We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact

– Jean-Paul Sartre

SEVEN STEPS TO HEAVEN SIGNATURE CHOICE - DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS

• 1/ The Killing Popes A-Trane, Berlin 10 August

• 2/ Avishai Cohen trio Fasching, Stockholm 13 Aug

• 3/ Johannes Enders quartet A-Trane, Berlin from 16 Aug

• 4/ Jeanfrançois Prins Music Village, Brussels 2 September

• 5/ Linda Fredriksson trio Fasching, Stockholm 8 Sept

Juniper last year possesed a lot of staying power and proved a much more rapid grower than the tree-like junipers in Finland that can reach 15 metres and live for hundreds of years. The preternaturally still elegy 'Neon Light (and the sky was trans)' and even better 'Nana – Tepalle' a beguiling melody introduced by a deep riff that bears, you can't help much as you might fight it, an uncanny but distant resemblance to the heart of the main Ron Grainer theme for 1970s/80s TV series Tales of the Unexpected, the sax part of which was played by Duncan Lamont. (The effect is fragmentarily and tangentially subliminal that begins like oh the third note in of the motif in a different register and wildly different context coloured in the Fredriksson by the ground bass line ostinato. Even more contrasts are available. Both pieces have wonderful individuality and each are hermetically sealed in their own visions. Sheesh.) Fredriksson, first and the only time so far heard by this blog in the punk-jazz band Mopo at the Irish Time Jazz Connective festival in Dublin, taps spiritual jazz and a compositional sound that harnesses space and shades of electronica so intuitively in a deep song that has a stirring vibrational sense to it all through.

• 6/ Moon Hooch New Morning, Paris 22 Sept

• 7/ Robson/Levy Quartet Dolans, Limerick 22 Sept

In the seven to the fore: Linda Fredriksson, top