Please visit www.songlines.com for information on these current projects: 

Jerry Granelli and V16 "The Sonic Temple"

Andy Milne "Dreams and False Alarms"

James Carney "Green-Wood" 

Here's what's coming from Songlines for the rest of 2007......

In November, Songlines will release an SACD of New York tenor/soprano saxophonist Michael Blake's new Canadian sextet, entitled Amor de Cosmos after an eccentric 19th century Canadian politician of the same name. The band features some of Vancouver's best jazz improvisers (trumpeter Brad Turner, keyboardist Chris Gestrin, bassist Andre Lachance and drummer Dylan van der Schyff) plus percussionist Sal Ferreras. Michael takes full advantage of the instrumental possibilities (e.g. marimba and piano) to create a program ranging across the jazz spectrum and beyond - including funk, African, and contemporary classical influences. By the way, Michael was voted a rising star in this year's DownBeat critics poll. He's one of those players (and composers) who seem to be able to combine the best of the past with an individual, forward-looking approach. This project is something of a homecoming for him, since he grew up in Vancouver but has lived in NY for over 20 years.

Michael and Chris have two duo improvs on the record, which brings us to the other November release, Chris Gestrin's After the city has gone : quiet. Chris is one of Vancouver’s busiest and most respected musicians. That he isn’t better-known internationally is certainly not due to a lack of talent or vision – he would just rather raise a family than be on the road a lot. He’s had two previous releases on Songlines – one by his electro-acoustic band Stillpoint (which includes Turner, Lachance and van der Schyff), and more recently a trio concert with van der Schyff and Ben Monder. The new one is another double SACD – and like the Jerry Granelli double that was released this spring (The Sonic Temple) there’s a compelling musical reason for it. It documents a mammoth three day DSD recording session that paired Chris on Steinway D with nine duos and trios made up of Vancouver cohorts, including a number of artists who have appeared on Songlines such as Peggy Lee, Ron Samworth, Gordon Grdina and Jesse Zubot. Sifting through the various takes (most of them free improvs), it eventually became clear that one disc could not adequately represent the music – there was just too wide a range of inventive interaction and expressive power. So Chris put together two sequences of about an hour each, and that’s what you’ll hear. It’s all about combinations of timbres and musical gestures; it’s also all about spontaneous composition in different contexts, combining aspects of jazz, classical, ambient and world music.

As usual, both releases have been mixed to multi-channel as well as stereo.