A look at music on the rise and causing waves around the globe.
Attacca Quartet – Flow My Tears (Lachrimae)
Mixing late 20th-century minimalism back onto the music of the Renaissance, the Grammy award-winning Attacca Quartet‘s most recent album Of All Joys was made during the COVID-19 pandemic. The title comes from Dowland’s Flow my tears (“And tears and sighs and groans my weary days / of all joys have deprived”). The quartet deliver performances that range from intense and explosive, to gentle, late-night ruminations spread across an album of deep introspection, perfectly aligned with current times.
Tarta Relena live for Eurosonic
Catalan duo Tarta Relena describe their music as “progressive Greorian”. With voices united in immaculate harmony, the duo take on everything from traditional Georgian song to a composition by 12th century Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen. Married with sparse electronic accompaniment, it is the vocal coupling that is truly on display. Their debut album Fiat Lux takes the listener on an archeological adventure, where a traditional Greek song nestles up to an adaptation of traditional poetry by Pashtun women from Afghanistan, which in turn sits harmoniously alongside a traditional Sephardic song. A truly unique and emotional musical force.
Ryan Daunt Trio – Essence
A graduate of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts with a First-Class Honours Degree in Music, majoring in Jazz Performance, Australian drummer, educator, bandleader, and composer Ryan Daunt is, it goes without saying, a major talent. Hungry yet sophisticated, innovative yet constrained, there is a freshness to Daunt’s playing that is the driving force on his latest album release Essence. Over eleven original compositions written by Daunt and accompanied by Nick Abbey on bass and Tristan Wills on piano. A beguiling musical voice on the Australian jazz landscape, Ryan Daunt is a name to follow.
Fabiano do Nascimento – Ykytu
Ykytu means “wind” in the indigenous Brazilian Guarani language, and is also the title of guitarist Fabiano do Nascimento’s fourth album for Now-Again Records. A solo guitar album consisting of his own compositions, Ykytu follows folkloric Brasilian music, Brasilian jazz, bossa-nova and samba as experienced through the mind and able fingers of an expansive musician, this time in a minimalist, meditative manner. Performed almost entirely with a Strimon Timeline pedal, with a few loops and overdubs, the album is a self reflective escape from the restrictions of the pandemic lockdown during which it was recorded.