Magic Moments 19 - In the Spirit of Jazz

For nearly three decades, Magic Moments has been ACT’s love letter to the music it makes possible - a yearly snapshot, hand-picked by label founder Siggi Loch, of where jazz stands right now.

Volume 19 is no exception: 17 tracks that move from trio fire to orchestral grandeur, from Tehran to Tunis to Stockholm, proving that the ACT family speaks in many voices but one language.

Shalosh open with the coiled intensity of ‘Hysteria’, while Émile Parisien, Yaron Herman, Prabhu Edouard and Linda May Han Oh trade rhythmic sparks on ‘Badhra’.

Rising talents such as Jakob Manz and Emma Rawicz sit comfortably alongside icons like Dhafer Youssef, Joachim Kühn and Nils Landgren, the latter joined here by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra for a widescreen ‘Moonshadow’.

Genre lines blur further with Johanna Summer and Igor Levit’s classical-jazz dialogue on ‘Andantino de Clara’, Mammal Hands’ ‘Window to Your World’ and Mahan Mirarab and Kian Soltani’s ‘Choopan 42’.

The result is less a sampler than a guided listening session, a map of a label always chasing the unexpected.