Andy Sheppard

Espen Eriksen Trio & Andy Sheppard – As Good As It Gets (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · October 12, 2023 · Comments off

The combination of Espen Eriksen Trio and UK saxophone giant Andy Sheppard is truly a match made in jazz heaven, or in the words of Andy: “I knew from the first time I heard the trio play that I would fit right in. I loved the melodic sense and vibe and was thrilled when I was invited to guest with the trio in London in 2016”. This led to the very popular and critically acclaimed Perfectly Unhappy album in 2018, and now we are proud to introduce As Good As It Gets, the quite brilliant follow-up. It´s fair to say that the new album finds the trio slightly more lively and sunny in parts, still highly melodic and lyrical, often with a typically Nordic melancholic signature (check the Grieg nod in album closer “Drifting Clouds”). Eriksen is a master of catchy tunes and when Sheppard adds his inimitable playing to the trio´s minimalistic approach, pure magic is created.

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Guillaume de Chassy & Christophe Marguet feat. Andy Sheppard – Letters to Marlene (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · February 23, 2023 · Comments off

We owe it to William Shakespeare to have us together. It was in November 2013: inspired by the plays of the famous English playwright, we had conceived together a course mixing texts and music. Our trio found here the ferments of his poetic universe. Through the concerts, we found a sound identity and a way of dialogue that belonged to us, a balance between improvisation and writing where everyone proposes and listens simultaneously. After 3 years of existence and a record, our Shakespeare Songs were now well-honed. It was during a tour of the trio in Ireland, that Andy posed openly the question: “What comes next, guys? “. We were in March 2016, at a time when the disastrous resurgences of nationalism and populism were spreading across Europe and the United States. We were looking for a way to share our concerns and affirm our values with the best weapon we had: music. Andy suggested that Marlene Dietrich would be a particularly inspiring muse for our next creation. Actress and legendary singer, icon of the 20th century, she was also a free woman with an iron will and courageous convictions, a citizen of the world committed body and soul – against Nazism, for peace, Europe and feminism . We decided to send him these musical letters: letters of admiration and gratitude in tribute to his exceptional career as an artist and a woman who brought hope; musics to interrogate otherwise two troubled times: the years 1930-1940 and our years 2010-2020.

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Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard, Steve Swallow – Trios (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 4, 2022 · Comments off

Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard and Steve Swallow revisit classic Bley compositions in an exceptional album recorded in Lugano last year by Manfred Eicher. Included here are spirited new versions of “Utviklingssang” and “Vashkar”, and the suites “Les Trois Lagons”, “Wildlife” and “The Girl Who Cried Champagne”. Carla’s robust tunes are vividly conveyed, all members solo compellingly, and the trio has never sounded better.

Trios is one of the outstanding jazz albums of the season and marks the first time that a new Carla Bley album has appeared on ECM itself (rather than the ECM-distributed WATT label, which has been her primary platform for 40 years).

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Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard, Steve Swallow – Life Goes On (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 4, 2022 · Comments off

A sage piano stylist audibly influenced by Basie and Monk among others, Carla Bley has over the past 60 years also become one of jazz’s preeminent composers. Originally influenced by ’60s jazz avant-garde, Bley, as evidenced by her latest, Life Goes On, has fashioned her own jazz ethos—what ECM’s Manfred Eicher has called her “radical originality.” In jazz groups of any size longevity is often impossible as the essence of the music is often dependent on the potential of new combinations of talent, and yet a large part of Bley’s recent success is keyed by her working trio of bassist/life partner Steve Swallow and saxophonist Andy Sheppard, who’ve been together for 25 years.

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Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard, Steve Swallow – Andando El Tiempo (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 4, 2022 · Comments off

Andando el Tiempo features new music of wide emotional compass by Carla Bley, and underlines her originality and resourcefulness as a jazz composer. “Saints Alive!” sets up animated conversations between the participants with striking statements from Steve Swallow’s bass guitar and Andy Sheppard’s soprano sax. The stately “Naked Bridges/Diving Brides” draws inspiration from Mendelssohn and the poetry of Paul Haines. And the powerful three part title composition – which addresses the trials and tribulations of recovery from addiction – moves through sorrow to hopefulness and joy. The trio with Sheppard and Swallow has been an ideal vehicle for Carla’s writing for more than 20 years and also provides one of the best contexts for her unique piano playing. Like the critically lauded ECM album Trios (2012), Andando el Tiempo was recorded at Lugano’s RSI Studio and produced by Manfred Eicher.

