In: Jazzpodium, by Reiner Kobe. Translated by Aparajita Koch

In this formation, Jeanneau plays only, exclusively, his soprano instrument. Even before Coltrane and Lacy, in his younger days, Jeanneau listened to Sidney Bechet – and so his playing is informed most of all by a clear, elegant performance of melodic lines, despite all his ‘new jazz’ experience. Uli Lenz, often a ‘power player’, full of the frank admiration for McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones, is a virtuoso partner with equal rights, underlining with sensitive rhythmic and harmonic accompaniment.

In the ‘A-Trane’ in Berlin, ‘Deutschland Radio’ came and listened to a performance a bit over two years ago. It has recorded a captivating recital, the tension mounting without slackening throughout its entirety, while the subtlety of the dialogue – as is impressively to be heard on this CD - leaves the audience speechless. This is truly the ‘Art of the Duo’.

 
The original recension in German can be found under www.rondomagazin.de.
Translated by Aparajita Koch

Live a Borrello (CH) - Italy Geoff Warren - flute Raffaele Pallozzi- piano Marco Di Marzio - bass Fabio Colella - drums

The guitarist Geoff Goodman and Bernd Hess, the virtuoso on the tabla, Tobias Ott and the Albanian singer Fjoralba Turku make up a quartet which melds western and eastern tones to create one homogenous sound. The skilful rhythms of Indian tradition, the soaring sounds of shimmying/flurrying strings, the crystal clear delicate voice and the dark mystique of languorous harmonies converge into an unusually deep and radiant object of sound art. Melodies structured and composed through out are a strong contrast to the audibly free improvisation, flowing ragas alternate with groove oriented pieces, as also jazz or songs inspired by folklore both in the Albanian and in the English language. Floating suspended above all these: the improvisation of that old master on the saxophone Charlie Mariano – spontaneous and yet as if chiselled out of stone!

This second Tabla & Strings album is also in the spirit of ‚Blue in Green’. The band leader Geoff Goodman’s creation with sound colours is striking. He counts as one of the greatest on the scene in this context. For him tradition means passing on the burning torch, not the consecration of ashes. Accordingly, he seeks in certain niches with an assurance greater than others, for the intense value of each sound colour.

On the second album of the group after Islands Everywhere he adds a horn and voice added, thus letting Tabla & Strings appear in a totally different light. He thus discovered the young singer from Albania who grew up in Germany: Fjoralba Turku – a revelation, without a doubt!
The quality of the album Song of Naturee is not only about ‘World Music’ at its best – you will look in vain for the joins and seams – but more than this: the listener will be surprised by an ecstasy of shimmering sound - oscillating between blue and green, travelling from melancholy to hope, between heaven and earth, from orient to occident, into a turquoise blue yonder – with no insurance schemes.

“I’m only the bass player”, Ed Schuller likes to emphasize repeatedly. But with the album “Serendipity” and the formation of the Reunion Trio, he has been able to cast his line and catch that renowned Moment of Revelation: Click! Everything falls into place. This album may well be considered a classic one day.

These recordings, done “live” in the A-Trane in Berlin are like an axe plunged into a frozen sea – marking a trend against the spirit of the times. You could say it’s a perfect manifesto against the mechanising of music.

Nothing appears to be co-incidental for these musicians have known each other forever – and yet floodgates and doors remain open to spontaneous improvisation. The musicological experience of three virtuosos on their respective instruments is not merely summed up here, it is the modelling of this that is refined; so that they flourish two-fold – complex and multidimensional at once – without losing on direct impact. Joe Lovano’s classical, almost apollonian tenor saxophone is sometimes passionately contrasted an sometimes ideally complemented by the four strings on Ed Schuller’s bass. The percussive centre of gravity in the band is Paul Motian in his inimitable way – a dynamic source, a fund of frugality. The result is a precise musical plumb-line that plunges straight to the depths of human existence by means of the exactitude and sovereignty of narrative style. Everything is subordinated to the clarity and substance of the message. Totally jazz!

Apart from which: Paul Motian has resolved not to go on tour again … so here’s a chance to hear ‘Mr. Cymbals’ again in best form in your own living room – ‘LIVE’ !!!

01-2009

Yet another anthology put together by the producer, I hear the critics say. But I can reassure you – this isn’t a contribution made according to the motto: from a flood of CDs to ebbing creativity is not a long way. Grant yourself the time – pour yourself a glass of red wine and make yourself comfortable; because you should allow this album to work on you, so that you can become aware of the abundance of intermediate tones.

You find out pretty soon, that the German pianist Uli Lenz and the French saxophonist sought … and found each other; they chose one of the most difficult disciplines of the genre, the ‘art of duo performance’. If you think about a soprano sax and piano duo, you cannot, of course, by-pass the greatest such duo in jazz history – the Steve Lacy-Mal Waldron-Duo. But for these two musicians, it’s not about conserving that tradition, it’s about bearing the torch onwards in an on-going dialogue with each other.

