THE CLAUDIA QUINTET NAMED RISING STAR JAZZ GROUP by DOWNBEAT 56th ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CRITICS POLL

[From top left-clockwise: Matt Moran, John Hollenbeck, Chris Speed, Ted Reichman, and Drew Gress]
CUNEIFORM RECORDS is honored to announce that THE CLAUDIA QUINTET, a jazz ensemble led by composer/percussionist JOHN HOLLENBECK, has been named the RISING STAR JAZZ GROUP by DOWNBEAT 56th ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CRITICS POLL. In addition, John Hollenbeck is named as both the RISING STAR COMPOSER of the year and the RISING STAR ARRANGER of the year in the poll. Indeed, The Claudia Quintet and its members won a staggering number of awards and nominations in this year's Downbeat's International Critics poll. Other Claudia bandmembers nominated for awards by Downbeat include Chris Speed, nominated for RISING STAR CLARINET; DREW GRESS, nominated for RISING STAR ACOUSTIC BASS and RISING STAR ELECTRIC BASS, MATT MORAN, nominated for both VIBES and RISING STAR VIBES; TED REICHMAN (accordion), nominated for RISING STAR MISCELLANEOUS INSTRUMENT.
DownBeat's International Critics Poll is the most prestigious jazz poll in the world, and is compiled from votes submitted by many of the world's best jazz journalists.
The Claudia Quintet is signed to Cuneiform Records, an internationally acclaimed record label that releases jazz, improv, experimental rock, avant progressive, electronic/ambient, classical minimalism, 'new weird americana' and numerous other genres 'beyond', by some of the best and most adventurous musicians from around the world. Based in the Washington DC (Silver Spring, MD) area since 1984, Cuneiform was recently honored in the Washington City Paper's 2008 BEST OF DC as DC's 'BEST HYPHENATE LABEL' in recognition of its genre-busting multi-genre music.
In addition to the members of The Claudia Quintet, several other artists associated with Cuneiform received nominations in various categories in the DownBeat 56th Annual Poll. Wadada Leo Smith, whose "Tabligh" CD was just released by Cuneiform, was nominated for TRUMPET. An archival recording that Cuneiform recently released, the Steve Lacy / Roswell Rudd Quartet's "Early and Late", was nominated for HISTORICAL ALBUM (and Rudd was also nominated for TROMBONE).
http://cuneiformrecords.com

Greek Progressive Metal Band Wastefall Disband

Greek progressive act WASTEFALL has announced its decision to disband. The group's official statement on the matter reads as follows:
"The band's situation has not been really good the past few months, since Alexander [Katsiyiannis; guitar] was studying in Crete (island of Greece) far away from Athens. We did renew our contract with Intromental Management this year and after this we have had the opportunity to play at ProgPower Scandinavia in October 2008. Our drummer Kostis [Papaleksopoulos] passed his examinations and he will have to leave Greece this summer for a few years, since he will study in a musical university in England, so we found a professional session drummer to help us for this live show. Also Domenik [Papaemmanouil; vocals, guitars, keyboards] has moved to Germany since 2007 and although he was doing all he could, it was not easy for us to handle our obligations. The band was spread out and it was difficult for all of us to organize our priorities in any way required. We were also in a very difficult economic situation and it was then that Alexander decided to leaveWASTEFALL.
The beginning and vision of WASTEFALL was an idea of Alexander and Domenik and since Alexander wasn't available anymore the band's 'core' was broken. After this, nothing will be the same so we made the difficult decision and we are really sad to announce the end of WASTEFALL.
At first, we would like to say a big thanks and a lot of apologies to Hercules Loukakis for his time, honesty and will to help us out with the 'ProgPower live show' and also thank our former members, Ken Golden from our record label Sensory and Olivier Garnier from our French record label/promotion Replica, Claus Jensen and Lars Larsen from our official management, George Karamanos, Nikos Sigklidis and Vicky Michalitsi (Si-lia) for being our personal local management/advertisers, all our friends, our families for supporting us, the local and international magazines, webzines, forums, and finally our fans in all over the world and all those who did believe in WASTEFALL's dream and supported us all these years.
The band's website, forum, e-mails and web administration, such as any WASTEFALL profiles all over the internet, for at least some years will be administrated by Christos Kyrkilis in cooperation with any other WASTEFALL member neeeded."
WASTEFALL guitarist Alex Katsiyiannis has issued the following separate statement regarding his decision to leave the group:
"Due to various complicated reasons and my personal choice to follow my academic studies, I can no longer be a WASTEFALL member. I want to thank all my bandmates, fans, Claus and Lars from Intromental, Ken at Sensory and Olivier at Replica for all the great times. Concerning music, all I have to say is that I'm going to continue writing music, in a very different style though, and not with the perspective of releasing something soon. It was a great journey I will always remember. I hope that other bands will be influenced by our passion so far and mark their way in the 'rotten' music business. Dom, Chris, Nick, Kostis: Love, respect, good luck and apologies."
WASTEFALL's third album, "Self Exile", was released in 2006 via Sensory Records. The CD was mixed and mastered by Tommy Hansen (HELLOWEEN, TNT, JORN LANDE etc.) at Jailhouse Studios in Denmark.