Déjà vu
Carlos Jimenez; Alexandre Cote; Pierre Francois; Dave Watts; Alain Bourgeois
CAJ Music CD005 (carlosjimenez1.bandcamp.com/album/d-j-vu)

What we are looking at is a rollicking album of eight songs written in the style of contrafacts (new pieces based on the chord changes of existing works). Its many styles include forays into jazz, folk, Berlin cabaret, Middle Eastern and chamber music of the post-serialist 20th century conservatoire. But to describe it as such gives the impression of overcooking when in fact the whole project is a masterpiece of subtlety.

Carlos Jiménez’s take on the spacy and the cool rippling horn-like tones from his guitar summon woodwind-like tones from Alexandre Côté’s alto saxophone which, along with Pierre François’ piano, Dave Waltz’s rumbling bass, and Alain Bourgeois’ world of drums, makes for something magically different. This is the contrafact-world of Carlos Jiménez’s Déjà vu. The performers’ long-limbed dreamworld of narratives crafted into glassy sheets of harmonic soundscapes with earthy melodies and rolling rhythms lift up these songs to elevated heights.

Jiménez pilots a tall ship that navigates deep and shallow waters. He rings in the moods and changes with compositions and improvisation; he dashes his music into rocks, breaks free and glides rippling through Deep Blue ink-black seas, with a Look At The Stars in a brave new sound world all his own.

Fiat Lux
René Lussier; Robbie Kuster
Microcidi 044 (renelussier.bandcamp.com/album/fiat-lux-2025)

Listen to any two tunes on this14-track disc by Montreal experimental guitarist René Lussier and you’ll understand why he’s now celebrating a half-century career. Backed by Swiss-born Montreal percussionist Robbie Kuster, Lussier, who also plays electric bass and daxophone (an electric wooden experimental musical instrument) and Kuster, who varies his percussion thrashing with hand saw whines and nail organ vibrations, bound from style to style with the same sophistication and energy.

The guitarist’s shaking flanges and fuzz tones brush up against drum pounding on Rock 66. Rien d’aquis mates Kuster’s patterning clips with simple reflective string picking; while La Valise Du Vendredi is a Québécois blues, featuring garbled mumbles and perfect bottleneck frails. Lussier even uses the wooden daxophone’s gaunt voice-like drones to scrape alongside saw reverb replicating the sounds suggested by Guimbarde Et Brosse à Dents.   

Fiat Lux isn’t all fun and games. Some of the other Lussier originals mark his POMO conversions that add C&W licks to an otherwise understated improv melody or use primitive whistling to humanize what stands out as a heavy metal attack.

Unbeatable technique mixed with humour also turns French folk composer Albert Larrieu’s Biscuit – La Feuille D’Érable into a Rock anthem with guitar feedback; and he uses simple harmonies to break down Ornette Coleman’s Haven’t Been Where I Left into a progressive child’s song with chiming guitar runs and zipping single notes. 

There may be some music Lussier can’t distinctively transform, but it’s not here.

Cory Weeds meets Jerry Weldon
Cory Weeds; Jerry Weldon
Cellar Music CMF102704 (coryweeds.bandcamp.com/album/cory-weeds-meets-jerry-weldon)

In a fast-paced world where we are constantly bombarded and pressured to keep up with the latest trends and objects, renowned saxophonist and bandleader Cory Weeds’ latest release is a reminder to slow our pace down and “stop and smell the roses,” if you will. The album harks back to the classic swing era with a fresh twist, embodying the idea of honouring the classics in an era where “newness” constantly wants to take over. Weeds has gathered a group of famed musicians for these recordings, namely fellow tenor saxophonist Jerry Weldon, pianist Miles Black, bassist John Lee and drummer Jesse Cahill. 

What captures the attention of the listener right from the first note are the dual saxophone lines, a unique aspect of the album that pays tribute to “seminal tenor-battle recordings of the past.” The record starts off with the tune Hey Lock, where the listener is treated to a driving drum rhythm, swinging piano chords and the intertwining tenor melodies of Weeds and Weldon. Taking the tempo down for Just As Though You Were Here, a well-known tune by jazz pianist John Benson Brooks, the lyrical and mellow qualities of Weeds’ skilled playing are showcased. The album features a collection of jazz greats, ending with the bandleader’s own composition 323 Shuter. 

A perfect accompaniment for soon to be chillier fall days, this is a worthy addition to any jazz aficionado’s collection.

