Kaja Draksler Octet - Out for Stars (2020)

With the previous “Gledalec”, Slovenian pianist and composer Kaja Draksler found a gem to work on, and here is the continuation of that labour, now having the poetry of Robert Frost as both inspiration and feedstock, in the voices of Laura Polence and Björk Níelsdóttir. The ambiances of the music are pastoral, respecting the poems taken from “West Running Brook”, “A Witness Tree” and “In the Clearing”. You can almost hear the woods and the streams described by the late author in his attempt to depict the complexity of the human condition and its relation to nature. Living in Amsterdam, and playing with a group of musicians of different nationalities also settled in Holland (Ada Rave, Ab Baars, George Dumitriu, Lennart Heyndels and Onno Govaert are the instrumental participants in her octet), Draksler adopts in “Out for Stars” many of this jazz scene’s procedures, namely the contributions of all the musicians involved and the interiorization of diverse musical genres and styles, including some of the past. But attention: what we have here isn’t more of the same, but the answer to new challenges. You can’t miss it.