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Happy Release Day: Wawau Adler – I play with you

He is, of course, addressing his esteemed fans and listeners when the great gypsy swing guitarist Wawau Adler calls his new album “I Play With You.” But he could also be referring specifically to his instrument. He changes playfully between the Selmer No. 828, a classical guitar from the forties, over modern types to the electric guitar. Finally, the title could also refer to the repertoire that is played here: After Adler has interpreted in his earlier recordings mainly standards – his last album “Happy Birthday Django 110”, released two years ago, was, for example, explicitly dedicated to his and the great role model of all gypsy jazz guitarists Django Reinhardt – and interspersed in each case only a few original compositions, it is now for the first time exactly the opposite.

With his own songs you can now get to know the whole Wawau Adler on “I Play With You”. The one who never denies his Manouche roots, but who has derived his own style from them and has always applied it to all jazz like few of his generation. Biréli Lagrène was the first formative influence for Josef “Wawau” Adler, born in Karlsruhe in 1967, when he was twelve years old. The guitarist who is considered by many to be Django Reinhardt’s most legitimate successor precisely because he never simply copied the forefather of hot jazz and gypsy swing, but developed him further in his own way and transferred him to modern jazz styles. And Adler did and does the same.

Listen: https://glmmusic.de/IplaywithyouWE

More infos: https://www.glm.de/en/product/wawau-adler-i-play-with-you/

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Happy Release Day: Robert Keßler – Little People

Think big! Bigger, further, faster! We are no longer used to attaching importance to the small. We don’t have enough attention span for details in the ever more confusing mountains of images and sounds that pile up in front of us. Nuances are no longer perceived at all, they are not recognised behind the filters of the present or they are wiped away like an annoying little creature.

“Little People”, the new album by Berlin guitarist Robert Keßler, comes at the right time. Because it directs the senses, dulled by distractions, to the essential and seduces them to listen: For example, to the pleasantly warm sound of the wood of Keßler’s archtop Gibson ES-175 from 1963, or to the enormously concentrated interplay of Keßler, double bassist Andreas Henze and drummer Tobias Backhaus, which pays attention to each other’s most minimal musical gestures. And last but not least, on the compositions, which grow in their course and flourish to full splendour like seeds carefully made to sprout.

Listen to the music: https://glmmusic.de/LittlePeopleWE

More infos: https://www.glm.de/en/product/robert-kessler-little-people/

 

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Happy Release Day: Esther Kaiser – Water

Water is the origin of all things. It´s the substance from which everything emerges and to which all things will return.

– Thales of Miletus

If jazz has to be termed as a wave, then music is a sea, but if the reflectors in the water is the chord.“   – PAT METHENY

The vocal artist and jazz vocalist Esther Kaiser has taken on a theme for her new album that – as with the widely praised previous album “Songs of Courage” – addresses an important aspect of our time, which is constantly in flux, in which nothing is more constant than the liquid, than the evaporation and liquefaction of everything solid and traditional:  Water.

Esther Kaiser therefore takes the ancient and, from today’s perspective, of course not to be taken literally, quote from Thales of Miletus as a poetic-metaphorical image for her album:

“Water is the origin of all things. It´s the substance from which everything emerges and to which all things will return.“

Thus, even the musically and lyrically multifaceted theme of the album repeatedly finds its way back to pure clarity and lightness, despite the shimmering socio-political and climate-related dimension that Kaiser does not disregard in her cleverly nuanced approach.

listen to the music: https://glmmusic.de/WaterWE

More infos: https://www.glm.de/en/product/esther-kaiser-water/

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Happy Release Day: Johannes Tonio Kreusch – Portraits of Cuba

The story of an extraordinary friendship; the proof that music is the universal language of the globalised age, with which the whole world can be embraced and expressed without having to deny one’s own origins; the revelation that Cuban music is much more than we know from the “Buena Vista Social Club”: Portraits of Cuba” is all that. The album of guitarist Johannes Tonio Kreusch, on which the pieces from the late nineties are gathered on CD, which the Cuban composer Tulio Peramo wrote for him. In the remastered original recordings of the world premieres.

The search for the origins of this splendid, once again groundbreaking Kreusch album leads back to 1994, when Johannes Tonio Kreusch and Tulio Peramo met at the Havana Guitar Festival. Two who had more to talk about than musical petitessen: Kreusch, who was 24 at the time, had initially studied philosophy until the beauty of Bach adaptations for guitar completely absorbed him and led him to study at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and the Juilliard School in New York. At that time, he had just released his debut CD: “Ginastera – Bach – Brouwer”, already a triad of themes that occupy him to this day. Alberto Ginastera represents Kreusch’s penchant for the Ibero-American guitar tradition, Bach his classical foundation, and Leo Brouwer his love of Cuban music.

Listen to the music: https://glmmusic.de/PortraitsofCuba

More infos: https://www.glm.de/en/product/johannes-tonio-kreusch-portraits-of-cuba/

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Happy Release Day: Tales for my mother – Lottchen

Critics have been raving about “ingeniously woven sound parcours” (In-Music), “subtle aural adventures” (Jazzthing) and “irresistible charm” (Süddeutsche Zeitung) for 14 years. Ever since Lottchen existed, the duo of singer Eva Buchmann and vibraphonist Sonja Huber. And perhaps this rare and intimate combination of vibraphone and vocals would have had an even greater impact had the two not taken a baby break twice. On the other hand, otherwise there would probably not be the unique project that the two have now completed: “Tales For My Mother”, the new Lottchen album after the award-winning “Lazy Afternoon”, “Travelling Birds” and “Quiet Storm”, is an ode to being a mother, inspired by their mothers as well as by their own role as mothers, by an unfulfilled desire to have children, but also by “Mother Earth” and the search for their own roots.

Vinyl or digital or videos: https://glmmusic.de/TalesformymotherWE

More infos: Tales for my mother – Lottchen