Jacob Chung – Live at Al Frankie’s Jazz Club
Jacob Chung; Tyler Henderson Trio
Cellar Music CMF110924 (jacobchung.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-frankie-s-jazz-club)

New-York based saxophonist and composer Jacob Chung’s newest recording is ample proof that jazz is most certainly not going away anytime soon and that the younger generation is carrying the torch for continuing this great musical genre. Chung has gotten a group of truly skilled musicians and friends together to breathe life into this record: pianist Tyler Henderson, bassist Caleb Tobochman and drummer Hank Allen Barfield. The tracklist features a collection of well-known tunes as well as a couple penned by Henderson thrown into the mix. 

Chung describes the album as “a true snapshot of four friends just playing and sharing our love for each other and the music with an enthusiastic Vancouver audience.” This friendship and love for the music clearly shines through in every note of the recording and is especially evident through how balanced and “tight” each piece sounds. The musicians are in tune with each other and share a cohesive feeling throughout the melodies and rhythms. Opening track Jeannine stands out for its catchy bass line, moving rhythms and soaring tune. Love Endures, one of the aforementioned songs composed by Henderson, is mellow yet energetic and embodies both the traditional and the modern. The fact that the recordings were made unbeknownst to the musicians during a live show is what really captures the essence of the raw passion for this music and respect for each other that this group has and holds.

The Isle
Tommy Crane; David Binney
Elastic Recordings/MythologyRecords ER 022 | MR29 (davidbinney.bandcamp.com/album/the-isle)

Tommy Crane is a Montreal based drummer/composer and saxophonist/composer David Binney lives in Los Angeles. They have played together several times over the years and collaborated on The Isle which was recorded in Montreal in 2023 and “draws inspiration from the city of Montreal itself—its atmosphere, rhythms, and cultural landscape. The city’s influence is evident not just in the album title, but in the pieces themselves, several of which are named after neighbourhoods.” 

One of the album’s most noticeable strengths are the many atmospheric grooves which are both relaxing and engaging. Crane’s drumming gives each work a steady and entrancing pulse like the St. Lawrence which flows immutably past the busy island of Montreal with its vibrant culture, traffic and road construction. In fact, I can hear horns and brakes in the slightly apprehensive The Isle of Jam. Binney’s saxophone is lyrical and limber, sometimes providing long tones and then breaking into delightful flights of fluttering bop lines. The tonal palette is enhanced by several other musicians on flutes, bass, keyboards and guitar. The Isle creates a sense of expectant calm: you can relax to it, listen while driving or anywhere else you enjoy sampling a variety of evocative moods.

Heart Music
George Crotty Trio
Independent (georgecrotty.com)

Having had the good fortune of recently seeing cellist George Crotty’s latest album release of his trio’s Heart Music in concert, I was excited to find listening to the recording just as engaging as the live performance. The Toronto native has been travelling and touring for many years, picking up his heavy skills in jazz and many music languages of the world, and this album reflects on the wide diversity of the entire trio which includes John Murchison on bass and Jeremy Smith on percussion.

Crotty has many collaborations in his credits including the Brooklyn Raga Missive, the National Arab Orchestra, and years of travelling and studies of Hindustani raga, European jazz, and left hand pizzicato to build the powerhouse of chops he has at his disposal. The trio is unique in its combination of jazz, classical, Arabic, Irish, flamenco and music theatre, and each of the tracks on this album is equally unique. Crotty plays the cello in this configuration standing, allowing him to move and lead freely.  

From the opening Bandish, based on an evening raga, and Heart Music and The Task at Hand, both of which use exceptionally intricate left-hand pizzicato, we experience the power of Crotty’s technique on the cello. The spooky intro to Twelfth House gives way to a jazz-infused exploration of dreams. The following track A Game features playful episodes within the group, and the cinematic Cigarettes at Sunrise includes Crotty in duet with himself in a live cello loop. The album closes with my favourite track Saturn Returns, a complex expansion of chords in parallel fifths on the cello, polyrhythms, and a group improvisation showcasing the entire trio, a solid brew of skill and inspiration from around the world.

Listen to 'Heart Music' Now in the Listening Room

I Am Doing My Best
Curtis Nowosad
Independent CN002 (curtisnowosad.bandcamp.com/album/i-am-doing-my-best)

With I Am Doing My Best the hard-driving percussionist is wearing his emotions on his sleeve – even carrying the weight of living on his shoulders. Nowosad belongs to the “bracing change” in this literal sense. Edgy and unpredictable, an ensemble that is invigorating as a shower of ice-cold water on a day that is by turns hot and cold. 

