Michael Formanek, Tim Berne, Mary Halvorson – Even Better (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:19 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Intakt Records
With his impressive artistic biography, Michael Formanek is one of the outstanding personalities of contemporary jazz as a composer, a bassist in ensembles and a soloist. He belongs to the circle of leading bassists and composers that includes Charles Mingus, Dave Holland, Charlie Haden and Barry Guy.
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Michael Formanek, Ensemble Kolossus – The Distance (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:11:18 minutes | 733 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM
The Distance represents a grand creative leap for bassist-composer Michael Formanek, following two widely lauded ECM releases featuring his quartet with Tim Berne, Craig Taborn and Gerald Cleaver. The new album showcases his texturally rich compositions for the dynamic 18-piece big band he has playfully dubbed Ensemble Kolossus. The project saw some of the most distinctive musicians on the New York scene bonding to realize Formanek’s epic design, as he re-imagined what a big-band can be. Channeling sounds from the classic to the modern, he also composed for individual soloists in the Ellingtonian tradition. Along with the romanticism of the title track, The Distance features the “Exoskeleton” suite – a kaleidoscopic musical experience in which Formanek’s bold, beautiful vision for 21st-century large-ensemble jazz comes vibrantly to life.
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Michael Formanek – Small Places (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:11:21 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM
Small Places is double bassist/composer Michael Formanek’s follow-up to “The Rub and Spare Change”, his widely lauded ECM debut as a leader. That 2010 release garnered a rare five-star review in DownBeat magazine, while The New York Times described the disc as being “graceful in its subversions, often even sumptuous.” The review in Progression perhaps puts it best: “This type of listening experience, dense yet luminiferous, treads the tightrope between cerebral and streetwise in a damn cool way.” The new album features the same powerhouse band of long-time confreres, with Formanek in telepathic league with saxophonist Tim Berne, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver. If anything, Small Places is a step beyond this quartet’s first release, with the compositions and improvisation blending so seamlessly that a listener is scarcely able to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. Earthy yet atmospheric, this is very 21st-century American jazz, the music brimming with piquant riffs and muscular ostinatos, rich in melodic possibility and the sound of surprise.
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Michael Formanek – Imperfect Measures (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 55:30 minutes | 469 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Intakt Records
With his extensive artistic biography, Michael Formanek is one of the most outstanding figures in American jazz – As a composer, as a bassist in ensembles, and as a soloist. Although the bass often plays in the background, bassists write jazz history. So does Michael Formanek, who makes an impressive solo statement with Imperfect Measures (24 years after his first solo album).
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