We can admire the sensitive, supple soprano playing of the Frenchman, performed with a nonchalance born out of the rich harvest of a musician’s career of over five decades in the jazz metropolis of Paris on the one hand; and on the other, the powerful striking of the keys of this German virtuoso on piano – sometimes like a builder, his thundering blues-saturated chords gauging, furrowing through the building site; sometimes like a sculptor, full of dedication to the delicate, ornate melodic details. The astonishing thing is, they’re more than just unity – they permeate each other with their different musical personalities and experience. They take us on a journey through music landscapes that they light up with their sovereignty and precision.

Through Uli Lenz’s woven carpet of sound, the lines of the soprano saxophone wind, with the habitual tristesse of this French neighbour; sometimes with the lightness of the evening breeze that softly caresses the white clouds on the horizon or blows them onwards or sometimes pleasantly cool, but also stringent and fierce, cleaving through the landscape – the dialogue oscillates without a break between structured form and free form, between composition and communication, hard to tell apart- the transitions seem fluid.

The improvisation is in the finest tradition of the Art of the Duo, freedom of form is in both of each others interest. Like someone going for a musical walk; you have the inclination to let yourself go, walking on solid ground, sometimes barefoot, sometimes in robust shoes, but always just drifting. It’s like Walking in the Wind.

Purely eclectic! Something that has always made jazz what it is. That’s how the Geoff Goodman Quintet presents itself on their second album ‘Tall Tales & Dreams’. The musical language of the band leader is universal – a kind of musical Esperanto – in the best sense of the term. Stylistic categories or walking their planks aren’t Geoff Goodman’s thing, it’s the intersections of the history of jazz that he finds more exciting. And those who decide to trust the scout will not need to regret it. Sometimes you’re beside him in a Ferrari, sometimes in a vintage car – no vehicle, nor carriage seems alien to him.

Goodman understands how to sift archetypes generic to jazz through his own inner sensibility, to transform yet not diminish these, to distil them into his own individual form of expression. He has something to say and doesn’t make a secret of it, he spans worlds lightly, from the fairytale to nightmare. Nor is it merely about personal benefits that enable him to burgeon on his guitar, that would be far too negligible for him – no, it’s about the entire band, conceived of as multi-instrumental means of expression: his instrument. This is what makes for Geoff’s greatness, raising him above the ordinary, this brings him a little closer to the great band leaders of jazz.

The transmission bands between his creative mind and his fellow musicians are his brilliant compositions and complex arrangements, that not only intelligently highlight the strengths of his colleagues, but also marvellously revive that primal collective improvisation of nascent jazz: sparks fly with communicative whim and wit! Rudi Mahall – that virtuoso on the bass clarinet – brightly lights up the quintet with his solos. The other soloists follow suit, not willing to settle for less and surpass themselves. Yet the moving principle of reduction to essentials prevails, as against overflowing solos and worn out ‘chops’ rummaged out of the old jazz school chest-of-drawers.

Not unexpectedly, a lot of this music originates from Ornette, Monk or Mingus, but Goodman only lets them peep round a corner in the style of an old fox. All the historical traces on the trail are regenerated in his own ideas and then ground through a creative mill. What comes out is for instance the somewhat burlesque piece Fifth Chromosome: Everything seems to be rolling along the tracks of the old Ornette when suddenly, recited lyrics make the horizon expand unexpectedly; part tongue-in-cheek, part serious - or mock-heroic - the epic rhetoric of Homeric verse is recycled to describe that curious Trans-Atlantic scattering of seed, the phenomenon of Diaspora. Or even that old swing time hit Stompin’ at the Savoy, which he paradoxically seems to have taken the swing dimension out of, in that he simply does without a rhythm section. The front line comprising the guitar and the two horns create a firework of sound, letting a sort of butterfly burst out in splendid colours, sometimes resting briefly on an exotic patina, sometimes intently soaring up into un-guessed shimmering heights.

‘Geoff’s World’, his musicological language could be broken down into musical hieroglyphs running through almost all the eleven titles on the album. Or better still, should one begin to discover ones own creative resources, to trust ones own creative impulses, then this music becomes an ideal projection screen, like an idiosyncratic trail scouting of ones own. That this is also about being driven out of a musical paradise is somewhat uncomfortable at first glance, yet one neither loses on road grip, nor the challenge.

Let’s not forget, the Geoff Goodman Quintet has become something fascinating over the last few years. The band’s potential comprises far more than its individuals, its musicians, whose names in any case read like a Who’s Who of the central European jazz scene. A complex balance between form and improvisation, control and spontaneous impulse has come about. More and more a scarcity on the current scene, this is in the meantime also an unmistakeable element of this quintet’s sound. This is not just meant as a compliment to the band leader and composer - the material is worth more.

Whenever Mal Waldron got on stage with first class musicians, the same thing happened almost always: he progressed to assume absolute spiritual authority, whether or not he was the band leader.

