Freedom Tree (Norway/Brazil/Mozambique)-Modern Acoustic World Jazz Rock

FREEDOM TREE is a multicultural jazz group that have achieved international popularity among music fans for their eclectic performances, drawing from three continents.

Close friends and colleagues, internationally acclaimed musicians each in their own right; acoustic guitarist Steinar Aadnekvam – from Bergen, Norway, bassist Rubem Farias from Salvador Da Bahia, Brasil and drummer/singer Deodato Siquir from Maputo, Mozambique make their base in Stockholm, Sweden and since 2015 they form this band.

Moving from clarity to clarity ever since, they released their joint debut album “Freedoms Trio” in 2016 and followed up in 2018 with the sophomore release “Freedoms Trio II” – both on Losen Records, Oslo.
Together, the band has performed several hundreds of concerts in some 17 countries across Europe, Eurasia, Africa and the United States until 2020 brought all touring to a halt.

Formerly known as ”Freedom’s Trio” the band has undergone a slight name change in 2021, embracing the name FREEDOM TREE – a significant name with deep connotations – and with their new album they continue characteristically in the vain of an eclectic afro jazz rock expression firmly rooted in both past & present.

Aptly titled ”MODERN ACOUSTIC WORLD JAZZ ROCK” the new album was recorded live in studio during the pandemic and the performance was originally live streamed to a group of fans.


Only afterwards did the band realize that the music that had been captured was of such a high quality in both performance and recording that it deserved to be released as a proper album.

The record features a set of familiar tunes from the bands original repertoire in what is arguably their best recording to date. What we hear is a band that has lived together on tour for a number of years, honing their interplay through hundreds of concerts, perfecting their compositions and collective musical presence to a such degree that there is not a split second of temporary loss of focus to be found anywhere in the recorded music…

All tracks on this release were also captured as film during the ’live in studio’ recording session and will be released online across streaming services with video capabilities simultaneously with the audio album on
September 24.

”Their music is both complex and joyful, full of passion and energy. (…) They have a natural synergy which can be rare, especially when the musicians are so accomplished individually. People should hear FREEDOM TREE. Gives you hope!” – Robben Ford, 2019

Website YouTube Instagram
World Music Mix

JazzWorldQuest Showcase 2021 : Fabrizio Savino Trio(Italy) – Album: The Rising Sun

 From Saturday July 10th 2021, “The rising sun”, the new and fourth album by modern jazz guitarist Fabrizio Savino, is available on all streaming and download platforms including Apple Music.


The album is also physically distributed worldwide by Inner Urge Records through the website innerurgemusic.com, in Benelux by Xango Music and will soon be available also in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong through the Albore Jazz distributor.

Two weeks after its release, the album has over 80,000 plays only on the Spotify platform and has been selected by the editors and included in important playlists such as “State of Jazz”, “Jazz X- Press” and “All new Jazz”. The song “Rebirth” was selected and played, accompanied by a beautiful introduction to the album for the Anglo-Saxon audience, by presenter Chris Philips of the London radio station Jazz FM UK.


After the success of his previous production “Gemini” that has won many awards and was broadcasted by the most important worldwide radios (France, Norway, Germany, Italy, Greece, Spain, Finland, USA, Canada and Japan), Savino brings rock sounds through a deep contemporary jazz language. With “The rising sun” Savino explores many sonorities and composes music starting from an inner analysis. The main topic of the album is the “Rebirth”.


The musical journey it’s the transposition of inner energies through the music language and the spiritual research with the practice of meditation and yoga.
The songs of the album were composed over a period of one year and embrace many of the musical forms that have always fascinated the author who was able to translate them into the line-up that best represents him: the Guitar trio.
The modern jazz sound that distinguishes him is intertwined with the sounds that most influenced his adolescence, the rock of Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix.
“The Rising Sun” is a musical journey that mix of eleven tracks, two standards and nine original compositions one of which includes an arrangement for string quartet.

To complete the line-up there are the Italian double bass player Luca Alemanno and the German drummer Sebastian Merk, musicians with whom Savino has a particular musical, artistic and human affinity.

For the release of the album, the official videoclip was published on Youtube and on the Facebook and Instagram pages of the label and the artist.

It will soon be published a video animation, entirely hand made with the technique of ink on paper by the graphic designer Marika Mastrandrea of the MM Visual Communication Design Studio, for the song of the album with the string quartet “So close and yet so far “.

JazzWorldQuest Showcase 2021

JazzWorldQuest World Music Mix: Armagos(Greece)-Album: Promises

Armagos(Greece)-Promise
Composer: Armagos
Album: Promises(2021)
In 2020 Greek composer Armagos created the album “The Lonely Piano”, his first studio instrumental project, which became popular among music lovers in Greece and around the world.
Armagos released on September 2021 his new instrumental album, “Promises”: a unique collection of 10 emotional tracks for piano and ney (asian flute). The listener lives the experience of a journey full of images, emotions and melodies that come straight from the heart and capture a unique sense of atmosphere, presence and peace.
Two of the best Greek musicians perform in this recording: Neoklis Neofytidis (piano) and Nikos Paraoulakis (ney).
Website CDStore
WorldMusicMix

JazzWorldQuest Showcase 2021: Family Plan

Family Plan
Futuristic Collective “Family Plan” Revamps Piano Trio Concept Family Plan

Out September 24, 2021 on Endectomorph Music, Family Plan recasts the classic jazz piano trio with intricate counterpoint, 21st century beats, and electronic production.
CD Release Concert: Thursday, September 30, 2021

CD Release Concert:
Thursday, September 30, 2021
6:30 – 9 PM, free admission / open to public

Green Oasis Garden
376 E 8th St, New York, NY 10009

“We needed a phone plan,” recalls bassist Simón Willson of Family Plan, and thus a band was born.