This album is set out in eight short and vivid movements, each with an evocative title. For example: What We Do, Choices (A Butterfly Breaks Free), Mythologies (The Stories We Tell). Nowosad brings together several guests: the brilliant vocalist Joanna Majoko, the JUNO-Award winning singer and songwriter Joey Landreth and guitarist Andrew Renfroe whose harmonics scorch the fretboard. All the while the performers brilliantly subscribe to the leader’s vision and artistry with which this gritty music is conceived and articulated.

Nowosad’s music shifts from a fecund kind of beauty to a dirty bluesy volatility. On What We Do we feel the unexpected jolts of a man’s forsaken cry, loosed upon the rumble and thunder of his drums, and in the quiet sizzle of the well-tempered and singing tissue of his brass, superbly aligned to the bronzed, glistening voice of Majoko. (I’m Learning To Be) Kind is a gush that pushes wind into the song’s sails. The Archer (I’m Doing My Best) featuring Landreth and Majoko closes out a fine album.

Dream
Nancy Newman; Jennifer Scott; Rene Worst; Buff Allen; Bill Buckingham
Independent (nancynmusic.com/new-album-dream)

Women who interpret standards with allure and uncommon wisdom and grace can be all-too rare, but for this Nancy Newman certainly gets my vote. She is an erudite vocalist, a natural stylist who can work with any kind of material and interprets standards with a completely independent mindset. Her phrasing is brilliant and so is the emotion she puts into a phrase. While digging into every word, she emerges like a breath of fresh air, giving each work a special grace. 

Newman is not fazed by the limitations of her range. On Dream, a repertoire that includes film songs and other standards, she has set down authoritative accounts of what is billed as the Great American Songbook. Newman’s interpretations of Bond theme songs are quite special. On every one of them it feels as if she has a new story to tell. And with each one, the story of Mr. Bond takes on a new, more graceful, often more menacing, and energetic face.

Multiverse
Nicolas Ferron Trio
Independent (nicolasferron.bandcamp.com/album/multiverse-2)

The organ trio setting is truly a dream for guitarists. One is able to play chords as they might in a trio with bass and drums, but there is ample harmonic accompaniment available when needed, rivalling that of a quartet with piano. To an audience there is a funky accessibility present on gigs and recordings that utilise organ, regardless of how esoteric the repertoire may get. Modern jazz doesn’t necessitate esotericism, but I was thrilled to hear such fresh and interesting new sounds when I first experienced Multiverse.

The 2020s experienced a renaissance of very traditional jazz guitar playing, ranging from players who honour their valuable influences, to those who sound stuck in a bygone era. Guitarist Nic Ferron eschews any entrapment in nostalgia, whilst staying grounded in the rich tradition of the instrument. He’s joined by Jonathan Cayer on organ, and Louis-Vincent Hamel on drums, who function beautifully as a rhythm section. 

The album’s namesake and title track Multiverse features an upbeat groove and energetic trading between Cayer and Ferron in its solo section. This sets the tone for the tracks that follow, which are each simultaneously contrasting yet unified. Valencia begins with a guitar pattern that would sound apropos of either Radiohead, or Leo Brouwer, and moves on towards groovier territories. Each time I’ve listened to Multiverse it’s felt like a brief vignette, but at just over 47 minutes in duration, it’s no doubt a full album. That is a shining endorsement of its intrigue.

Stars, Engines
Valley Voice
Elastic Recordings (harrisonargatoff.bandcamp.com/album/stars-engines)

I first came across the beautifully creative noodlings of native Torontonian Harrison Argatoff somewhere around 2020 while walking through a local ravine underpass, where I came upon the saxophonist using the cement structure as a resonance box, creating long tonal phrases and rhythmic rounds which became the Toronto Streets Tour album. I’ve been hooked on Argatoff’s warm, thoughtful playing ever since. 

His newest project is the group Valley Voice and their debut album is called Stars, Engines. It features a quartet of some of the city’s finest cohorts: Michael Davidson on vibraphone, Dan Fortin on bass, and Ian Wright on drums; the album refers back to Argatoff’s earliest relationships to the natural world. Despite the contrary themes, this collection of compositions has the feel of emerging from his Streets Tour album in melodic structure and tone, now paying homage to his rural British Columbian Doukhobor roots and his relationship to his grandmother. Continuing his formal training as a composer, add Argatoff’s experience as a contact dancer, and you get the lyrical, flowing lines and phrases of an authentic artist not afraid to de-couple his instrument from the standard jazz repertoire. Even with the addition of the vibraphone the group still manages to avoid the typical/traditional jazz memes. 