Mal Waldron was one of the chosen few of the late Bebop generation, who got their final polish from the musical chalybeate bath in the Prestige kitchen of the late fifties and thereby acquired the ability to carry the spirit of modern jazz through the second half of the twentieth century. Let the names of John Coltrane, Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy be named as examples, travelling companions of those days, who lined his artistic pathways. He got a lot about jazz vocalisation and phrasing from Billie Holiday, which decisively influenced the development of his sound. Not only as a pianist, but also his efficacy as bandleader was affected by this. What came out of it was the magic that surrounded him on stage, that has been acknowledged in the liner notes to the present album From Dark Into the Light as the ‘Three Facts to Centre Stage’. Ed Schuller once said at the time “… Going on stage with Mal – and also altogether, being on tour with him - is like going on a voyage; and you never know where you’re going to or where you’ll arrive. He’s the scout and we can all trust him blindly. He makes things come out of me that I’d never imagined or thought possible. Yet he hardly ever gives you any instructions – it just kind of happens on stage!” Mal considered jazz a mirror of life, of his life – and this perception was the basis of his musical playbill: an improvised time journey to the centre of the human soul. Ed Schuller – who worked for over ten years with Mal Waldron, has tried to express this feeling in his composition Mal-Factor. He was also the bass player in this last illustrious quartet under the leadership of Mal Waldron, following in the wake of the legendary Mal-Waldron-Jim Pepper line-up. Not only does Ed Schuller come out of the ‘Dark into the Light’; but also the great Nicolas Simion, with that unmistakeable influence of his Transylvanian horn sound on the tenor saxophone; as also that well-versed, incredibly versatile star on drums Victor Jones; they all succumb to the magic of these moments, thus emerging to acquire great and brilliant radiance.

Lenz is a born rambler between worlds. Whoever listens can join him on his “Slow Boat to Mars” and set off on a journey bearing a banner with the words “Goodbye Venus”, which is quite apparently meant to be not a little ironic. What you can experience on these wanderings -  in transit and in transition – is described impressively by none less than Uli’s bassist Ed Schuller himself : “I have known Uli Lenz for over a decade.  We have played many concerts together both duo and with various trios throughout the world …  the man has been to more places on this globe than almost anyone I know … like all ‘real’ jazz musicians Uli has his own unique style rhythmically, harmonically and melodically - check out his left hand.  His compositions also bear an original stamp, often bluesy, sometimes playful but always with a strong direction.  Uli’s music is as real as his personality.  His knowledge of music both technically and artistically comes from a deep place forged by much experience!”

Ed Schuller has worked with many fine drummers in the last three decades, but for him John Betsch is the real thing.  “His feel can be both relaxed and intense, strong and at the same time sensitive.  He understands dynamics vis-à-vis tension and release.  Of course, the most important thing is that he swings but with his own original funky edge …!” 

With this excellent rhythm section, the Uli Lenz Trio effortlessly spans an unusual and widespread dynamic space, so that a hammered out fortissimo in bass keys can vanish  within hardly perceptible moments into gently soaring heights. The ballad interpretations on this album appear to let time stand still and the beat of the music pacing forward can often hardly be felt. This is a truly masterful debut album by this trio.

The most striking thing about the present album of this duo is the skilled confluence of modernity and tradition. They play with sounds, creating, discovering, inventing them as they go along, in the true spirit of improvised contemporary urban jazz. And at the same time, they take generously from the lore of folk music and rural life. There’s a predominance of dance titles, which reflect the musicians’ fascination for rhythm: in the Moldavian Tatoo in B flat or Scholocho, an Armenian waltz or the more complex Bulgarian folk dance Zagora Tangle.

Geoff Warren’s flute playing on Zagora Tangle in 13/8 evidences most demanding breathing technique, as also on Stambul Express, on which an endlessly held single note is like the long whistle of a train speeding out into open spaces. The ten-finger guitarist from the Ukraine takes your breath away once again with his protean transformations, moving with ease and grace from the droning, supporting sounds of a tanpura, to another and yet another role… it’s a tabla! No, it’s a sitar! No, a sarod…! No, it is not a rôle but only the never yet invented guitar of the one and only Enver Izamilov.

“But like I said,” Geoff told us, “ this is like the second generation of the Enver thing – because the first generation was…Here’s this guy from…you know? …And I’ve gotta learn his tunes…we go out and play. Okay, it’s fine. But – where do we go from there? So this is like taking it into the studio. It’s like going from rock to progressive rock and into these ‘concept numbers’ like this one. Enver just said “I’ve got this Chinese tune, what d’you want to do with it?” And all this stuff came out…”

Indeed, this wandering between past and present is most evident in the piece Colours of Satsumas. The C major pentatonic scale evokes melodies and airs of gracious Chinese opera. And then suddenly, the music’s up tempo – a casual and complete change to jazz idiom, without abandoning the five-note line. We’ve left the Emperor’s pavilions for the skyscrapers of Hong-Kong. Soksu is another example of urban slick, contemporary and slapstick, both intelligent and virtuoso. Warren’s laid back English humour sets up the right smooth backdrop for the boisterous wit of this ‘goulash rap’. Enver blends a traditional style of syncopated ad lib bass vocalization from the Mongol steppes of Central Asia with an improvised anti-sense text. Here this duo achieves that very rare repartee associated with brilliant comedians like the Marx Brothers.

