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Julie Sassoon
British pianist/composer Julie Sassoon is classically trained on piano and violin. She graduated in music and visual arts from Lancaster University in 1988, winning the university prize for piano performance, and later completed postgraduate studies in jazz piano and Indian violin at Leeds College of Music.
She came to the attention of critics and audiences in 2000, when she formed the remarkable Azilut! trio with Bart van Helsdingen (twice nominated Best Jazz Drummer in the Netherlands), and Lothar Ohlmeier (tenor and soprano saxophone, bass clarinet). They released their album “To The Power Of Three” in 2001 on the Babel Label. Azilut! has performed at major venues and festivals throughout the UK and Europe, receiving outstanding reviews.
She has been a key member of ensembles including Piano Circus, the international contemporary music ensemble for six pianos; Inside Colours, a dynamic duo with Lothar Ohlmeier; Martha Lewis’s world music group - Café Aman,; Duo with accordionist Karen Street & Freefall with BBC New Generation Artist -Tom Arthurs (trpt) & Milo Fell (dr).
In 2006 she released the critically acclaimed solo piano album ‘New Life’ - on Babel Records, which was voted among the top ten favourite international albums in Jazzwise Magazine. The solo gig she shared with Oregon at the Queen Elizabeth Concert Hall in the London International Jazz Festival was described as ‘one of the most inspired pairings of the festival’ and received a 4 star Evening Standard review as well as an invitation to appear on BBC Radio’s famous ‘Woman’s Hour’. The concert was broadcast on Radio 3. In 2008 Julie enjoyed a successful solo piano tour, sharing a double bill with BBC Artist - Tom Arthurs (trpt) and his AHR trio. In the 2008 London Jazz Festival they teamed up for a BBC live concert, broadcast for Radio 3 ‘Jazz line up’.
Since her move to Berlin, Julie has formed some exciting new musical collaborations, including; ‘The Art of Duo’ with Israeli singer – Efrat Alony. They performed for a live broadcast at the RBB Sendesaal in Berlin; an improvising chamber music duo with saxophonist - Frank Paul Schubert; Sassoon/Ohlmeier/Arthurs Trio; Sassoon/Thiele Duo with percussionist Nora Thiele; House of Mirrors - with Peter van Huffel, Sophie Tassignon, Miles Perkin, amongst others.
In April 2013 Julie will be releasing a new live solo CD – entitled ‘Land of Shadows’ on the Berlin Jazzwerkstatt Label. This music explores her German-Jewish identity - a theme that has become a prominent part of her artistic work since her move from London to Berlin in 2009.
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Julie Sassoon: Inside Colours Live
by Mike Jurkovic
Shedding warm illuminations on all our fragile, secretive, sensuous moments, is the underlying axiom behind British pianist/composer Julie Sassoon 's vulnerable and telling music. A classicist at heart who, whether she is aware of it or not, comes at her music in much the manner as Marilyn Crispell--visceral, personal, labyrinthine, yet ultimately accessible--Sassoon's sense of the improbable and the possible doesn't so much dominate the live performances that comprise Inside Colours Live as they green-light both to occur simultaneously.
read moreJulie Sassoon Quartet: Voyages
by Mike Jurkovic
As on a high speed, downhill slalom chase, listeners are suddenly, nakedly and without poles hurled into “Missed Calls"; the opening burst of sublime energy and groupthink cracks Voyages wide open, sets the mad, determined pace and tone for a craftily organic, six-song, free-jazz adventure which never lets up. It is breakneck rhythm churning, keening, into whiplash waves, a wake up call of massive proportions. “Missed Calls" busts Berlin-based, British pianist Julie Sassoon and her henchmen from isolation and double ...
read moreJulie Sassoon Quartet: Voyages
by Dan McClenaghan
Not all voyages involve smooth sailing. Indeed, pianist Julie Sassoon's Voyages opens on a blustery note. It is a quartet outing--as opposed to Sassoon's 2021 solo set, When You Can't go Outside...Go Inside (Jazzwerkstatt), with the pianist joined by reedman Lothar Ohlmeier, bassist Meirad Kneer and drummer Rudi Fischerlehner. The opener, “Missed Calls," sounds like a prelude to battening down the hatches in its blustery beginning section, before Sassoon take an introverted solo during a lull in the squall.
read moreJulie Sassoon: If You Can't Go Outside...Go Inside
by Mike Jurkovic
As we've learned time and time again throughout this sick year, 2021, not many humans are ready to completely surrender themselves for the good of their fellow kind. So it's truly a beautiful thing when Berlin based pianist Julie Sassoon surrenders so completely to her instrument and the moment that, like a medium, reveals mysteries to us in ways both intimate and oceanic. When woman and piano meet, If You Can't Go Outside. . .Go Inide may, for ...
read moreJulie Sassoon: If You Can't Go Outside...Go Inside
by Dan McClenaghan
American novelist and short story writer Stephen King has said that he thinks his stories are “found things, like fossils in the ground...relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world." He goes on to say that, as a writer, it is his job to reveal as much of this fossil as he can. Interesting, and maybe true. If it is, that can be transferred to music. Sounds as found things, not in the ground but in the air, waiting to be ...
read moreJulie Sassoon, Willi Kellers: Waves
by John Eyles
Although pianist Julie Sassoon's first recording—the trio Azilut!'s To the Power of Three (Babel)—was released in 2001, the intervening years have not seen a stream of albums from her; in fact, her releases to date can be counted on two hands. However, in Sassoon's case quantity is far less important than the variety and quality of the music on the releases. In particular, amongst her recordings are two fine solo albums—New Life (Babel, 2006), inspired by the 2004 birth of ...
read moreJulie Sassoon: Fourtune
by Duncan Heining
Fourtune is British pianist-composer Julie Sassoon's first quartet recording. Sassoon's musical approach draws in equal measure on her classical training and on a love of jazz and improvised music. This marriage goes far beyond the translation of a pianistic technique from one musical area to another but becomes something far deeper and more powerfully emotionally moving in her hands. The CD features life-and musical partner Lothar Ohlmeier on reeds, along with a remarkably strong rhythm pairing in bassist ...
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