Alexey Kruglov - Transfiguration 100. Duos (2024) Hi Res

This is truly the hundredth album that the champion of the Russian scene in terms of the number of releases, Alexey Kruglov, has released in 23 years of his work in recording. He is a saxophonist, jazzman, director, poet, actor, performer, and one of the leaders of the Russian new jazz scene, whom the British magazine Jazz Wise once called "the future of jazz". It is symbolic that, like Alexey's first album "Transfiguration" (2002), the saxophonist's hundredth release is being released by the SoLyd Records label. 23 years ago, Andrey Gavrilov, the producer of SoLyd Records, paid attention to the then very young musician, believing in his talent. As a result, Kruglov's first disc had a certain resonance and gave the young musician a lot on his further creative path.

More than two decades passed from the first to the hundredth album. During this time, Alexey published diverse works - there were classics, and total free jazz, and his own performances, and orchestral recordings, and experiments in the field of electroacoustic music, and joint projects with legendary musicians, including the pioneer of German free jazz Joachim Kühn, the famous Swiss percussionist Fritz Hauser, legends of Russian new music - Vyacheslav Ganelin, Vladimir Tarasov, Vladimir Chekasin, Arkady Shilkloper, Vladimir Volkov; and projects with Estonian musicians, shown more than once at Russian and Western festivals, in particular, programs with guitarist Jaak Sooeyar, and much, much more.

The hundredth recording, on the one hand, refers to the beginning of the path (including visually: on the album cover, which was made by Alexander Medvedev, the image from the cover of the very first album of 2002 is visible through the silhouette of Kruglov), and on the other hand, it opens up new artistic perspectives. "Transfiguration 100. Duos" is a conceptual composition consisting of miniature duets with unique musicians of different genres. The idea of ​​the program is to search for an artistic space built at the junction of genres and styles.