The surfaces of friction that thereby come about make you sit up and listen…they’re the spice in the soup; you can’t miss the unmistakeable clusters and guitar riffs of the band leader – not only are these the emulsion, but also signposts in the dramatic narrative of these musical sketches about the improbability of human existence. Whoever’s looking for pure entertainment will quickly find out that he’s in the wrong film. Unlike them, those who appreciate irony will find it truly worth while and will follow this musical incident with increasing pleasure.

Six compositions - six hot colts, six sixshooters! Nicolas Simion’s first live session for Tutu Records was recorded in Vienna - an exciting melange: Ornette Coleman reflected in Balkan rhythms, Bartok and Arnold Schonberg.

In the meantime, Simion belongs to the upper echelons of musicians and calls the tune like an old master on his horns - the tenor and soprano saxophone as also the bass clarinett - and chooses his sidemen accordingly: the rhythm section comprising Ed Schuller on bass and Victor Jones on drums is of the finest, that the ‚New World’ can send across to ‘Old Europe’. They come across the Atlantic from the jazz metropolis of New York, laden with the Afro-American jazz tradition; not only do they cling to this, but they also absorb the oriental, walk over bridges that the band leader builds in an almost miraculous fashion - with no breaks, full of passion, meticulous, as if they had never meant to do anything else.

Nicolas Simion’s compositions and arrangements bear his own unmistakeable signature, make the listener expectant, curious about the improvisations of the soloists - how will the thematic melodies be worked through, made rhythmically compact and then dissolved again? This quartet succeeds consistently in performing long arcs, keeping solo passages thrilling - bows that are often stretched beyond capacity on live recording sessions - - individually as well as collectively interlocked. Also the man on the black and white keys, Mircea Tiberian, Nicolas’ comrade-in-arms and compatriot from the days behind the iron curtain, Mircea Tiberian, a musician graced by fortune, gives evidence as all the others in the band - post modern jazz doesn’t necessarily have to be an escape into an innocuous mainstream cud-chewing.

Nicolas Simion stands for scintillating jazz, which doesn’t necessarily have to come out of New York or Chicago, but can also flourish in the not so traversible Carpathian mountains.

For as long as I’ve known Marty Cook - which goes back to the middle of the eighties - he has been an ardent admirer of Ornette Coleman, a musician who seldom worked with a keyboard instrument. You may ask, what’s better than the sound of a good piano? Nothing - it is true. But a piano also nails down the sound of the ensemble, pins it to the wall - and not just the sound!

The idea of substituting a piano with a guitar is not new, yet there are advantages for the sort of progressive music Cook wishes to play. Coleman chose guitarists when he formed his band Prime Time, and it made sense within his musical conception. Modern guitar playing unites the colors and structures of chords with the open-ended freedom of running melodic lines, thus doing away with the restrictive elements of blocks of chords.

This use of the guitar instead of piano works in the same way for Cook. In my production ‘Phases of the Moon’, which was recorded back in 1993, Marty worked with guitarist Bill Bickford. The results must have encouraged Cook to want to work more in this format, only this time with only one horn, his trombone, and two guitars. Surprisingly enough, he found two high-caliber guitarists in Munich, Geoff Goodman and Gunnar Geisse, but what is even more amazing about both of them, is how such different styles and musical characters work together in such a creative way.

The one, Geoff Goodman, is an American with eclectic roots ranging from Country & Blues, jazz, pop, and Mid-Eastern music that flows from the soft and melodic to the harsh sounds of avant-heavy metal. Commenting on guitarists in general, sound engineer Mike Müller once appropriately called Goodman the ‘Last of the Space Cowboys’. The other, Gunnar Geisse has more European roots - he can be brittle and shrill, his approach more unconventional, more “off the wall”, emphasizing ‘moments of Monk’ in his own way. Each represents a different aspect of Cook’s imaginary musical world. They are, so to speak, two alter egos for one person, and both worlds are interlocked in some incredible fashion. As soloist on the trombone, the band-leader has more free space for improvisation than he ever had before.

At first, Marty worked with these two guitars purely as a trio, and in my judgement, it was the first time that Marty Cook had the chance to pull out his music - like a conjuror from a magic hat - in all its perfected form and content. The first time I heard this line-up was back in 1995 at the Jazzclub Unterfahrt and because as a producer I’m always looking for - or better said - listening for different, unusual sounds, I was immediately fascinated by this line-up’s concept. Likewise, on this album, there is a new inner geometry in Cook’s music that I’ve never heard before. The cross-references up and down the line of jazz tradition play a bigger role in here than in his former recordings. This becomes evident as he turns to urban Blues forms à la Monk, along with the freer forms of Jazz, in which elements of avant-garde classical music can so easily be integrated. However, in doing this, it is less about the harmonic structures here - they retreat into the background - than about shaping forms out of which unbounded possibilities for improvisation spontaneously occur - apparently of their own accord. For various reasons it took a long time to produce this group, but finally the dart - my fourth album with Cookin’ jazz - hit the target. Bulls-eye!

