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439: ALEXANDER HAWKINS. Song Unconditional – Piano Solo

Intakt Recording #439/ 2025

Alexander Hawkins: Piano

Recorded on October 7 and 8, 2024, at Artesuono Recording Studios, Cavalicco, Italy, by Stefano Amerio. Mixed and mastered in February 2025 at Artesuono Recording Studios, Cavalicco, Italy, by Stefano Amerio.

Original price CHF 12.00 - Original price CHF 30.00
Original price
CHF 30.00
CHF 12.00 - CHF 30.00
Current price CHF 30.00
Format: Compact Disc
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British pianist and composer Alexander Hawkins is one of Europe’s most innovative pianists, working in a variety of creative contexts and always constructing a unique sound world. As a style-defining and imaginative voice in contemporary jazz, Hawkins provides further testimony to the art of his solo playing, six years after his last solo album (Intakt #330). Song Unconditional is as playful as it is intense – firmly rooted in tradition, yet endlessly searching and adventurous. Each of the 13 short pieces explores one or more expressive possibilities of the piano and are, in the words of Adam Shatz in the liner notes, “... marvels of compressed exploration. To listen to them in succession, as they’re meant to be heard, is to enter a vast, sophisticated, and deeply considered sound-world. Song Unconditional is also gorgeous, sometimes startlingly. It belongs, I think, in the company of the most impressive solo piano albums of recent years, notably Craig Taborn’s Avenging Angel and David Virelles’ Nuna."

Album Credits

Alexander Hawkins: Piano

All compositions by Alexander Hawkins. Recorded on October 7 and 8, 2024, at Artesuono Recording Studios, Cavalicco, Italy, by Stefano Amerio. Mixed and mastered in February 2025 at Artesuono Recording Studios, Cavalicco, Italy, by Stefano Amerio. Cover art contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA. Graphic design: Jonas Schoder. Liner notes: Adam Shatz. Photo: Edu Hawkins. Produced by Alexander Hawkins and Intakt Records. Published by Intakt Records. Executive Producer: Florian Keller. Intakt Records, P.O. Box, 8024 Zürich, Switzerland. www.intaktrec.ch

Customer Reviews

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J
John Sharpe
All About Jazz Blog

Where on the first solo outing by British pianist Alexander Hawkins, Song Singular (Babel, 2014), his influences strode in plain sight, and the second, Iron Into Wind (Intakt, 2019), in its austerity, nodded toward Hawkins' classical schooling, Song Unconditional feels simultaneously more personal and more welcoming. It finds Hawkins not only consolidating the vocabulary of his earlier output but distilling it into something strikingly self- assured.

Since that initial unaccompanied foray, Hawkins has become one of the most in demand voices in modern improvised music. A valued colleague of Anthony Braxton, Joe McPhee, Nicole Mitchell, and Evan Parker, among others, he draws from an expansive range—both his encyclopedic command of the jazz canon and deep affinity for classical idioms inform a technique that is as rigorous as it is imaginative. The material stems from a lockdown-era correspondence with regular collaborator cellist {[Tomeka Reid}}, in which the pair challenged one another to compose a piece daily for 100 days. Hawkins' notebooks from that time hold the genesis of these 13 short cuts which retain the vim and vigor of the best extemporizations.

Just because Hawkins is alone in the studio does not mean that he has to abandon the layerings and juxtapositions which are a feature of so many of his ensembles. His prodigious hand independence keeps multiple plates spinning -as lines part company, run parallel or intersect, sometimes clashing, sometimes coalescing into unexpected structures. On "Two Trees Equal," this contrapuntal thinking takes center stage, a high-velocity exchange that teeters between dialogue and divergence. "Song of Interdependence" recalls the astringent lyricism of early Keith Jarrett filtered through the player piano works of Conlon Nancarrow, evoking a kinetic, breathless momentum.

Melodies here tend to be elusive and fragmentary, but Hawkins knows how to make them linger. "Satin Antiphonal" introduces one of the album's most arresting motifs: clipped upper-register figures sparring with a jabbing, low-end pulse, thickening in texture as it moves toward a richly sonorous close. Nonetheless, "Song of Balance" stands as the clearest homage to the lineage of Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk.

Many numbers unfold into self-contained sound worlds. There is little conventional resolution in Song Unconditional, but Hawkins never aims for closure. Instead, he favors a modular approach, crafting miniatures that hover, suggesting more than they declare. The final track, "Song of a Quiet Ecstatic," gestures toward leave-taking, but with a provisional feel—an ending that doubles as an invitation.

In his most personal solo offering to date, Hawkins does not just straddle the line between improvisation and composition—he renders it moot. The result is a compelling suite that reveals itself with a sense of intricate, evolving possibility.

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/song-unconditional-alexander-hawkins-intakt__16280

Z
Z'Kay
Klenkes

Dieser Sommer ist gut gefüllt mit Piano Solo. Neben Sophie Agnel, Stephen Grew, Matt Mitchell und Amina Claudine Myers, um nur einige zu nennen, sticht vor allem der britischen Pianist Alexander Hawkins mit Herz-****. ..Song Unconditional" ist seine dritte Soloaufnahme und spiegelt sowohl die Verfeinerung seiner Technik, als auch die Weiterentwicklung seiner Signatur. Hawkins fasziniert durch Reduktion auf das Wesentliche. Überwältigung interessiert ihn nicht, seine Musik ist Freiheit pur. Dennoch fesseln seine kompakten Kompositionen mittels einer Fülle von Emotionen. Hawkins nutzte alle Mittel seiner Kunst, um mit Polyfonie, Kakofonie, mit alter Stim mung und neuen Klangfarben das gute alte Piano zum Leuchten zu bringen. Wer das weite Spektrum seiner Interessen, von polyphon singenden Pygmäenstämmen Zentralafrikas, Gamelan aus Bali, über Klassik bis hin zur zeitgenössischen Musik kennt, ahnt womit seine Synapsen aufgeladen sind. Kein Wunder also, wenn er uns zunächst radikal Neues zwischen die Ohren knallt, um uns im nächsten Augenblick in rosa Zuckerwatte zu betten. Lieblingslied „Song Of Work Still To Do" - too good to be true.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y7HI-FC-LvJPozgrpZZVcmAvcKFj--9-/view?usp=drive_link

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