The Ecstasy of Becoming Flying Pooka!

• 1 Primordial Puddle 09:58
• 2 Little Awakenings 07:11
• 3 Water to Land 19:49
• 4 Chasing Loss 09:08
• 5 Sweet Love and Broke Memory 05:59
• 6 Death Dances 04:35
• 7 Soul Surfaces 07:11
• Total Runtime 01:03:51

Info for The Ecstasy of Becoming

Juno-winning pianist Florian Hoefner and wind/vocal improviser Dani Oore unite in a transformative and spellbinding journey.

Sometimes the best musical collaborations are created by chance. Juno-winning pianist and composer Florian Hoefner took a leap of faith when he moved to remote St. John's in Canada's easternmost province, Newfoundland and Labrador, in 2014. While the beauty and remoteness of the place greatly inspired his artistic output, the size of its jazz scene at that time required Hoefner to mostly rely on his existing connections from his time in Berlin, New York City and Toronto for his musical projects. It was a great surprise when just before the pandemic, interdisciplinary wind and vocal improviser Dani Oore ended up in St. John's for a posting as postdoc with IICSI (the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation). The two had briefly met once before and never played music together. At a brief informal jam the synergy between their musical concepts became immediately apparent and they began performing together as a duo. Being grounded on an island during the pandemic strengthened their musical bond, and they emerged with a recording of fully improvised music on the highest imaginative plane, something that felt whole, a story from beginning to end.

The Pooka is a shapeshifting creature known in Celtic and Northern European cultures to take people on wild rides. On their new album The Ecstasy of Becoming, Oore and Hoefner surrender themselves to a Flying Pooka, inviting you to join them on its spellbinding journey. Oore flows seamlessly between horn and impassioned glossolalic vocals, often in the midst of a single phrase. His sounds issue directly from deep within the soul together with Hoefner's complex and expansive harmonies and soundscapes.

“Sublimely evocative music” (The WholeNote, Canada)

“Utterly charming… deeply moving” (Globe and Mail, Canada)

“In every situation, the music is so substantial and at times even breath-taking.” (Ottawa Citizen, Canada)

Florian Hoefner, piano
Dani Oore, vocals, saxophone

Florian Hoefner
Born and raised in Germany, trained in New York City and now based in Canada, jazz pianist and composer, Florian Hoefner, draws from a myriad of influences that culminate in his unique brand of modern jazz. Praised as a “composer-bandleader of insightful resolve” by the New York Times and a “harmonically daring pianist [...] reaching toward new sonic territory” by Downbeat, Florian Hoefner has made his mark as an inventive creator and performer of exciting contemporary Jazz.

With his quartet, the Florian Hoefner Group, he has released 3 albums on Origin Records that have received rave reviews around the globe. “Luminosity,” his latest release that features tenor saxophonist Seamus Blake, has been described as a “starkly picturesque album ... that makes profound statements from quiet moments” by Downbeat and as a “total experience” by the New York Jazz Record. It has been nominated as Jazz Recording of the Year at the East Coast Music Awards 2017. The Group also received the Stingray Rising Star Award after their performance at the Montréal Jazz Festival 2015.

As a member of the Germany-based collective, Subtone, he has released 5 critically acclaimed albums on labels including ENJA Records and performed on 4 continents including festivals such as Jazz Baltica (Germany), ACACIA Jazz Festival (Ethiopia), Jazz in Situ (Ecuador) and Tremplin Jazz d’Avignon (France) where the group was awarded the jury and audience awards. Florian’s work as a sideman has led to numerous additional CD releases including a collaboration with guitarist, Kurt Rosenwinkel on Fresh Sound Records. He has shared the stage with the likes of Joe Lovano, Seamus Blake, Rich Perry, John Riley, and New York Philharmonic clarinetist, Mark Nuccio.

A two-time winner of the ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Award, Hoefner’s compositions and arrangements can be heard on many commercial albums by artists including Till Brönner, Jasmin Tabatabai and Peter Fessler. His big band compositions have been performed by the New York Jazz Orchestra, the Lucerne Jazz Orchestra, the German Youth Jazz Orchestra and the DanJam Orchestra.

Now Florian presents his new Canadian trio with Andrew Downing on bass and Nick Fraser on drums. The group is performing a completely new repertoire of his originals and arrangements of folk songs from different parts of the world. Their debut album, “First Spring” was released on September 27th 2019 on Alma Records / Universal.

Dani Oore
is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, teacher, and scholar.

As a featured sound artist, instrumentalist, composer-arranger, actor, and dancer, working in major venues across North America, Europe, Australia, and beyond, Dani’s collaborations have garnered accolades from leading institutions, critics, and artists (JUNOs, Canada Council for the Arts, JazzTimes, The Globe and Mail): “devastating,” “radioactive,” “astonishing,” “extraordinary creativity,” “stunning … masterful,” “daring,” “so dangerously and uninhibitedly exposed,” “is there no end to this young man’s brilliance?”

Their scholarship is published in leading and high-impact music-media and science-technology venues (e.g. Journal for the Society of American Music, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, NeurIPS Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems, Proceedings of Machine Learning Research), and reviewed as "a tour de force ... with magisterial sweep."

Daniel's teaching includes visiting artist-scholar invitations and faculty appointments at institutions across North America and Europe, in sound, performance, media, culture, improvisation, saxophone, composition, and music education, and she continues to lead and co/facilitate diverse and at-risk community-building arts projects.

Booklet for The Ecstasy of Becoming