For the recording session, the phenomenal bassist Edwin Schuller was fetched from New York. Schuller has been on all of Cook’s albums since 1987. Peter Perfido is one of Marty’s favorite drummers in Europe. He is an outstanding player with enormous stylistic versatility. Both Peter Perfido and Ed Schuller have worked together with Romanian tenor saxophonist Nicolas Simion (check out ‘Viaggio Imaginario’). With this outstanding rhythm team propelling them on their way, Cook and his two guitars could travel any path they wished.

In the jazz tradition, Marty Cook constructs a musical foundation through an eclectic process which not only sums up his own experiences as a musician with roots in the turbulently creative New York jazz scene of the sixties, but discovers ever new and astonishing territories. These discoveries test the creative potential of all of his sidemen, and they stand up to that test.

The name Fractal Gumbo may be seen as a metaphor for a musical dish to set before a king. The ingredients may at first seem impossible to combine tastefully, so it is all the more surprising that they work together so well; they create thrilling, spicy moments you’d have hardly considered possible. A fine potpourri of allusions is all part of the program. The music of Fractal Gumbo is not like Ornette’s or Monk’s, or like anybody else’s music… in a wonderful way, it expresses the original voice of the one and only – Marty Cook!

Peter Wiessmueller
Vouno, September 2001

No beer, no Schuhplattler! But Tabla and Strings? Munich as the site of a multicultural event of some significance - who would have thought it? It’s simply about the point of intersection from New York to Calcutta, Freiburg and Freilassing. It is at this focal point that the music for their debut album Islands Everywhere came into being. Should the term ‘post modern’ ever have meant anything, then it is this successful mélange of modern grooves from jazz, fusion or Indian elements with their rhythmic cunning. The guitarist from New York, Geoff Goodman not only breathes new tones into the rare and unusual mandolin, but is also the initiator and composer at the same time, whilst Shankar Lal serves as an all pervasive medium - indeed, Calcutta, the charm and the thrill of it in equal measure. The stylistically manifold hydra-headed creature on the electric guitar, Bernd Hess, and Tobias Ott on the infrequently drummed Ghatam prove indefatigable in brillantly expressing strong form.The music of Tabla & Strings reconcile opposites and integrate not only diverse musical cultures, but also folklore elements with mytical sounds of the spheres, contrasting acoustic and electronic strings, whilst stringent compositional structures rub against collective improvisation. This is all - astonishingly - welded together without the usual loss of substance or authenticity, as the magazine Jazzpodium reported on Tabla & Strings. A song of great praise, that the band is able continually to live upto - on the highest instrumental levels.

The bass player Ed Schuller and the saxophonist Mack Goldsbury are sitiing on the platform at Savignyplatz, Berlin, and waiting for the last underground. Where to? Who knows! Musicians of their calibre get no rest, they’re always on the road. They feel at home wherever they might be caught up in the joyful spirit of playing. They’ve just got back from the A-Trane, one of their favourite living rooms. The two of them have recently given an extraordinary performance there.Those who have so much of the necessary equipment such as these two, who also know each other for so long, dare to choose the highest form of communication that jazz knows: the dialogue!Apart from which they span their bows from Brooklyn, New York - their musical cradles - where they once earned their spurs - into the Berlin of present times, into an artistic future which includes expressive moments of globalization. The cry of the Muezzin is only a stone’s throw away. They prefer to work with a variety of stylistic means and their consistent transformation into their own individual forms of expressive possibilities and ways of playing; because their goals do not end with that worldwide monoform, neoclassicism, the mainstream jazz of the traditionalists.However the two who stand on stage are not only striving for expression, but in their tête à tête, they grapple with each other, attempt to move each other. Their sovereignty over their craft goes without saying: the bass lays down its lines with rhythmic-melodic refinement, but also emphasizing the earthy; the horn - sometimes urged forward, then again completely selfsufficient - goes on a journey driven by its power to give shape, on the untiring search for new, flowing forms. In this way a lot of space is created, made pregnant with their surprising ideas, a thousand and one stories are turned into poetry.The Art of this Duo does not only turn itself on, but also the intuitive listener gets his money’s worth, starts off on one of his dream trips: new doors open, through which he can confidently step. For no doubt a process such as this requires wilfulness and the courage to take risks, for both the player and the listener.

Please find below details of my new release which will come out in Europe in March. It is a very prestigious, significant album - a double CD with about 120 minutes of music. Also it is a 6-page digipack with very nice cover art inside and outside and a 24-page booklet as well.