“Oh, right—well, so then that was it,” says pianist Andrew Boudreau. “T-Mobile was offering good deals on family plans.”

“I would always see cell phone ads on the subway,” adds drummer Vicente Hansen, “so I might have brought it up, and then it became the three of us on the plan.”

Family Plan began as a workshop for three like-minded improvising composers, who began playing in 2018 with a bent toward insouciant experimentation and formal rigor. The band is a direct descendant of jazz-informed collectives like The Bad Plus and The Necks, and the program on their first album showcases their undeniable chemistry. 

Having come of age in a digital era, Family Plan also felt strongly that they should avail themselves of post-production techniques embraced in most contemporary musical genres, which show up in the form of overdubs, electronic distortion, and sonic refinements.

“I’m just personally kind of tired of listening to jazz records that sound like a band in a room,” says Hansen, who, in addition to drumming, also mixed the album. “I used the opportunity to try to enhance some of the artistic and musical qualities for each piece.”

Each member of Family Plan has their own well-defined angle on making compelling, fresh-sounding music in a time of musical excess, with aesthetic positions drawn clearly in the sand. Of the three, Willson gets the most calls to play straight-ahead and modern jazz around New York, and his songs both reflect and comment on his position in the scene.

“As a bass player that plays a lot of bands, sometimes it feels like there’s an over-complication,” says Willson, “so I was trying to write a pretty skeletal kind of music so that we play more expressively.” 

Willson’s stripped-down approach is featured on songs like “Who’s Your Copilot,” a catchy but off-kilter melodic hook with toy piano on the out chorus, and “Seemingly OK,” which begins with an umbrous chorale before morphing into its explosive, rock-influenced conclusion. Other songs bridge the jazz tradition like “Scam Likely,” a riddle on the Thelonious Monk-Herbie Nichols axis that alludes to T-Mobile’s Scam ID service and the band’s moniker, as well as “What’s Your Fee,” a self-consciously modern jazz tune replete with a guest spot by saxophonist Kevin Sun.

Willson’s laconic songs stand in contrast to the more expansive pieces of Hansen, a DMA candidate at Columbia University whose work has been performed by new music ensembles like Wet Ink, Yarn/Wire, Jack Quartet, and the International Contemporary Ensemble.

“I was trying to write something like advanced children’s music, like ‘children’s music for adults’ kind of thing,” says Hansen, who realizes his musical vision by mixing the elemental with the complex: convoluted counterpoint and contrapuntal forms combined with basic musical building blocks like triads. 

Pieces like “Celebratory” and “Reptilian” show the band at its hardest-hitting and most virtuosic, dancing to relentlessly knotty rhythms without giving an inch in terms of ferocity and risk-taking. Hansen also brings the band to other extremes with “Touch,” an ethereal loop that draws on the power of repetition much like Wayne Shorter’s famous “Nerfertiti” with the Miles Davis Quintet.

The band’s pianist and lone Canadian, Andrew Boudreau, embraces his role as the intermediary between Willson and Hansen, opting for the cordial middle ground.

“I’m aiming for balance between complexity slash seriousness and humor slash rambunctiousness,” says Boudreau. “Even though they’re from different places, the songs [on the album] all face the same thing, like guests talking at a dinner party.” 

Combining tunefulness with pianistic verve, Boudreau’s “Groundhog Day” is a light-hearted romp that pays homage to Shubenacadie Sam, the resident predictive groundhog of the pianist’s native Nova Scotia. A darker palette comes to the fore on “Little River,” a dodecaphonic composition disguised as a waltz, and “Life is Good” satirizes the platitudes of small talk with a haunting and unforgettable melody.

Everyone in the band gets their moments to shine throughout the album, but Family Plan is arguably at its finest in its extended episodes of just playing music as a band. Willson’s “El Mono” is a fitting closer to the album, a through-composed slow-build with no solos, just unadulterated ensemble magic. 

“For me this band was never about making the next great jazz piano trio in the tradition, you know,” says Willson. “It was more about crafting our musical identity, whatever that might be or become.”

* * * * *

Family Plan

Immaculately conceived in 2018 in Brooklyn, Family Plan is an aesthetically diverse three-person extraction. The collective trio consists of the Canadian pianist Andrew Boudreau and two Chileans, Vicente Hansen and Simón Willson, on drums and bass, respectively. Family Plan has performed at venues such as Scholes Street Studio (NYC), Dièse Onze (Montreal), and the LilyPad (Cambridge), among others. Descendants in equal parts to sensibilities related to the high- and low-brows of music, Family Plan will release their debut album on Endectomorph Music in September 2021.

www.endectomorph.com

JazzWorldQuest Showcase 2021

JazzWorldQuest Showcase 2021: The JVM Collective(USA)/Album: Frontiers

The JVM Collective(USA)-Into The Night
Album: Frontiers
Label: Blue Canoe Records
The JVM Collective consists of guitarist/producer Denny Jiosa, bassist Roy Vogt, and drummer Tom Moller. This Nashville Jazz trio delivers a creative and powerful album of beautiful original compositions, deep grooves, and inspiring improvisations titled, “Frontiers”. Fans of instrumental, eclectic music will surely love The JVM Collective and their 8 song album titled, “Frontiers”.
Blue Canoe Records

JazzWorldQuest Showcase 2021