Pastor, Stefano & Ari Poutiainen

North South Dial

Label: Slam Country: UK

"Slam Productions is proud to present the new CD by Italian violinist and multi-instrumentalist Stefano Pastor, winner at Top Jazz 2010, and Finnish violinist and educator Ari Poutiainen. The violin duo in jazz is very unusual, a difficult challenge in the field of research and innovation on this instrument. But the music here is not only an exercise: they play warm and intensely evocative nuances from several atmospheres.

As written in the liner notes Anthony Barnett, poet, percussionist and author of bio-discographies of Stuff Smith and Eddie South: "Poutiainen has published his ground-breaking doctoral dissertation Stringprovisation: A Fingering Strategy for Jazz Violin Improvisation (Helsinki, Acta Musicologica Fennica 28, 2009) and Pastor has published his treatise Violinjazz (Monza, Casa Musicale Eco, 2008) but do not imagine that the playing of either is an academic exercise. They are too creative to do anything other than make beautiful practice out of whatever theories they may espouse; their different innovative improvisational approaches are rooted in the development of the American jazz tradition"."-Slam Productions