At the end of November there will be two jazz delicacies: while Gordon Goodwin will deliver the finest big band sound with The Gordian Knot, Saz prodigy Hazar will show himself reborn with the acoustic guitar – Reincarnated is virtuoso jazz guitar art!
IAN Productions officially releases the immersive jazz experiences to be enjoyed at home on November 27th, and they are already available here.
According to the Greek legend, artistically intertwined ropes connected the drawbar and yoke of the chariot of the Phrygian king Gordios in the “Gordian knot”. Alexander the Great is said to have cut this knot, which has since been considered an extraordinary overcoming of an extraordinary problem.
For Gordon Goodwin, the new album of his Big Phat Band is therefore not just a pun, but a description of the process of creation. Thus the opener T.O.P. Adjacent is fresh and dynamic and directly after that it becomes danceable in Don’t Blink. But then comes the title track and it lives up to its name. The Big Band is allowed to show everything they can do in full range and looks cinematic – like in a Hitchcock movie where one twist chases the next and the suspense rises to immeasurable levels.
“You can feel the musicians thinking and interacting as the track plays, and it is this energy, that you get during a live performance, that is sometime missing in studio recordings.”
– Gordon Goodwin on Dolby Atmos
The production in Dolby Atmos on the Pure Audio Blu-Ray completes the listening experience and makes the cinema feeling complete. The great homage to the big bands of the 1930s and 1940s comes in the last third of the album with a snappy Summertime adaptation and the epic medley The Buddy Complex, which closes the record.
“If you want to show your skills, you should play guitar.”
More than ten years ago Hazar caused a sensation with his album Virtuoso, on which he played Paganini, Mozart and Bach with the saz on only three strings. In a conversation with John McLaughlin after a concert in Cologne, John commented on Hazar’s album: “If you want to show your skills, you should play guitar.” His artistry with long-necked lutes in perfect form, Hazar turned to the guitar at the height of his career.
“I had nothing more to tell with the saz.”
Reincarnated is the result of this reorientation and cements Hazar not only as a saz virtuoso, but as an exceptional talent when it comes to string instruments. Whether warm, full of longing and yet playful, even funky as in Black Orphans or as in Made in France – lively, moved, in turmoil – Hazar plays the acoustic guitar with an incredible filigree devotion and at the highest technical level. Thanks to Pure Audio Blu-Ray, the 3D sound experience in Dolby Atmos lets the listeners sound as if they were there live.
It is not only Hazar who can show himself in a new light on Reincarnated. It is also evergreens like Gershwin’s Summertime or Charlie Parker’s Donna Lee that Hazar reinterprets here so virtuosically that they sound like new pieces – it is also their reincarnation.
Below you can see Hazar’s creative approach to the hot Bossa-Nova-influenced number Bossa Dorado. Virtuoso!
