PRE-ORDER: This item will be shipped with the aim to deliver on release day.
Release Date: 17 January 2025
Label: Whirlwind Recordings
Packaging Type: Slip Sleeve (CD or Vinyl)
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 5065014356418
Genres: Jazz Contemporary
Release Date: 19 July 2024
Label: Whirlwind Recordings
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 5065014356401
Genres: Jazz Contemporary
Description
Saxophonist John O'Gallagher has carved out a formidable reputation as a musician and composer who seeks to expand beyond the frontiers of jazz and into new territories of improvisational concepts. His list of collaborators is a who's-who of adventurous improvised music. Recently he's extended into an actual new territory, moving to Lisbon, Portugal in 2021. This new record Beast captures him playing in front of a live audience with a new multi-generational ensemble of musicians from the fertile European improv scene. Rhythm section duties are handled by the Portuguese team of Ze Almeida on bass and drummer Joao Lencastre. Joining the band on piano is the German musical polymath Samuel Gapp, so that this recording marks the first time in John's prodigious and storied career that he has recorded as a leader with the classic piano quartet line-up.
The album presents four extended improvisational settings, with half of these drawing upon John's compositional ideas as inspiration for exploring unknown territory, manipulating timbre and density as well as pitch and rhythm. "My compositions are used as frameworks, with the caveat that they are only to be used to provide cohesion when we sense the need. Otherwise, everything's wide open."
This album presents the next instalment in the journey of one of the music's greatest questing musical innovators, exploring all the possibilities opening up with a new set of collaborators in a new country.
John O'Gallagher: alto saxophone
João Lencastre: drums
Ze Almeida: bass
Samuel Gapp: piano
Description
Saxophonist John O'Gallagher has carved out a formidable reputation as a musician and composer who seeks to expand beyond the frontiers of jazz and into new territories of improvisational concepts. His list of collaborators is a who's-who of adventurous improvised music. Recently he's extended into an actual new territory, moving to Lisbon, Portugal in 2021. This new record Beast captures him playing in front of a live audience with a new multi-generational ensemble of musicians from the fertile European improv scene. Rhythm section duties are handled by the Portuguese team of Ze Almeida on bass and drummer Joao Lencastre. Joining the band on piano is the German musical polymath Samuel Gapp, so that this recording marks the first time in John's prodigious and storied career that he has recorded as a leader with the classic piano quartet line-up.
The album presents four extended improvisational settings, with half of these drawing upon John's compositional ideas as inspiration for exploring unknown territory, manipulating timbre and density as well as pitch and rhythm. "My compositions are used as frameworks, with the caveat that they are only to be used to provide cohesion when we sense the need. Otherwise, everything's wide open."
This album presents the next instalment in the journey of one of the music's greatest questing musical innovators, exploring all the possibilities opening up with a new set of collaborators in a new country.
John O'Gallagher: alto saxophone
João Lencastre: drums
Ze Almeida: bass
Samuel Gapp: piano
Tracklisting
Tracklisting
Empirical
Sultan Stevenson
Linley Hamilton
Lakecia Benjamin
Michael Olatuja
Samara Joy
Josephine Davies
Alice Zawadzki
Ben Lee, Jonathan Silk, Andrew Bain, Sean Gibbs, Stan Sulzmann, John O'Gallaghe
John O'Gallagher
