Restless artist at the center of the most risky music coming from Egypt, Maurice Louca is a fundamental cardinal point to map a well-populated community of minds and bodies as contested as inventive. From this terrain where history collides with a future, Louca gathers material for a music where the Egyptian musical tradition, free jazz, fusionist revisitation in the light of Chicago post-rock, minimalism and harmonic notations from various latitudes are continuously meeting and escaping in a dense music but open to great spaces and ideas. After a much, much celebrated debut with Salute the Parrot in 2014 through the Nawa Recordings platform, whose work has been illuminating some of the most challenging music in the Arab world, they have had their latest albums – 2019’s ‘Elephantine’ and Saet El Hazz (The Luck Hour) already this year – released in a partnership between two labels of history and weight in music further out: Northern Spy and Sub Rosa, respectively. Two ambitious albums, but which never succumb to their magnitude, linking a complex network of musicians, from the voice of Nadah el Shazly to the freeform cello of Anthea Caddy, from the Lebanese A Trio to the oud of Natik Awayez in a communal projection where diverse music and stories are entangled in a fluid and panoramic discourse. Music that could float in Brainfeeder’s cosmos or step on Constellation’s earth – and Louca even collaborated with Sam Shalabi for this connection not to be so unusual – but that doesn’t ask for anything but itself, capable of gathering all kinds of people without great conjectures. BS

A musician in clear ascension in the passageways of improvised music, jazz, and discovery, João Almeida has been increasingly recognized and requested, with good reason. A trumpet player with schooling but a free spirit not to cling to given and flabby material, Almeida has been guiding himself through contexts and forms with security and curiosity, laminating an increasingly capable breath of his own, full of lyricism, harmony, extended techniques and light in a lively and astute discourse. From the jazz of the Fork to the fusionist onslaughts of Peachfuzz, from the trumpet and voice duo LUMP to collaborations with people like Rodrigo Amado or Fred Lonber-Holm, it is becoming difficult to think of a jazz scene – and its tangents – without invoking him. It doesn’t matter much to speculate about the future as to accompany this already rich present. BS