Elias Haslanger & Mike Sailors (ENG review)

Street Date August 5th, 2024
Jazz
Elias Haslanger & Mike Sailors (ENG review)

I remember my arrival in the USA. Shortly after, my wife Ilene Martinez and I met the trumpeter Brian Swartz. He was the one who first told us about Elias Haslanger. A little later, we went to the Continental Club Gallery, a memorable evening where we could appreciate both the showmanship of this saxophonist and his full power. Known in certain parts of Europe and here in the USA, Elias is familiar with clubs like Snug Harbor in New Orleans, Jazz Alley in Seattle, The Elephant in Austin, and The Blue Note in New York. Although Elias Haslanger studied music in Austin, it was while living in Brooklyn that he was contacted by jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson and invited to tour the United States with his band Big Bop Nouveau. As the group’s star tenor soloist, Elias occupied the same position that Wayne Shorter had years before, and the experience of touring with Maynard helped shape Elias’s philosophy as a bandleader and performer.

This is a brief introduction to this saxophonist who offers you this new album with trumpeter Mike Sailors, who also has impressive credentials. Performing worldwide, in Japan and Europe, as well as across the United States and Canada, he has appeared in venues such as the Blue Note (Tokyo, Sapporo, and New York), Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, The Jazz Standard, Yoshi’s, The Jazz Kitchen, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, the Bowery Ballroom, Smalls Jazz Club, Mezzrow, Smoke Jazz Club, as well as at festivals like the Tokyo Blue Note Jazz Festival, EFG London Jazz Festival, Detroit Jazz Festival, Ravinia Music Festival, Newport Jazz Festival, and Montreal Jazz Festival. For these two artists, you will find links to their respective websites if you want to learn more…

In a top-quality Bebop atmosphere, this self-titled album showcases true craftsmanship where the succession of notes serves as expressive springboards to tell stories on harmonious melodies while playing with rhythms and codes. The second track of this album, “History Book,” even ventures into arrangements that the great Miles might have imagined in his purest period, and we remain in awe of the harmonious communication between the two instrumentalists. And just when we think we are comfortably settled into an album whose codes we know, the third track takes us into Latin rhythms, to “jazz” higher, to “jazz” stronger, as the moments I love most are those where Elias Haslanger sends notes almost in a free jazz style, but with a mastery that is his secret.

The fourth track arrives and plunges us back into a soft and calm club atmosphere that allows us to fully appreciate each instrumentalist. Let’s acknowledge Andy Langham on tracks 3, 4, 7, 9, 10 – Daniel Dufour on drums, Ros Margitza on piano on tracks 2, 5, 8 – Ryan Hagler on double bass. We appreciate the cohesion among all these artists who, despite offering us a rather classic album, manage to make us vibrate and surprise us with little tricks that only those who fully master not only their instrument and the history of jazz but are also seasoned performers, can pull off. And if you are not yet convinced, the sixth track of this album will finish you off, as it is the track where trumpeter Mike Sailors reveals himself with beautiful artistic sensitivity and a way of sending notes that is dazzling and perfectly matches Elias Haslanger’s playing.

Great albums are not necessarily those with the most striking covers. The album “Elias Haslanger & Mike Sailors” is a “Made in Texas” album, which is both discreet and demonstrative depending on the moments, the periods. The choice of the last track has the same effect as a good TV series, meaning that you just want to go back or have a sequel with new adventures. There is not one form of jazz, but different kinds of jazz that coexist, and this album is a perfect example that makes us give it our “Indispensable” logo, but you will have to be a bit more patient to make it your own.

Thierry De Clemensat
USA correspondent – Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News

PARIS-MOVE, July 19th 2024

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To buy this album

Elias Haslanger’s Website

Mike Sailors’s Website