The music is a cross over thing between jazz, Native American Music and classical arrangements by Gunther Schuller - a special event which has never happened before and most of all, it is a rendition of the music of that incredible, incorrigible, lovable, unforgettable anarchist, passionate saxophonist and composer, poet of his people, that Kaw-Creek-American, Jim Pepper, The Flying Eagle, Hunga-Chee-A-Dah.

The recording was made in Cologne with the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Orchestra and the Remembrance Band, comprised mainly of musicians Pepper had worked together with personally through many years, under the baton of Gunther Schuller. Native American dancers and singer-percussionists performed also at this event, lending deeper authenticity to this document. This music rises above all expectations, reaching beyond Gunther Schuller’s famous project of the fifties: Third Stream Music. These arrangements construct an astonishing arc, encompassing cohesively Native American chants and rhythms and the structures and tonalities of jazz and modern European classical music. Jim Pepper himself is heard on two titles a ‘Pepper Poem’ and ‘Legacy of the Flying Eagle’ on soprano & vocals!

One could describe the violinist from Munich, Hannes Beckmann, as a musical counterpart of Emil Nolde. Just as that expressionist painter acquired a more gorgeous and brighter style of colouring, so also Beckmann: “Through his openness towards new influences, particularly Brazilian and Afro-Cuban, but also South East European and classical music, he decidedly enriched the post-Hot Club and Stephane Grappelli style to find a language of his own, in which the rhythmic intensity of the American school and the finely chiselled elegance of the gipsy tradition or the long rhapsodic breath of a Ray Nance are equally present…” - so says the RoRoRo Jazz Lexicon.

Tales told and retold, Violin Tales: Beckmann relates his stories with sensitivity and intuition: his arrangements are stringent. The violin especially has always signified the bright scarlet of feeling, so that the danger of sentimentality lurks at every twist. Beckmann, on the lookout for emotional depth, is immune to this danger, with his masterful understanding of how to make use of shrewd provocation and bizarre alienation effects.

When somebody turns herself inside out it’s quite disturbing for a lot of conformists. Unfortunately this has led to a not inconsiderable process of conforming on the music scene today. Committed to ones own seriousness, it’s possible to resist this process only with some difficulty.

The expression in Nomakosazana’s voice comes from deep in her soul. Concealing many facets of popular singing, it still has the emotional power of all the waters that have flown under the bridge, which is to be expected from the life history of a person whose skin is both ‘black’ and ‘white’. Anger, aggression and protest come naturally to her, but so also do tenderness, love, vulnerability and despair.her voice is palpable, a tangible presence right through all fourteen songs. Always committed to authenticity, this is about Nomakosazana’s very personal, many facetted brand of Blues.

She resists the temptations of populism and leaves no room for profane clichés. One feels almost overwhelmed by this concentrated force and comprehensiveness; especially in a musical world which prefers to rely upon digital fiddling and flourishes in the background, artificially portentous, rather than on the vitality and the dynamism of expressive power.

Is ‘Tenderness’ for instance a Blues piece, or Jazz or World Music? The question of style recedes into the background, it’s only important to critics intent on analysis, armed with a scalpel.
Nomakosazana’s authenticity infects, carries away with it – and a duo set up is the ideal prerequisite for this exchange. – the man on the black-and-white keys…He moves out of the shadows of his great musician idols and simply plays like himself: Uli Lenz follows the contours of each song with singlemindedness, unveiling its rhythmic and melodic structure with a very personal dynamism rarely heard in his other work. In this context, Uli Lenz rises above himself to become a kind of Grand Master of Ceremonies.

Benny Waters? No! Muddy Waters? Not at all! MONTY WATERS is the guy nowadays!

Monty Waters’ third album for Tutu Records is about his predisposition as a jazz musician for Rhythm ‘n’ Blues! “As a youngster, I got my kicks out of Route 66″, says Monty. The heroes and rôle models of his teens were Nat ‘King’ Cole or Louis Jordan. But don’t worry - as far as the new traditionalists are concerned, it’s not about remakes or the revoking of old hat, but rather that Monty plays the street music of the forties with the conscious awareness of the development of jazz during the sixties and the seventies - a child of these times. Only the verses - his poems - have remained the same timeless stories about love, our daily bread and dreams, the brittle directness of which are reminiscent of that black H.Miller, James Baldwin - sensuous and bitter sweet.

The pleasure, the carefree - and also the matter-of-course way - in which Monty Waters melts together the diverse elements of black American music into an idiosyncratic mixture is really phenomenal and deserves the keenest attention. And a most essential thing - something that often gets neglected, in the jazz of our times: entertainment stands side by side with and is as important as artistic standards. The famous drummer Billy Higgins said of Monty Waters: “In his authentic phrases, Monty is able to create those brief moments in which it seems … Jazz could inherit the earth!”

His two mates and players in the rhythm section have understood exactly what he wants; that’s why he likes to classify them as “the love generation” - i.e. his own generation; Paulo Cardoso from the Land of Love, Brazil, might have come from Houston, Texas, with his powerful sound - without his Brazilian ardour taking second place. Tom Nicholas from the city of “brotherly love” - Philadelphia - makes the African congas swing - as none other can!

