Jazz de Ville

Milton Wright - Friends & Buddies

Repress!

Athens of the North is proud to present Milton Wright's stunning alternate version of the now Classic Miami soul LP 'Friends & Buddies'. An altogether more stripped down, folky soul affair than its highly respected, much sampled brother is now available on Vinyl, CD and Digital for the very first time. 

Shelved at the last minute then re-recorded and overdubbed, only a few promo copies of this early version escaped from the studio and are deep in the collections of the very few previously in the know. 

The master tapes burnt in a fire at T.K Disco in Miami in the early 80s so even the label has not heard this in 30 Years. Many reissues of the second version of Friends & Buddies LP have come and gone, but Milton's original vision has remained hidden until now. 

As searingly honest and stunningly soulful as any seminal Marvin Gaye or Terry Callier LP, it stands tall amongst its exceptional peers as one of the true pillars of quality 70s soul. 

Alfa Mist - On My Ones

Beautiful new stuff by Alfa Mist!

Quantic - I Won't Fade Away

After a deluge of dance producers sampling QSO's classic 'Pushin On' the original composer Will Holland decided the time had come to take the wheel himself. 'I Won't Fade Away' features the timeless vocal of Alice Russell but veers away from previous channels, deep diving into UKG through an analogue lens, tape hiss included. By mining the less obvious vocal aspects and taking unexpected steps through broken beats, Quantic has cooked up a genuine dance floor anthem just in time for our return.

Robert Glasper - Shine

4x Grammy Award-winning artist and producer Robert Glasper has released his new single “Shine” featuring Inglewood, CA natives D Smoke and Tiffany Gouché. This release is his first since a strong 2021 Grammy showing, nominated for Best Progressive R&B Album and taking home Best R&B Song for “Better Than I Imagined” featuring H.E.R. With lyrics that express gratitude and evoke a rise-up spirit, “Shine” arrives as yet another glimpse into Glasper’s highly anticipated third installment to the Black Radioalbum series. Black Radio 3, much like both of its predecessors, is a cultural moment that celebrates Black love and resilience.

Linda Fredriksson - Juniper

Linda Fredriksson (they/them) shares their debut solo album "Juniper" on We Jazz Records, 29 Oct 2021. Linda (of Mopo and Superposition) has been working on the compositions heard on the album for several years, composing them mostly on guitar, keys and by singing. Only later have they been arranged for the band heard on the album, including Fredriksson on saxes and various instruments, Tuomo Prättälä (of ilmiliekki Quartet) on rhodes, moog and piano, Minna Koivisto on modular synth, moog and OP, Olavi Louhivuori (of Superposition) on drums, and Mikael Saastamoinen (of OK:KO and Superposition) on bass, plus featuring the Swedish artist Matti Bye on piano.

At heart, "Juniper" is a "singer-songwriter album", performed by an instrumental jazz band. The end result is unique, personal, and as Linda themself puts it "quiet and introspective". 

The influence list for the album name checks the likes of Feist, Neil Young, Susanne Sundfør, Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Eric Dolphy and Fever Ray, yet the number one inspiration for Fredriksson prior to making the album was "Carrie and Lowell", the 2017 album by Sufjan Stevens. Different as the albums are in terms of instrumentation and general scope, it's fascinating to draw parallels between them by listening to the quietness and immediacy of the music. 

"Juniper" can still be heard as a jazz album, but perhaps one reminding that the word doesn't need to mean any one thing in particular. At its best, jazz music is highly personal and "of the moment", both true on "Juniper". The album has been made in two different studios, three homes, two summer cottages and four working spaces. It was recorded with professional studio equipment but also with an iPhone and on a basic built-in laptop speaker. With that, "Juniper" stands as a remarkable musical diary of a creative musician and composer during the early 2020's.

Boom.Diwan feat. Nduduzo Makhathini - Minarets

Led by Abu Dhabi-based musician/applied-ethnomusicologist Ghazi Al-Mulaifi, Boom.Diwan is a collaborative jazz ensemble  inspired by the cosmopolitan Kuwaiti pearl diving music of the Indian Ocean trade

Commissioned, premiered, and mixed as a virtual performance by The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi for the 2021 Barzakh festival, Minarets is the result of a collaboration between Boom.Diwan and featured pianist Nduduzo Makhathini (Blue Note)

A three-movement suite, the record is the outcome of a series of intimate, trusting, and vulnerable conversations between Ghazi Al-Mulaifi and Nduduzo Makathini.

