The idea of the harp in jazz is nothing new, and of course we’ll primarily associate it with the iconic albums of Alice Coltrane. Today, as expected, we can also find it in a number of bands with the “spiritual” tag, but I’d say that Julie Campiche approaches the harp from a different, more authentic perspective. Already on her previous couple of quartet albums, it was clear that this Swiss artist was reaching more broadly, both towards electronics and “alternative music” in a wider sense, while at the same time retaining her jazz credibility.
But on her current album Unspoken, she enters the avant-pop domain as a song-oriented vocalist and harpist, in tracks with a strong feminist charge and titles that pay tribute to strong women who are important to her. So the broader context of her album is not so much the usual “Alice Coltrane universe” as perhaps Joanna Newsom, if we’re talking about a creative approach to the harp in popular music. Still, this is a completely authentic album with several really strong songs, so I can see the potential for “Campiche style” to become a new (affirmative) musical reference.
The album was released by Ronin Rhythm Records, the label founded by pianist Nik Bärtsch, which is also an interesting detail. The label isn’t new and has long been somewhere around the musicians connected with his projects, but I believe it has great potential – of course not for mainstream success, but to strengthen its “label identity” and become a focal point of the creative European cross-genre scene.
Last week I tried to listen to several free jazz or avant-garde albums, but each time I would give up when the saxophones or trumpets became too loud or nervous. For me, this isn’t a new phenomenon. I’ve written before about how I divided my listening persona into one that enjoys more “extreme” jazz at concerts, and another that enjoys more “balanced” jazz at home, and that works perfectly OK. I confirmed this as soon as I put on Mark Guiliana’s new album BEAT Music 2.0 (Edition Records), on which the drummer presents his neo-retro fusion, or highly produced music based on rhythm and synths.
We mostly think of jazz as music of strong improvisational personalities, or music that gains a new dimension in live performance thanks to the exceptional imagination of its authors and performers. But there is also a very strong faction of jazz that translates its essential qualities into a studio framework. Production and post-production in that sense aren’t an “additional instrument”, but also a kind of philosophy of sound, something best demonstrated by the work of Scandinavian musicians such as Jan Bang, Erik Honoré or Nils Petter Molvær.
Guiliana approaches studio sound in a very entertaining way. When I use “neo-retro” or “retro-futurism” as a reference, by that I mean music that sounds as if it could have been made, for example, in the 1980s (based on the dominant instruments and approach to production), but which would have sounded a little “ahead of its time” back then because of some of its creative and stylistic solutions.
What is “old” isn’t only the technical approach, but also a kind of homage to the melodies of that time, or a specific sentiment, pathos, something that sounds seemingly “naive” but also becomes slightly strange when removed from its historical pop-cultural context.
In that sense, Mark Guiliana is a master of “fusion” understood in a broader meaning, beyond the narrow jazz context in which we most often associate the term with the jazz-rock or jazz-funk of the 1970s and 1980s. He successfully connects and mixes not only musical styles and techniques, but also their emotional and semantic layers, while remaining communicative and seductive in his approach.
Jazz Across Europe
I’ve already written about my fondness for everything connected with We Jazz Records, which over the past few years has been turning into a real “We Jazz Universe”. A few months ago, I talked about this with Matti Nives, the founder and spiritus movens of We Jazz, in my first audio interview on Eurojazzist. For years, one of the most visible segments of his work has been the We Jazz Festival, which this year was renamed the Väreet festival. This year the festival takes place from December 2 to 5 in Helsinki, and the performers include the Fire! trio and Orchestra, Goran Kajfeš Subtropic Arkestra & Avin Omar, Superposition, Verneri Pohjola, Timo Lassy, Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble… the names speak for themselves.
The other festival that particularly catches my eye this week is Jazztopad in the Polish city of Wrocław (November 13–22, 2026), for several reasons. The first is the programme, which has several real gems. Alongside SML, who are definitely a live attraction, and the Amir ElSaffar Quartet, who dominate the first part of the festival, towards the end we have William Parker and Hamid Drake with Shabaka, followed by an intriguing programme called “An opera created by Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding“, DoYeon Kim, Darius Jones Trio….
But my attention was also caught by the Concerts in Living Rooms programme, which connects well with my earlier thoughts about whether (and how) the concept of jazz concerts and festivals should be redefined. Enrico Bettinello from the festival Jazz & Wine of Peace Cormons made a number of great points and observations on the subject in the comments, and these concerts in Wrocław are another practical response to the dilemmas raised.