It’s now over seven years ago that the jazz world lost one of its most original voices: Jim Pepper, the saxophonist with an unmistakeably own individual sound, with original compositions and an ardent voice. Tutu Records has the good fortune to possess a few live recordings. Here’s a selection from them! The Flying Eagle made a stop-over at the New Morning in Paris to create a scintillating live ambience…Not just a casual jam based on stale jazz standards with never-ending solos, as so often is the case, but an improvising ‘working band’, with a comcept that just keeps the sparks flying!

Too often, Jim Pepper’s music was patronisingly entitled Red Indian jazz. With the present album, it becomes abundantly clear once again, that this is very short of the truth. Not just the other personalities who’re involved are a guarantee for the consistently high artistic standard of the improvisation: Mal Waldron with a typically  light hand on the piano, as also the utterly appropriate rhythm section with Ed Schuller on bass and John Betsch on the drums, “swinging’ as swing can”; and of course, first and foremost, Jim Pepper himself, that great  tylist and improvisor!

In the “Pep” classic, Three-Quarter Gemini, all the particpants leave you their visiting cards. And in addition to this, two ballads: In Paris, Pepper seemed to find himself repeatedly Somewhere Over The Rainbow; and then there’s the original Mal Waldron ballad, Soul Mates, in this live quartet set-up, the studio version of which the composer once spontaneously dedicated to his duo partner, Jim Pepper. A very special surprise is Ski-Jumpin’ Blues, with verses about Jim Pepper’s highly personal grappling with the border zones of living, his crazy life! And of course, what can’t be left out, as a starter, that vergreen, Witchi Tia To, trimmed with a medley that picks up the most popular Pepper tunes, robust and poetic at once; a catchy tune - but also a litany - to that “eternally flowing water” - which you can’t ever get enough of.

The creativity of the artist is conditioned by the directions and indirections of his soul. Nicolas Simion’s fifth album with Tutu Records is based on the description of such paths through the landscapes of the soul. Whoever lets himself in for the mythical world of this Odyssey with open ears, will feel musical archetypes and personal, individual experience flow together and light up as in a mirror. The famous, not to say notorious films within oneself begin to reel off, from brightly coloured to pastel shades, full of dramatic beauty, yet never neglecting the bizarre.

Simion’s themes and improvisation in Balkan colouring, are however also mythical shapes, sculpting themselves into symbols, appealing to something characteristic and primeval within us, reaching deep into the unconscious layers of our existence, emerging slowly at various points, to penetrate the consciousness; not infrequently, this last occurs in the aftermath, in retrospect, after having listened … a very special sign of quality. Never forgetting that this is about pure jazz, about the melting together of diverse elements and their improvisational recurrence. This runs through the entire album like a leitmotif. Myths of the past reach out into the future.

In the process, Nicolas Simion takes recourse to the collective unconscious in a masterly fashion,spawning musical creations in the primordial waters of the human predicament. Those who assist him here have been his travelliung companions for quite a while now: Tomasz Stanko and Ed Schuller. Along with the creator of this album, both have a congenial knowledge of how to steer out of these archaic waters, towards a more discriminating musical perception - a quickening process; sudden meetings and experiences, though mostly old and familiar, are found here none-the-less in new robes, appearing in a completely different light….

Music as a vehicle for lyric, particularly the brittle, brisk burlesque, the socially critical philosophy of a Bertolt Brecht has to be found and felt intuitively. The Bertolt Brecht & Kurt Weill interpretations of the past, those would-be Pavarottois, the vain attempts to tread water between opera and operette, even the smooth big band sound with girly choruses and violins in the background appropriate to Gershwin or Cole Porter - were all more or less noble attempts. Brecht once turned down an actor because „…he sings too well!”

BRASS ATTACK is not an attempt. It’s a success fous. Thomas Bergmann and his horns get it right. Off the cuff. A firstling of the hand that’s a firstling of the heart. German musicians who interpret a German librettist and a German composer with that uncanny perception born of a shared culture and that love for jazz, swing and the sound of big, bad, brass brought by musician G.I.s to post war Europe - the Europe in which Brecht-Weill songs received enormous trans-Atlantic acclaim. That’s why it’s also not an accident that the drummer is Joshua Tinwa, who brings that there funky groove from his birth place, the Cameroons. And he’s supported not by a bass player - that would be too simple - but the guy on the tuba, Stefan Gocht!

When Louis Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald began to sing „Oh, the shark has / pearly teeth, dear…” it made people sit up - in Tokyo, Trivandrum or Texas. But there’s more to Brecht-Weill than the hit, Mackie Messer; it’s the challenging and rare, broken beauty of all these songs.

