Wollny, and…
Three continents, three musical world citizens. Morocco-born Majid Bekkas, Franco-Vietnamese Nguyên Lê and American Hamid Drake have combined their astonishing musicality, their origins and their global experiences to create a captivating live concert programme encompassing desert blues, Gnawa trance, Middle Eastern jazz, sixties rock and Far Eastern serenity.
Voice, oud and guembri (bass lute)…electric guitar with a wide spectrum of shimmering timbres…a percussion arsenal between subtlety and physicality – these are the tools deployed here by three remarkable, world-class, globe-trotting protagonists… Majid Bekkas’s innovations have cast a wholly new light onto the fascinating music and culture of the Gnawa minority in…
Israeli keyboard player Sharon Mansur carries her many influences into Trigger, her debut album on the ACT label.
Those influences include classical piano, heavy metal, progressive rock, electronica and Middle Eastern traditions, all fused with improvisational flair to create an intriguing jazz hybrid.
It is her classical background and progressive rock influences that make the strongest impression and underpin the eight self-penned tracks. Her dramatic and intense piano and keyboard work is supported by her trio, made up of drummer David Sirkis and bassist David Michaeli.
Opening track, “Outside In,” immediately brings the drama with Mansur’s driving, classically connected piano phrases leading to swirling,…
…On October 18, 2018, Danish conductor and former trombonist Mogens Dahl reached out to Nils Landgren with a bold idea: a new choral composition by Swedish composer Sven-David Sandström, written specifically for mixed choir, trombone, and voice. Sandström, despite his illness, embraced the challenge, crafting Sonnets of Darkness and Love – a work inspired by the poetry of Shakespeare, Federico García Lorca, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Landgren met with Sandström, Dahl, and librettist Jakob Holtze in Stockholm in November 2018, marking the beginning of this extraordinary project. Sandström, though physically weakened, radiated creative energy, and within months, the piece was finished. By May 2019, Sandström…
When one of Europe’s finest jazz drummers releases a double live album based on a 2024 studio record, you don’t expect a simple reheating of familiar material. With Life Rhythm Live, Wolfgang Haffner delivers far more than a live replica, he offers an augmented reality of the original. The album’s themes remain intact, but they are reimagined for the stage, rewritten in spirit to give each musician the space to explore, create, and elevate.
Haffner, long admired as both a composer and an arranger with a distinct musical identity, transforms the concert hall into a place of revelation. His new release not only sounds alive, it breathes, pulses, and roars with energy. For an artist who once played in the shadows of legends…