With Release, the highly acclaimed Lisbeth Quartett presents a greatly anticipated album on Intakt Records. After twelve years and five albums, Charlotte Greve, who has just been awarded the German Jazz Prize for “Artist of the Year”, has relied on her intuitive sensibilities to create the new music for Release. The result is an album marked by sensitive interplay – a collection of stunningly subtle and melodically pronounced songs that are both gentle and powerfully fluid. Even if the musicians are across the world in Berlin or New York City, all traveling and working on their respective projects, they seem to meld and blend with ease because of their history together and their knowledge of each other’s instrumental styles. “They have all cultivated the ability to play their instruments gently and cleanly aligning with the style of even sounds and tone they have refined throughout their journeys together. Twelve years is a long time and the span of thousands of moments that they have shared having brought them to where they are today, working as a unit, creating new music in this post-modern era and continuing their legacy as a leading band in the international jazz landscape”, writes Jordannah Elizabeth in the liner notes.

Kukuruz Quartet began their partnership with Julius Eastman and his musical works in 2014. In 2017, their performance at ‘documenta 14’ in the Megaro Mousikis concert hall in Athens earned a standing ovation. They performed works by Julius Eastman: 'Evil Nigger', 'Gay Guerrilla', 'Buddha' and 'Fugue No. 7.’ The recording of these compositions followed in November 2017 on four Steinway D pianos in the main hall of the historic Radiostudio Zürich.

Aruán Ortiz has long dreamt of making an album that would evoke "a cascade of rhythms going over me, almost dragging me to fall." This feeling of being overtaken by rhythm is one he knows well, having spent his first 23 years in Cuba. Born in 1973, Ortiz grew up Santiago de Cuba – the cradle of Afro-Cuban music and a veritable "vortex of rhythm".

Ohad Talmor came to New York in 1995 to study music and since then made Brooklyn his home where he has been one of the "movers and shakers" of the creative jazz scene. On the ground floor of his Prospect Heights loft, he runs the performance space "Seeds".

The septet’s music weaves together Ingrid Laubrock‘s compositions with improvisation and live processing, often in multiple simultaneous layers.The four compositions in the form an imaginative and evocative piece that straddles the boundaries of improvisation, new music and avant-jazz.

A big anniversary is celebrated on this recording: Evan Parker and Paul Lytton got to know each other in 1969 and after months of rehearsals their first performance followed in 1970. It was the time of the jazz avant-garde, which renewed and expanded the traditional ways of playing and the Parker-Lytton Duo was an active part of this process.

Tim Berne recorded for Intakt Records for the first time in 2019 as the saxophonist in Michael Formanek’s Very Practical Trio with Mary Halvorson. Now the New York saxophonist, composer and bandleader presents a new CD with his ensemble Snakeoil. After five albums this is the first Snakeoil record to be released on Intakt. The band balances the possibilities of composition, improvisation and the tonal possibilities of an acoustic and electric playing jazz band in an unmistakable way. The Fantastic Mrs.10 is one of Snakeoil's most mature and at the same time most edgy CDs.

Frith returns to his deep roots in this improvising trio with the classic lineup of guitar, bass and drums. Playful, intimate, and bound together by a dark and delicate interplay, the group reminds us what listening is all about. After a lifetime of experience across almost every field of musical endeavor, Fred stretches out in the company of two stalwarts of the vibrant Bay Area music scene who have their own stories to tell.

Aly Keïta comes from a Malinke Griot family from the Ivory Coast and is a master of the balafon, the African xylophone.
The musician from Côte d'Ivoire settled in Europe years ago and has since played with a number of jazz giants from keyboarder Joe Zawinul to Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek.

Since the nineties, the drummer and bandleader Jim Black has been one of the most influential figures of progressive jazz. On his Intakt Records debut, Jim Black plays with the acclaimed young pianist Elias Stemeseder and highly in-demand New York bass player Thomas Morgan contemporary jazz with distinctive arrangements, complex rhythms and expressive improvisations.

The quartet Weird Beard was founded by Zurich based saxophonist Florian Egli. Following the debut album 'Everything Moves' on Intakt Records, they release a second studio album, recorded again in the Blackbox Studio in Brittany by the out­standing sound engineer David Odlum. 'Orientation' is a sophisticated record on which Weird Beard increasingly focus their attention on the creation of moods and atmospheres.

With this recording, alto saxophonist and bandleader Angelica Niescier and pianist and composer Florian Weber, both from Cologne Germany, place themselves at the centre of the New York City jazz scene. They are joined in the NYC Five by three acclaimed jazz musicians in great demand in the Big Apple: trumpeter Ralph Alessi, bassist Christopher Tordini and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. The quintet plays highly contemporary jazz with original tunes, distinctive arrangements, complex rhythms and expressive improvisations on the album, co-produced by Niescier.

Saxophonist Florian Egli presents with his band 'Weird Beard' his debut on Intakt Records. Deeply rooted in the jazz tradition Weird Beard creates with stylistic openness an independent and characterful music in the undogmatic field of contemporary jazz. Everything Moves is a characterful album with a strong pulling power and manages to combine lyrical passages with the unpredictable.