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Andy Sheppard, Michel Benita, Sebastian Rochford – Trio Libero (2012) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · June 21, 2022 · Comments off

Andy Sheppard, Michel Benita, Sebastian Rochford - Trio Libero (2012) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz] Download

UK saxophonist Andy Sheppard’s second ECM album introduces his freely lyrical new trio with Michel Benita and Sebastian Rochford. All three players share a sense of stylistic open-mindedness. Drummer Rochford is one of the young players changing perceptions of British jazz with bands Polar Bear and Acoustic Ladyland. Algiers-born French bassist Benita, who cites Charlie Haden and Scott LaFaro as influences, has played with Archie Shepp, Dewey Redman, Lee Konitz and in the ELB trio with Nguyên Lê and Peter Erskine. Repertoire here includes originals by Sheppard, Benita and Rochford, plus group improvisations and the standard “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.” In all contexts, interaction is highly creative, as Benita and Rochford respond perceptively to Sheppard’s melodically and rhythmically inventive lines. Recorded July 2011 at Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera, Lugano.
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Andy Sheppard Quartet, Andy Sheppard – Surrounded By Sea (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · June 21, 2022 · Comments off

Andy Sheppard Quartet, Andy Sheppard - Surrounded By Sea (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Extending the range of his widely-praised Trio Libero project with French bassist Michel Benita and Scottish drummer Seb Rochford, Andy Sheppard adds the Norwegian guitarist and electronics wizard Eivind Aarset to his band for „Surrounded by Sea“.

With Aarset’s ambient drones and electronic textures as a backdrop, Sheppard and co seem to have even more space to explore than on the saxophonist’s acclaimed Trio Libero recording (2786630). The music embraced here includes new compositions by Sheppard, Benita and Rochford, open improvisations, the Elvis Costello tune “I Want To Vanish”, and the Gaelic traditional ballad “Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir” which appears in three variations, a thematic thread through the album. ‘Surrounded by Sea’ was recorded at Lugano in August-September 2014 with Manfred Eicher producing.

The prodigiously gifted Andy Sheppard famously took up the saxophone at 19, inspired by Coltrane, and played his first gig with it three weeks later. After a period in Paris, he returned to the UK in the mid-80s, recording the album ‘Andy Sheppard’ with Steve Swallow as producer, the beginning of a long musical association. Since then he’s recorded extensively and written trans-idiomatic music for ensembles of every size (his Saxophone Massive project has included 200 sax players) as well as for theatre, film, dance and mixed media.

Sheppard’s collaborators over the years have ranged from Han Bennink and Joanna MacGregor to Keith Tippett, L. Shankar and Kathryn Tickell. He has played with numerous key jazz artists, including the exceptional composers George Russell, Gil Evans and Carla Bley, and recorded many times with the latter for her ECM-distributed WATT label. Sheppard released his first ECM leader date, the hugely-popular ‘Movements in Colour’ (1795042), in 2009.
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Andy Sheppard Quartet, Andy Sheppard – Romaria (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · June 21, 2022 · Comments off

Andy Sheppard Quartet, Andy Sheppard - Romaria (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Andy Sheppards quartet extends the musical explorations begun on the 2015 release Surrounded By Sea, an album praised by Télérama for its poignant serenity. In this new program of compositions by Sheppard (plus the title track by Brazilian singer-songwriter Renato Teixeira), the drones and washes of Eivind Aarsets guitar and electronics aided by the generous acoustics of Luganos Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI help to establish a climate in which improvisation can take place. Theres a highly atmospheric, ambient drift to the music which Sheppard clearly finds liberating, as do Michel Benita and Seb Rochford, free to move in and out of conventional rhythm section roles and to make impassioned statements of their own. Romaria was recorded in April 2017 and produced by Manfred Eicher.
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