Polish piano trio lining up Ornette, Hermeto Pascoal, Hans Eisler, Paul Bley and Fran Landesman alongside five of its leader’s compositions.

‘What playing!’ raved Alex Ross in the New Yorker. ‘Notes were placed with surgical care; inner voices gleamed in crystalline patterns; elusive emotional states were painted with quick, light strokes.’
A compendium of tiny homages to composers from Scarlatti to Stravinsky, and tributes to colleagues and influences, interspersed with heart-stopping Bach transcriptions. The wit and sublimity of these games, the incisiveness of the playing, four hands on the piano, and the affection between the elderly partners, are really something to see. Off the beaten path for us, but hotly recommended.

Evocative, engaging considerations of close relationships, a bit like a family portrait, centred on the German town of Ravensburg (home of the trumpeter’s grandmother), by a sextet including affective violin and two drummers, involving African percussion, homemade cymbals and bundles of brushwood, with ‘driving rhythm at the bottom end and soaring melody at the top.’

Alluring duets by Swedish nickelharpa and accordion, inspired by Bach’s sonatas and Pergolesi. (You might recall Matinier from sessions with Anouar Brahem and Louis Sclavis.)

Marimba, bowed vibraphone and waterphone, hang, bells, gongs, cymbals, magic drum, log drum, sheep bells, Indian cowbells, udu drum, various drums and metal-utensils… with Jan Garbarek.

Multi-tracking especially the raj nplaim from Laos and the nohkan from Japan (a free-reed pipe and flute, both bamboo), as well as many male voices, inspired by Georgian polyphony, sung by himself.

Playing ndingo, genbri, guitars, suling, nay, rewab, rabab and shakuhachi, and singing.

Playing a chikulo from Mozambique, twelve-string guitar, tongue drums from Central Africa, kalimba, a Gambian sinding harp, a Peruvian charango, Egyptian nay flute, Japanese nohkan flute, Balinese suling flute, bowed sattar from Xinjiang, Tibetan cymbals…