Outstanding tracks for me were Analemma, a spacious and luminous tune with a wishful quality, and the titular Stars Engines, a sweet, gentle accompaniment to a memory his grandmother shared years ago relating to seeing the stars at night. Deftly supported by his award-winning bandmates, this new quartet promises to be a Canadian group to watch.

Nour Symon; Roxane Desjardins – Je suis calme et enragé-e
Ensemble Supermusique; Collectif Ad Lib
ambiences magnétiques AM 281 CD (ambiances-magnetiques.bandcamp.com/album/je-suis-calme-et-enrag-e)

Listening as I was walking, I thought there were helicopters overhead, the overt voice interplay masking the underlying drones, unable to fully cloak them. At this point in time, I am aware that what I was hearing was Ensemble SuperMusique directed by Nour Symon, as they, along with the vocalists, realized their graphic scores (which were not in front of me). 

While the history of improvised music accompanying poetry (and/or vice versa) is endlessly rich and contains multitudes of multitudes, Symon’s piece scratches out the lines between poet, subject, musician, recitation, and performance until everything in sight is swept up in a furious blaze of microscopic events and fleeting collective gestures. Look not for meditative passages that gradually blossom into cathartic brushstrokes of melodicism; perhaps do not look at all, merely brace senses to receive. Accordions coalesce into synthetic tones that contract as they briefly become timbrally indistinguishable from a croak of a stringed instrument’s bow which clashes with the overtones in organically distorted vocals while moans echo, carrying just enough that the dimensions of the room can be mapped. Distinguishing features between how sound is produced becomes more of a rough outline as sonic details proliferate, in a manner that comments on the world surrounding them. 

One can, as I have, reach a brief idiosyncratic alcove in the music while gazing upon the apparition of Ontario Place, confident that the resilience of people and the impermanence of public space are anything but antithetical.

Listen to 'Je suis calme et enragé-e' Now in the Listening Room

Gil Evans Project Live at Jazz Standards Vol.2 – Shades of Sound
Ryan Truesdell; Gil Evans Project
Outside In Music OiM2515 (ryantruesdell.com/shades-of-sound)

This gorgeously produced, historically priceless recording is actually “Volume 2” and just like the Grammy nominated “Volume1” Shades of Sound was recorded live at the now defunct Jazz Standard in Chelsea, NYC. The music here was entirely arranged by the late Gil Evans and produced and conducted by the guiding light of both Evans-centric recordings, Ryan Truesdale. This album is dedicated to the late Frank Kimbrough, who was a consummate pianist and pioneering voice of the Gil Evans Project. This new recording lovingly presents vibrant takes on four never before recorded works as well as four of Evans’ more familiar compositions and arrangements. The 23-piece orchestra includes outstanding soloists too numerous to name.

On Spoonful, drawn from Evans’ original 1964 recording The Individualism of Gil Evans, Kimbrough’s luminous, complex tone clusters seamlessly mesh with bass and viola as the rest of the ensemble creeps in on a beam of micro-tones. Donny McCaslin’s tenor solo is sexy, rhythmic and bracing and Dave Pietro’s alto breaks the sound barrier as he soars into the sonic stratosphere. The Ballad of the Sad Young Men is a unique tune written by Fran Landesman and Tommy Wolf for the 1959 Off-Broadway musical, The Nervous Set. Kimbrough’s playing is breathtaking and the arrangement itself is a thing of special beauty. The ensemble moves like a single-celled organism, with skill, insight and deep sensitivity – words that easily apply to the incomparable Canadian/North American treasure, Gil Evans.

Cosmic Cliffs
Whispering Worlds
Adhyâropa Records ÂROO 117 (aaronshragge.bandcamp.com/album/cosmic-cliffs)

Extending the minimalist/global music ideas of the late John Hassell, Montreal raised Aaron Shragge brings his custom microtonal slide trumpet with rotary valves, shakuhachi and special effects, to a unified quartet that plays three of his compositions, one of Hassell’s and five group improvisations. Assisting are the alternately rhapsodic and ratcheting flanges and frails from guitarist Luke Schwartz, the understated throbs of Damon Banks’ bass strings and Deric Dickens’ drum clanks, chips and clatters.

