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Michael Attias
Concerts in clubs and festivals throughout the US, Europe, the Middle East and Japan have brought him together with such musicians as Anthony Braxton, Paul Motian, Oliver Lake, Butch Morris and Anthony Coleman. He has released two albums as leader in the last three years, Renku and Credo, for Playscape and Clean Feed respectively. Both were warmly received by critics and featured on several end-of-the-year lists of Top Releases. He's currently enjoying rich activity both as sideman and leader in multiple overlapping projects often featuring Tony Malaby, Nasheet Waits, Russ Lossing, John Hebert, Sean Conly, and many others.
In recent news, Attias could be heard on the Sony Music Fall 2007 release of the Hino/Kikuchi Quintet: Counter Current, with Paul Motian and Thomas Morgan. His trio Renku, with John Hebert and Satoshi Takeishi, completed its first European tour in January 08, and in May 08, he made his debut at the Village Vanguard in Paul Motian's Trio 2000+2. In June, both Renku and his Quintet recorded live albums at the Coimbra Jazz Festival to be released on Clean Feed in 2009. Other upcoming releases Volume 5 of Paul Motian’s On Broadway for Winter&Winter, John Hebert's Byzantine Monkey for Firehouse 12, and Taylor Ho Bynum’s Positive Catastrophe for Cuneiform.
Attias is currently creating a live score for Notes From Underground, directed by Robert Woodruff, to be performed at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven in Spring 2009.
Awards
2000 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship 2008 MacDowell Arts Colony Residency
Tags
Nataniel Edelman Trio: Un Ruido De Agua
by John Sharpe
Born in Buenos Aires in 1991, Argentinean pianist Nataniel Edelman first met bassist Michael Formanek and saxophonist Michaël Attias when studying in New York City. He maintained the ties and the outcome was the three sessions under Edelman's leadership in a Berlin studio in 2022 which resulted in Un Ruido De Agua. It is not the first time he has recorded with the reedman, as Attias joined Edelman for a tour in his homeland in 2021, where the pianist, an ...
read moreThe Angelica Sanchez Nonet: Nighttime Creatures
by Angelo Leonardi
Pubblicato dalla Pyroclastic Records, Nighttime Creatures è il magistrale debutto del nonet della pianista Angelica Sanchez, organico che riunisce alcuni protagonisti della scene musicali di New York, Los Angeles e San Francisco: i sassofonisti Chris Speed e Michael Attias, il clarinettista Ben Goldberg, il cornettista Kenny Warren, il trombettista Thomas Heberer, il chitarrista Omar Tamez, il contrabbassista John Hébert e il batterista Sam Ospovat. Trasferitasi nel 1994 a New York da Phoenix (Arizona), Angelica è parte dell'Exploding ...
read moreMichaël Attias, Simon Nabatov: Brooklyn Mischiefs
by Neri Pollastri
Registrato all'iBeam di Brooklyn il 6 luglio del 2014 e riemerso dagli archivi nel corso della pandemia, questo album documenta una fortunata serata di improvvisazione tra il pianista di origini moscovite Simon Nabatov e il sassofonista contralto israeliano Michaël Attias, un “primo incontro" tra due artisti usi a muoversi su territori accidentati e inesplorati. I cinquantatrè minuti di musica sono suddivisi in cinque tracce, tutte improvvisate a eccezione della terza, che include un'escursione in “The Spinning Song" di ...
read moreShawn Lovato: Microcosms
by Troy Dostert
Bassist Shawn Lovato's debut album, Cycles of Animation (Skirl, 2017), possessed a conceptual sophistication that went far beyond an imaginative slice of creative jazz. The same is evident on Microcosms, an album that involves giving his terrific ensemble the chance to develop minute gestures into larger, more determinate shapes. The constant ebb and flow that results is compelling, with a sense of order that periodically takes hold amidst the individual members' freedom to find their own pathways to a common ...
read moreSebastien Ammann's Color Wheel: Resilience
by Alberto Bazzurro
Lo svizzero Sebastien Ammann, di professione pianista e compositore, guida in questo elegante, solido album un quintetto dalle geometrie ben definite e dai percorsi espressivo-espositivi conseguenti. Magari non vi si respirerà tutta l'originalità di questa terra, ma il lavoro d'insieme (soprattutto) è ottimamente congegnato e condotto, e sul piano solistico tutto procede analogamente, col trombone di Samuel Blaser una spanna sopra gli altri (peraltro sempre all'altezza della situazione). Subito l'iniziale “Yayoi" ci introduce eloquentemente entro i meandri ...
