Julie Campich: Unspoken Review – The Harpist’s Quiet Radical Hymn for Women Who Endure | jazz

WWhen the London Jazz Festival launched online-only in 2020, a captivating live-streamed performance by Swiss harpsichordist Julie Campeche’s avant-garde jazz ensemble was a stunning highlight, introducing UK audiences to a talented player and composer who was already turning heads in Europe. Campeche captures the sounds of guitar, zither, and East Asian sounds from the ukulele, mixed with vocal loops, classical music, ambient northern jazz, and more. You might call its soundscape magical or otherworldly if it didn’t coexist with the political urgency of an activist on environmental and social issues. But Campeche has too much vision to overshadow the eloquence of pure sound with controversy, as her new album, Unaccompanied, confirms more than ever.

Campeche’s non-musical agenda here is a celebration of sisterhood, dedicated to the women in public and private life who have inspired her. The Anonymous editorial was built around a quote by Virginia Woolf – “For most of history, Anonymous was woman” – repeated by a chorus of women’s voices in various languages ​​building up the revelry. Grisélidis Réal is named after the Swiss artist and writer who took her physical and mental life to every abyss, including sex work, expressed in gentle lyrical harp lines around the eerie sounds of footsteps tapping on the sidewalks.

“Rosa” is a lit harp tune dedicated to the weary resolve of migrant workers, the tempo-shifting “Andrea Besconde” is a gentle tribute to the French actor and director, and in “Maman du Ciel,” Campich charmingly uses her inward and outward breaths as a rhythmic pattern. “Unspoken” is the least exciting of Campeche’s great adventures so far, but if she didn’t live in a world of improvisers, she wouldn’t have imagined it that way.

Also out this month

New York jazz pianist Craig Taborn He emerged in the late 1990s with leaders including Tim Byrne and Steve Coleman, but his work has flourished in the 21st century. With Dream Archives (ECM), in a trio with cello star Tomika Reed and percussionist/composer Chase Smith, he embraces fast-moving ensemble free swing, smoldering lyrical originals and a couple of heartfelt salutes (Paul Motian’s mambo jumbo and Jerry Allen’s When Kabuya Dances). Trumpeter Ariel Beesona French jazz superstar, is strengthening her long-standing relationship with the accordion player Lionel Suarez On Blossom (Bretelles Prod/Papillon Jaune), a mainstream but exhilarating mix of joyful, tender originals, and tender covers of Carla Bly’s “Ida Lupino” and Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays Au Lait. and a talented young pianist/composer in the UK Noah Stoneman He continues his steady rise with Dance at Zero, deft transformations of his minor compositions into rich improvisations in the company of fast-rising young saxophonist Emma Rawitz, bassist Freddie Jensen, and UK jazz drum maestro James Maddren.