Appending Carnatic raga affiliations to electronic oscillations throughout, the concept is most expertly expressed on the extended Seen by the Moon/Secretly Happy. On it the trumpeter mates shakuhachi tones with vocoder processed trumpet samples so that his plaintive brass tone becomes more intense as it works up the scale. It’s expertly backed by percussion slaps.

Sampled loops are also interpolated on the interconnected improvisations Reflection Nebula, Crystals and Serpentine Suspension, as microtones create double and triple shakes as if from multiple brass instruments. Meanwhile the three affiliated improvisations reflect how half-valve brass smears judiciously join with drum rattles, cymbal vibrations and tremorous guitar string scratches so that repeated portamento trumpet phrasing adumbrates melodic transformation to create a lyrical concordance.

Electro-acoustic applications are steadily advancing and the wealth of subcontinental traditional music is still available for study. That means that the cosmic cliffs that Shragge and company scaled so expertly here will most likely lead to additional sound ascension in the future.

Listen to 'Cosmic Cliffs' Now in the Listening Room

Brahms, Balkans & Bagels
Oktopus
Independent (oktopus1.bandcamp.com/album/brahms-balkans-bagels)

Formed in 2010 by clarinetist Gabriel Paquin-Buki, Oktopus, the Quebec-based klezmer octet (get it?) dedicates itself to exploring those creative possibilities that reside in the stylistic margins and fuses Western Art Music with klezmer and jazz improvisatory sounds on this terrific release. Brahms, Balkans & Bagels, released through the ensemble’s online Bandcamp site, expands upon and amplifies the influence that folkloric and traditional musical traditions had upon such esteemed art music composers as Brahms, Saint-Saëns and Franz Liszt. Although it is well-known that Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály—whose dynamic piece Kállai kettős is performed with aplomb here—were among music’s first ethnomusicologists, less is understood about the ways in which traditional folk music styles inspired other composers from the Western Art Music canon. 

Over 12 fine performances, creative arrangements and engaging sonic fusions where the only constant is musical excellence, Oktopus demonstrates why it has been routinely fêted with nominations for JUNO, Canadian Folk Music, Félix and Opus Awards.  Perhaps most notably, they earned a “special prize for the most creative fusion of ancient and contemporary music traditions,” at the Slovak Radio’s International Competition of Folk Music Recordings in Bratislava. Creative fusions certainly abound on Brahms, Balkans & Bagels. The album’s leadoff track, Mahler Goes Meshuge (Mahler goes crazy) sets the tone for the excellently curated, dynamically performed, inspired arrangements to come. Notable contributions from French chanteuse Janna Kate underscore the fact that there is much to enjoy on this unorthodox, but always musical, new release.

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Sofresh Tisch
Ladom Ensemble
Lula World Records LWR050A (ladomensemble.bandcamp.com/album/sofreh-tisch)

Canadian Ladom Ensemble is back with its third illustrious release, Sofreh Tisch. The four-member band’s diverse cultural and musical influences are created by founding member pianist Pouya Hamidi from Iran, who is joined by current members cellist Beth Silver of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, Canadian accordionist Michael Bridge, and Canadian percussionist Adam Campbell. They combine their personal musical talents and influences to blend Western classical, klezmer, rock, tango, jazz, East Coast traditional and classical Persian sounds. 

The ten diverse tracks are highlighted by each musician’s technical and improvisational expertise. Opening Gegna Taksim was composed by Jewish klezmer composer/violinist Jacob Gegna as an introduction or interlude. Here, with its moving cello melody above a low drone note, and tonal melodies with touches of modern music effects like rapid runs, it leads directly to the next track, Hamidi’s three movement Distance Suite. Inspired by separation.1. Hope opens with cello plucks, repeated notes on the piano, and taps on the accordion like raindrops. Detached chords with conversational legato cello and accordion melodies add drama. Gole Pachal is a Ladom “traditional” take on an Iranian folksong with crashing dramatic instrumental start, high pitched piano, and a memorable, traditional mid piece section with accordion and cello countermelodies.

Together as a “band,” Bridge’s musical accordion lines, Silver’s cello effects/melodies, Campbell’s intense to subtle percussion, and Hamidi’s grounded stylistically diverse piano playing make Sofreh Tisch  (meaning “spread” in two senses – the ceremonial table cloth at a celebration, and the feast placed on the cloth) unforgettable.