August 23, 2021

Broken Shadows

Broken Shadows
Intakt 362

The Workers

Altbüron

Wide Ear WER 049

These two reeds-two rhythm sessions succinctly point out how improvised music is constantly evolving. Altbüron by four Swiss-based players’ one track is so immersed in uncompromising 21st Century Free Music that its reference points are almost exclusively within that genre. In the same way the American Broken Shadows quartet’s interpretations of 12 compositions by Ornette Coleman and his associates become traditional Jazz with its vocabulary informed by Blues, rhythm and organized melodies. In comparison it shows how Coleman’s seemingly incoherent experimentation of the early 1960s have now become mainstream. MORE