Trygve Seim Ensemble / Toni Kitanovski & Cherkezi plus New Birth Brass Band

Trygve Seim Ensemble

“Destined to be one of ECM’s classic,” John Fordham predicted in the Guardian. “At times Trygve Seim sounds like no sax player you’ve ever heard – more like wind in the trees, or wooden flutes… An extended band delivers a remarkable sequence of tone trances, at times faintly suggestive of Carla Bley and Gil Evans, but based on small melodic motifs, given strength and mesmeric fascination by progressive harmonic overlays and tonal variation”.“

An astonishing ECM debut,” Richard Cook concurred in Jazz Review. “In this age of rhythm, Seim’s music takes an almost contrary stance, dedicating itself to melody, timbre and the utmost refinements of tone and weight … A masterly, uncompromising jazz record.”

In the International Herald Tribune, Mike Zwerin wrote that “Seim presents the wind instrument chamber ensemble, a sort of slow-floating, pianissimo little-big band with occasional understated kicks. The shadow of Gil Evans hovers. The horn blowers finesse their personal, breathy, non-symphonic textures from behind the beat.”

Toni Kitanovski & Cherkezi plus New Birth Brass Band

When Macedonian guitarist and Berklee graduate Toni Kitanovski heard the Gipsy band Cherkezi playing in the slums of Skopje, their music reminded him of Duke Ellington and Sun Ra – both vanguard and timeless. For seven years they have been cooperating and constantly broadening their repertoire of Albanian, Macedonian and Turkish tunes, mixing them with compositions of Erik Satie, Charles Mingus or Ornette Coleman.

Toni Kitanovski in an e-mail to Peter Schulze:

“Regarding the event, Werner mentioned the possibility to put us on a double bill with the New Birth Brass Band! I think it is a wonderful and very generic concept. Musically, both New Orleans and gipsy cocek grooves have the same origin - West African clave rhythm. It travelled across the ocean with black slaves and came to Macedonia through North Africa, Middle East and finally Turkey. The CD that’s coming out on ENJA is mostly exploration of transformations of clave.

Secondly, the principal orchestration of New Orleans marching bands and gipsy brass bands is the same. In America instruments came from pawn shops in New Orleans where sailors from military bands exchanged them for some cash to spend in Bourbon Street and here gipsies got them from Turkish army solders.”