“This very special period made me think and put a lot of things into perspective. I said to myself, finished the superfluous, if this is to be my last album, I do not want to put anything unnecessary, the watchword is therefore: Straight to the essential! Hence the title of this album ”.

Perhaps it was the presence of bassist Charlie Haden, but this trio set has more energy than one normally associates with the other members of the group (Jan Garbarek on tenor and soprano and Egberto Gismonti doubling on guitar and piano). The trio performs group originals and an obscurity during the picturesque and continually interesting release; this combination works well.

Released on March 29, 2021, on the occasion of Piano Day 2021, for the first time on the Erased Tapes label, Graz is the new album by the German pianist-composer Nils Frahm, recorded in 2009, in Mumuth, at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria, and never previously released. Sometimes when you listen to a piano, you may think it is a conversation between a woman and a man. At the same time, it can suggest the shapes of the universe and describe the appearance of a black hole. You can create sounds that have no relation to anything we can measure.

Produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Alpenglow is the Minnesota-based sextet’s tenth album. The album, named after the optical phenomenon that takes places when the sun casts a reddish glow across the mountains at dawn and dusk, opens with the wistful beauty of “It’s So Hard To Hold On”. The narrator contemplates the passing of time and how imperative it is to savor it while you have it.