Meeting of minds: Sofia Jernberg and Alexander Hawkins - photo: Niclas Weber.
So what have we got in this meaningful change of direction for the highly acclaimed avant pianist Alexander Hawkins from England with the hitherto comparatively lesser known Ethiopia born singer Sofia Jernberg from Sweden?
Eight tracks. Each sporting 1, or 2, word titles. Individual track lengths are all less than 10 minutes with 4 under 5 minutes long. Tunes include traditional pieces, Ethiopian singer-songwriter Aster Aweke's 'Y'shebellu' later sampled by The Weeknd on 'False Alarm', Jernberg's 'Correct Behaviour' and again another Ethiopian work in a cover of Girma Bèyènè's 'Muziqawi Silt.' There's an awesome droning tonality achieved on the grandeurs of 'Willow, Willow.'
Hawkins has long toured with Ethiojazz great Mulatu Astatke aside from his own piano trio featuring Birmingham player Neil Charles (Empirical, Zed-U, Lady Blackbird) and Belfast scene drummer Stephen 'Dakiz' Davis known for his work with Charles, Hawkins and Anthony Braxton in the great American's Standards Quartet.
Jernberg proves to be an outrageously fine experimentalist yet her style is couched in the strictnesses and disciplines of several traditions that she convincingly draws upon - and in this regard compares on certain levels, certainly to do with a sense of pushing the envelope in a vocals sense - with Josefine Cronholm known for her very different work with the Swiss based English jazz icon and Loose Tubes legend, Django Bates.
An album shrouded in what could be thought of as like a B minor blues pentatonic tonality pervasively with occasional altered scale ''Coptic'' touches and an unmistakable Swedish lilt within the sound, Hawkins' best passages are interspersed in the vocals on iridescent Jernberg song 'Correct Behaviour.' Definitely worth your time and an excellently thought provoking Sunday morning listen.
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