Name: Beast
Price: 31 USD
Availability: BackOrder

The band O’Gallagher leads […] stand very much in the tradition of an intuitive, disciplined acoustic quartet that plays material which is harmonically detailed, if not dense as well as rhythmically... — Jazzwise, June 2024 More…

Release Date: 21st Jun 2024
Catalogue No: WR4821LP
Label: Whirlwind Recordings

Side 1

1. Permeable

Side 2

1. Quixotica

2. Fishing for Paramecium

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About

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.

Reviews

June 2024

The band O’Gallagher leads […] stand very much in the tradition of an intuitive, disciplined acoustic quartet that plays material which is harmonically detailed, if not dense as well as rhythmically loose and pliable… Enjoyable, interrogative music from an international combo with a strong character.

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