read moreSebastien Ammann's Color Wheel: Resilience
by Jerome Wilson
Pianist Sebastien Ammann is originally from Switzerland but has been part of the New York City jazz scene since 2008, collaborating with musicians such as Kris Davis, Tony Malaby, Ohad Talmor and George Schuller. His current main focus is on his quintet, Color Wheel, whose second album is a kaleidoscope of fresh sounds and interesting musical combinations. Ammann's compositions often have spiky surfaces carved out by saxophonist Michael Attias and trombonist Samuel Blaser which are then made palpable ...
read moreSebastien Ammann's Color Wheel: Resilience
by Mike Jurkovic
Stark, abstract inquiries are fashioned, some resolved, some left hanging, in the jarring and resolute music of Swiss-pianist Sebastien Ammann's Color Wheel. With an uncanny ability to command the moment, Ammann and his equally inspired mates—Michael Attias on saxophone, bassistNoah Garabedian, trombonist Samuel Blaser and drummerNathan Ellman-Bell—take the moment and throw in a ton of turbulence and false leads and still close the deal. Quite nicely too. For the nine Ammann-imagined tracks on Resilience, Color Wheel's cart-wheeling follow-up to its ...
read moreMichaël Attias Presents "Nerve Dance" Featuring Aruán Ortiz, John Hébert & Nasheet Waits
Source:
Jason Byrne, Red Cat Publicity
Available March 10, 2017 on Clean Feed Records “Like a high-quality electronic product manufactured by the Panasonic Corporation, the career of alto saxophonist Michaël Attias has always involved being slightly ahead of his time...”—Ken Waxman, JazzWord Nerve Dance—saxophonist/composer/bandleader/conceptualist Michaël Attias’ sixth album (available on Clean Feed Records, March 10, 2017), which deals with the aesthetics of spontaneity, the theory of elasticity and the concept of equality in music, is an expansive, spirited debut from Michaël Attias’ new Quartet, featuring Aruán ...
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Michael Attias - Renku in Coimbra (Clean Feed)
Source:
Master of a Small House
New York-based saxophonist Michael Attias has a sound steeped in a somewhat unexpected amalgam of sources. He's obviously enamored of the free jazz canon and players like Jimmy Lyons and John Tchicai, but there's also a feathery, aerated inflection to his phrasing that obliquely recalls the Cool and West Coast schools of 50s jazz and specifically players like Lee Konitz and Art Pepper. This set, recorded during a three-night stand in Portugal by his quintet in the summer of 2008, ...
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Firehouse 12 to Present the Michael Attias Quintet May 1st
Source:
Improvised Communications
On Friday, May 1st, New York-based saxophonist/composer Michael Attias will make his Firehouse 12 debut as part of the venue's ongoing 2009 Spring Jazz Series. Fresh off a two-week stint performing his original live electronic score for the Yale Repertory Theater's production of Dostoevsky's “Notes From The Underground" in late March and early April, Attias will return to New Haven with his new quintet. The group expands his longtime trio, Renku, featuring bassist John Hbert and drummer/percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, to ...
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Michael Attias' Renku Entertaining Science, Amram & Co & More This Weekend at the Cornelia Street Cafe
Source:
All About Jazz
September 2, 2005 To: Listings/Critics/Features From: JAZZ PROMO SERVICES Press Contact: JIM EIGO, [email protected] Cornelia Street Cafe 29 Cornelia Street Greenwich Village, NY 10014 Tel: 212-989-9319 Fax: 212-243-4207 Web: corneliastreetcafe.com between West 4th and Bleecker Sts, Greenwich Village 1,9 Subway to Sheridan Square; A, C, E, B, D, F to West 4th St. “a culinary as well as a cultural landmark" Mayoral Proclamation, City of New York 1987 This Weekend at Cornelia Street Cafe Sept. 4 thg Sept. 5 Fri ...
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Michaël Attias' Renku Coming Aug. 30th on Playscape
Source:
All About Jazz
LONGMEADOW, MA -- On August 30th, Playscape Recordings will release Renku (PSR#080504), the debut recording from New York-based saxophonist/composer Michaël Attias' two-year old working trio of the same name, featuring bassist John Hebert and drummer Satoshi Takeishi. Named after a style of Japanese linked poetry, this trio documents an intense but intricate and diversely cultivated sound befitting both its name and the eclectic background of its leader, an Israeli-born son of Moroccan parents who was raised in Paris and the ...
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" .... one of downtown's best saxists and composers." Bruce Lee Gallanter DMG NEWSLETTER
" knottily vibrant compositions" -K. Leander Williams TIME OUT
" perpetually shifting tunes, richness of timbre, and a singular personality. You can almost see this music expanding and contracting." -Jim Macnie VILLAGE VOICE
" plays with great authority and passion." David Adler ALL ABOUT
„ ... a significant new voice on the alto saxophone." Michael McCaw ALL ABOUT JAZZ
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Music
Nighttime Creatures
From: Nighttime CreaturesBy Michael Attias