David Ornette Cherry - Organic Nation Listening Club (The Continual)

The new album by ‘Cosmic Nomad’ David Ornette Cherry following his father’s tradition, the legendary, innovative jazz trumpeter and composer, Don Cherry. This a mosaic of healing soundscapes blending spiritual jazz, leftfield electronica, Eastern & native, indigenous sounds into musical parallels that transport the listener through doorways of ancient pathways to futurist crossroads. 

David Ornette Cherry talks about his vision: “When I started my musical journey, my father, Don Cherry, took me under his wings. “To be an Artist/ Musician is a commitment, you must learn the music… own the music you create... and give it back. You must have a vision.

In my world, the piano, the keyboard, sounds of nature and numerous instruments of traditional peoples and those who reside in urban society, touch and effect each other with a calming and symbiotic fervour. I compose with the idea that all exist in a world of harmonies which mirror life evolving away from the chaotic (to the positive). There's not just a co-existence but a melding of forms to produce a single musical expression.” - David Ornette Cherry

These unique sounds are also a Cherry family affair with David collaborating with his incredibly talented nieces, Tyson McVey in the beautiful, upbeat ‘So & So & So and So’ and Naima Karlsson on the spiritual ‘Cosmic Nomad’, where Don Cherry’s instrument blue reeds is also featuring - an ode to his father’s work. 

This is phenomenal music with David Ornette Cherry working with upcoming, talented musicians from across the globe into creating genre-defying, groovy, spiritual organic soundscapes that speak to the soul!

DJ CAM & Frédéric Beneix present: Wine4Melomanes

DJ Cam & sommelier Frédéric Beneix present Wine4Melomanes, an eclectic and unique compilation album concept, matching fine wines with rare pieces of music produced in the same year.

Connecting the complexity, sensuality, liveliness of a drink with the harmony, arrangements, voice, orchestration, rhythm and melody of a song, Wine4Melomanes tours France, Germany, Holland, the USA and even Slovakia in search of only the finest musical flavours.

Ranging from jazz, to pop-rock, to blue-eyed soul from the early 70s right through to 2016, Wine4Melomanes is defined by its sense of musical opulence, with warm rich tones and understated quality evident throughout. Frédéric Beneix’s expert wine pairing suggestions can be found in the album liner notes, or at wine4melomanes.com

DJ and producer Frédéric Beneix has released original music and edits on several internationally respected imprints, and he also serves as sommelier editor for Sommeliers International Magazine. DJ Cam is known for his pioneering abstract hip-hop musical compositions, his virtuoso use of technology and his fascination for acoustic jazz gaining him international acclaim.

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme - Live in Seattle

After nearly six decades, a private recording of a rare, nightclub performance by John Coltrane of his magnum opus, A Love Supreme, is set for commercial release. Recorded in late 1965 on the culminating evening of a historic week-long run at The Penthouse in Seattle, A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle is a musical revelation of historic importance, capturing Coltrane as he began to expand his classic quartet—adding Pharoah Sanders on second saxophone and Donald Garrett on second bass—and catapulting him into the intense, spiritually focused final phase of his career. The full album A Love Supreme Live in Seattle is for release October 22, on Impulse! Records/Ume.

 A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle is heightened by the fact that Coltrane seldom performed his four-part suite after originally recording it in the studio in 1964. Composed and created as a public declaration of his personal spiritual beliefs and universalist sentiment, it became a best-seller and received a GRAMMY nod the next year. For more than six decades, it seemed the only recorded public performance of A Love Supreme took place at a French festival at Juan-Les-Pains in July 1965 and was released almost twenty years ago. The tape reels containing this performance from October 1965 sat in the private collection of Seattle saxophonist and educator Joe Brazil, heard by a few fortunate musicians and friends—and largely unknown until now.

A Love Supreme: Live In Seattle is a fascinating and rare performance of the full suite, marked by a looser and more improvisational approach, and a overriding sense of communal participation—much like a Sunday church service; the lineup featured John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders on saxophones, McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Jimmy Garrison and Donald (Rafael) Garrett on basses. Carlos Ward, then a young saxophonist just getting started on the scene, sat in as well.

Hiromi - Silver Lining Suite

2020 was a year in which dark clouds gathered early and threatened never to dispel. Silver linings were hard to come by amidst the torrent of bad news, but Hiromi was determined to find one. She found it on the stage of the Blue Note Tokyo, which she helped bring back to life after it was silenced by the pandemic. Dreaming of a quintet with piano and strings she composed Silver Lining Suite, which finds hope in the most trying of times while exemplifying the exhausting range of emotions evoked by the world’s year in quarantine.

RCO Club Night

In co-operation with the Royal Concertgebouw orchestra