Drummer/composer Sun-Mi Hong didn’t get to where she is now without a struggle for independence. She was born in Incheon, South Korea, to a conservative family and earmarked for a teacher’s life, but her teenage dream was to become a drummer. At 19, as the only woman in a not-overly respectful percussion class, she got wind of the Amsterdam Conservatorium’s jazz course, moved to Europe and met her band of skilful soulmates. Her evolving music leans towards a European chamber-jazzy sound with occasional American hints of Wayne Shorter, Paul Motian, or Ambrose Akinmusire. The Dutch jazz scene has feted her: the latest of its accolades, the Paul Acket award for an “extraordinary contribution to jazz”, will be presented to Hong at the big-time North Sea jazz festival this July.
This album continues her series inspired by ideas of migration and self-discovery. The band’s signature sound of closely entwining brass and woodwind harmonies open the two-part title track: tenor saxophonist Nicolò Ricci and Scottish trumpeter Alistair Payne are improvisers of elegant shape and balance, and delicate thematic tone-painters, too. Quiet abstraction unveils the second section, before canny slow-burn pianist Chaerin Im’s piano ostinato and Hong’s surging percussion ignite a crescendo: Hong often favours free-swinging Elvin Jones-like grooves in which the core of the beat roams all over the kit. Soft horn sighs, cymbal flickers, and Italian bassist Alessandro Fongaro’s fast flutters colour the plaintive Escapism, Toddler’s Eye is a springy folk-dance and the suite A Never-Wilting Petal confirms this imaginative band’s talents for balancing storytelling with on-the-fly musical adventures.
Also out this month
Georgia Mancio, the multilingual UK vocalist who makes the faintest sound gleam, releases A Story Left Untold (Roomspin), the third of a trilogy from her long and ever-more attuned partnership with Grammy-winning US composer/pianist Alan Broadbent. These personal and sometimes obliquely political pieces reinvent classic songwriting, notably in the sublime The Love I Left Behind.
At the other end of the musical galaxy is Ledley (Impossible Ark), a electro-acoustic melange of tuba-like grooves, free-jazz sax lines, guttural noise and graceful choral tones from trombonist Raph Clarkson, former Led Bib saxophonist Chris Williams and electronicist/producer Riaan Vosloo.
And the great Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii and her trio with long-time partner Natsuki Tamura on trumpet and wild percussionist Takashi Itani release Message (Libra Records). The thunderous Itani piles gripping new dangers into the already fascinating kaleidoscope of jazz/classical forms and headlong improv freedoms that she and Tamura so spiritedly share.
Source: theguardian.com
