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Matthieu Michel

Born in Fribourg in 1963, Matthieu Michel is acknowledged as one of the great trumpeters and flugelhorn players of European jazz. He was a member of the Vienna Art Orchestra from 1992 and has worked with Susanne Abbuehl, Malcolm Braff, Richard Galliano and Daniel Humair. He has released seven albums in various line-ups with Swiss and international musicians on jazz labels ranging from the prestigious to the less known. He owes his seductive power to his unique timbre and flair for improvisation, as well as his qualities of introspection and lyricism.

Elina Duni: A Time to Remember

Read "A Time to Remember" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
July 3, 2023

Someone once described Leonard Cohen's music as “uplifting in a peculiarly depressing way." The music of singer Elina Duni and guitarist Rob Luft is not depressing, though it certainly is uplifting. It is, however, full of tristesse, of sadness for things that are lost, be they people or places. This feeling goes deeper than mere nostalgia. Listening to A Time To Remember and its predecessors, Duni and Luft's Lost Ships (ECM, 2020) and Duni's Partir (ECM, 2018), ...

Album Review

Michel Benita: Looking At Sounds

Read "Looking At Sounds" reviewed by Friedrich Kunzmann

by Friedrich Kunzmann
May 22, 2021

Michel Benita's leader-debut with his Ethics band for ECM, 2016's River Silver, came as a welcome addition to his oeuvre and the label's catalogue, following the French bassist's earlier characteristic contributions in saxophonist Andy Sheppard's Trio Libero on Trio Libero (ECM, 2012) and Surrounded By Sea (ECM, 2015). As on the first Ethics album, 2010's self-titled effort released on OutNote, on River Silver Benita unified an international pool of musicians, with Norwegian guitar-scape designer Eivind Aarset washing atmospheric clouds over ...

Album Review

Elina Duni / Rob Luft: Lost Ships

by Chris May
December 4, 2020

Released just in time to make the Best Albums of 2020 lists, the Albanian-Swiss singer Elina Duni and the British guitarist Rob Luft's Lost Ships is an exquisitely beautiful, emotionally complex, words and music masterpiece from two of the most distinctive talents on the European scene. Passionate and grave, serene and desolate, it is a kind of sequel to Duni's acclaimed 2018 ECM debut, Partir. Partir explored the humanitarian crisis which was then (as now) sweeping across Europe ...