For their latest release, Project Earth: The Blue Chapter, the Iris Trio, which can typically be found in the classical music neighborhood, offers a suite of suites composed in a genre-crossing style by pianist and composer Florian Hoefner, best known for his work as a jazz artist, with accompanying poems by Don McKay. From Swiss jazz vocalist Nina Reiter come audacious arrangements for her tentet group, MetaLogue, of the music of the late Swiss composer Mani Planzer, who refused to allow the strictures of any particular genre to impede his self-expression.

Iris Trio
Project Earth: The Blue Chapter (CMC Centrediscs)
A review
I was familiar with award-winning jazz pianist and composer Florian Hoefner’s superlative jazz releases (reviewed here, here, and here) but had no idea that he was equally adept at composing music closely tied to the classical world. But when the award-winning Iris Trio—Christine Carter (clarinet), Zoë Martin-Doike (viola), Anna Petrova (piano)—asked if he would write music for them, the seeds were planted for Project Earth, a multichapter commissioned work focused, say the album notes, on “the impact of human behaviour on the environment, addressing issues of climate change, pollution, habitat degradation, and biodiversity loss.” The trio and Hoefner invited award-winning poet Don McCay to write poems that Hoefner used as a starting point for the musical compositions, and the two men worked closely, each refining his work on the basis of the other’s contribution. What these five artists have delivered is a work full of wonder and warning and hope, evoking the wild silence and articulate cacophony of nature, its ceaseless activity, and its precarious balance on the knife-edge of sustainability. The album offers three suites, “Bird Island Suite,” “Chorus of Wishes,” and “Kinds of Blue,” whose material ranges from folk melodies to minimalism, jazz colorations to classical forms, and whose feeling straddles chest-filling gratitude (“Wider Mind”) to gently mournful reflection (“Song for the Song of the Great Auk,” a bird extinct by 1848). The poetry, music, and performances place us in the center of a vast and compelling landscape/seascape, and they deliver a spellbinding plea that we consider what we have, what we have lost, and what we might yet lose. (Available on Bandcamp here. Currently in the works: Project Earth: The Green Chapter.)

Nina Reiter — MetaLogue
evolving: The Music of Mani Planzer (TPR Records)
A review
Judging from vocalist and arranger Nina Reiter’s take on the music of Mani Planzer, previously unknown to me, the late Swiss composer held no allegiance to any particular musical genre, happily creating genre-fluid compositions to fully manifest his artistic expression. Reiter—a well-trained vocalist, an accomplished lyricist, and a fearless arranger—gives full expression to Planzer’s music with her unusually orchestrated tentet, MetaLogue, including Reiter (vocals, lyrics, arrangements), Sonja Ott (trumpet, flugelhorn), Niko Seibold (alto sax, flute, clarinet), Tobias Pfister (tenor and soprano sax, bass clarinet), Elio Amberg (alto and tenor sax), Florian Weiss (trombone), Julie Campiche (harp), Mareille Merck (guitar), Marc Mezgolits (bass guitar), and Clemens Kuratle (drums). Based on Reiter’s work with Phraim, her genre-shifting jazz quartet (reviewed here), her sensibilities complement Planzer’s perfectly. Highlights include the album opener, “Evolution,” a new music/jazz composition dressed with Reiter’s pointed feminist lyrics, with terrific solos from Pfister, Campiche, and Weiss and a nice ensemble close. “Uccellagione Stravagante” marries blues and art song, attended by jazz, rock, and flamenco in the wedding party, with Reiter’s lyrics declaring a firmly possessed self-confidence. “Girondolone” offers swing and scatting, a folkish melody touched by the conservatory, and poetic lyrics in appreciation of a busker’s efforts. “Hoffen” features lyrics from Charlotte Brontë’s poem “Life” on a new melodic line composed by Reiter, a trumpet solo that straddles the jazz and classical worlds, and a funky electric bass solo that continues under a shifting array of unorthodox instrumental combinations in the new music mode. evolving challenges listeners to step out of their genre comfort zones and rewards them with fresh, bold, intelligent music. (Available on Bandcamp here.)

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