Jazz
Balkan Samba Records · 25 September 2026
Howard Levy recorded “Heavy World” entirely on his own: twelve pieces on which he moves between piano, keyboards, diatonic harmonica, dumbek, frame drums, ocarina and assorted percussion, according to the Discogs credits, and which he also produced, recorded and mastered himself. It came out on 25 September on his own label, Balkan Samba Records, and is streaming in full on his Bandcamp; Discogs also lists a CD-R edition.
It opens with “Niccolò’s Notion”, which the album notes present as the first perpetual-motion piece written for diatonic harmonica, inspired by Paganini’s “Moto perpetuo”. Alongside the originals and improvisations come his own arrangements of public-domain tunes – “Eliyahu HaNavi / Dayenu”, “Danny Boy” and “Amazing Grace”, which he had never recorded in a studio before – plus Saint-Saëns’s “The Swan” and, to close, Bach’s “Zion Hört Die Wächter Singen”. His Bandcamp, which lists him in Chicago, has two earlier releases: “Congroovance”, two tracks (27 December 2024), and the four-track EP “The Howard Levy 4: Live from Chicago” (15 December 2023).
Text by Aina Torrents