Koen De Cauter - A Little Corner Of Paradise - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

I share my personal experiences with the ensemble using materials ranging from graphic scores and written melodies, to photos and stories. These materials function as unfinished compositions and as such challenge us to creatively connect our own ideas and sounds to the music, over and over again. To deal with this freedom in a musical way, we developed strategies for collective improvisation during a two-year artistic research process focussed on the Dutch tradition of free improvisation from the 1960s. This combination of recollection and improvisation has resulted in a record that is playful and personal, yet has an evocative, nostalgic, and impressionist character.

At the age of 85 Augusto Gomes Rodrigues, known as Verequete, is considered the grand old master of carimbó, the local dance music in the region east of the Amazon. In the 1960s he brought this traditional style with African features out of the backwoods into the city Belém and modernized it. In his youth he was acclaimed as an innovator; in his old age, as a traditionalist. InchCarimbóInch will make Verequete's music internationally available for the first time.

The sophomore effort from the extraordinary drummer Sebastiaan Cornelissen featuring an all-star lineup - guitarists Alex Machacek, Mike Otram, Susan Weinert, Richard Hallebeek; keyboardists Gary Husband, Scott Kinsey, and Steve Hunt; and bassists Hadrien Feraud, Jimmy Earl, Gary Willis, and Tom Kennedy among others. Since first coming on the scene in the early 2000s, composer and drummer Sebastiaan Cornelissen has emerged as one of the most distinctive new voices on the European fusion scene. Whether acting as a leader, sideman, or group member, Cornelissen's playing combines a sharp sense of empathy and staggering technique with impressive improvisational grace and intensity.