Holshouser Trio, Will / Bernardo Sassetti

Palace Ghosts and Drunken Hymns

Label: Clean Feed Country: Portugal

"For those who think jazz is not a church or a credo demanding preservation and controlled entries, it's a factor of curiosity the encounter between a chamber jazz trio incorporating world musics like Middle Eastern and Central European klezmer, Louisiana's cajun, Argentinian tango, French musette and Eastern European gypsy songs and a jazz pianist who builds his concepts in the continuity of the classical tradition and of contemporary music, also having a cinematic perspective solidified by his many film soundtracks. That's what is offered by the reunion of the idiosincratic Will Holshouser Trio (with it's two previous acclaimed records on Clean Feed, Reed Song and Singing to a Bee) with the Portuguese pianist extraordinaire Bernardo Sassetti. For all effects, it's the inner nature of jazz itself these four notable intrumentalists and composers/improvisers honour with such an iniciative: we should remember that the "great African-American music" is, from the beginning, the fruit of cultural hybridizations. This partnership was possible only because all the musicians are conscious that, in a global world, you need to think and act globally. With this formula, the accordion turns really a Dada musical instrument - 80 years after Tristan Tzara's manifesto. Holshauser's trio and Sassetti were finally able to "destroy the conventional symbology and logic", one of the objectives of that art movement in the start of the 20th century. A former disciple of Anthony Braxton (Holshouser), the musical director of Andrew Hill's later projects (Horton), the heir of the most exquisite double bass lineage (Phillips) and the voted Prince of Portuguese jazz (Sassetti) do it brilliantly in "Palace Ghosts and Drunken Hymns"."-Clean Feed Records