That’s why the singers on this album don’t just sing. They spit, they bite out, they lilt, they translate these words into passion. Because they were quite apparently born to the act. All three of them are theatre people. And Brecht’s lyrics are drama: ironic, sardonic, bitter-sweet - and real. No moon-in-June crooning here. Tanja and Celina come’n get you. Le Diseur Deserable, Maza let’s you have it.

With the flavour of life on his tongue…and life is a bitch…à la Brecht-Weill.

“The music on this album is an expression reflecting the belief that from time to time we are called upon, like a snake, to shed the skins which embody our past achievements and failures….The ancients saw the shedding of the skin by the snake as symbolic of immortality” said Ed Schuller, explaining the title of his latest work, Snake Dancing.

Schuller’s albums convinced up until now by their ever distinctive, rhythmic-melodic compositions, with brilliant improvising by the musicians in an ambience of parenthetical power. The Force is rightly considered a further development from its predecessor Mu-Point. With its spectrum of sound colours it achieves new summits. In old maestro Paul Motian’s place, the towering young Jim Black hits the limelight… If Motian’s drumming was quite obviously an experience in itself, Jim Black’s - in another, more bizarre fashion - is simply breathtaking.”Black seems to spill over from his sheer abundance of ideas…” the Dresdner Neuesten Nachrichten reports.

Therefore it’s no surprise that on this present album, it’s another child prodigy on the drums, Ronnie Burrage himself. His high precision drumming is almost like a Swiss watch, people marvel at his virtuosity, his versatility interlocks with that of Ed Schuller’s in congenial fashion.

To extemporise on and embroider his complex bass riffs, Schuller brings together old comrades; ex-Defunkt electric lead guitarist Bill Bickford, as also Gary Valente, are part of his workin’ group. Valente’s archetypal, original trombone playing, he never-the-less continually masterminds. Both pick up congenially on Schuller’s ideas. New to the band is Mack Goldsbury, who takes the place of Dewey Redman with ease and sovereignty.

And so they don’t just play crisp, free, funky pieces with an emphatic groove, but also intricate ballads and mini Jazz-Suites, reminiscent of Schuller’s family tradition and his debut album The Eleventh Hour. Archaic and sophisticated at once, this music is distinguished by the friction of sound colours, variegated rhythms and their startling dynamics…magic moments like the unexpected shimmer of a snake’s skin in the tropical sun as it dances from rock to crevice…

That it’s the bass player who’s band leader and chief composer, and charters directions here is palpable at all times. The album bears the signature of Ed Schuller.

The pianist Mal Waldron and the saxophonist Nicolas Simion, guest artists at the Nuremburg Jazz Studio.What does a painist do to celebrate his seventieth birhtday? What he’d always been doing anyway: he plays. Maybe he’s learnt to conserve his energies, reduces to essentials, does without acrobatics on the keys, concentrates on the content. Mal Wadron, on a vist to the Nuremburg Jazz Studio didn’t have to learn all this for the first time. He always was a minimalist. He treats his piano with calculated care. One doest see him banging or hammering away. The forte suffices as a short and sharp contrast, every tremolo is circled off, the blocks of chords are the fine work of a skilled craftsman. His brand mark is the syncope. The let the chords bounce, the intervals make the music. Together with the Romanian saxophonist Nicolas Simion, who took the place of Jim Pepper in the Mal Waldron Quartet after the latter’s death four years ago, Mal Waldron inspired the audience with his fine sensitivity and deep creative philosophy on the black and white keys. He introduces himself almost like somewhat of a yo-yo player, lets the musical theme bounce back and forth with the pure pleasure of movement, until these melodic short hand signs acquire a magic life of their own. „The other Monk”, as he is also called, sets a few sparing accents: the tension mounts slowly with the dynamics, culminates in the interval - the morse code begins again from the top.

In dialogue with the equally precise saxophonist, who avoids garish colours, this musical Algebra develops and unfolds into melancholy inner perspectives. A dissimilar pair: the shy thinker and the rugged man of emotion. The one is afraid of mere effects, the other plays them out, without lapsing into gimmickry. The one is rooted in complex rhythms, the other is driven by folkloristic melodies.

What the young saxophonist puts forward is taken apart by the ageless pianist, whilst they combine forces to put the chromatic building blocks together again. Long lines and phrases distinguish the soprano saxophone player - and give away the clarinettist. His encore on the bass clarinette makes you feel like more of the same.
(Anja Barckhausen / Nuremburg News)

I’ve always been an absolute ballad freak, but find that over the last few years, the great moments of the celebration of this discipline are becoming more and more rare. The young Miles complained once about forty years ago to the older Dizzy, about why he could not play the higher registers like him. Dizzy answered, “”Because you don’t hear them, you have to hear “high notes” like these within you to be able to play them.” From that point of time onwards, Miles gave up the effort to try and blow as high and brilliant as Dizzy, to want to sound like his great rôle model. Instead of this, in the years following this, Miles became perhaps the greatest jazz ballad player of all times, because he only played what was natural to him. Transposing the meaning of this, it might be postulated, that the ballad is the “inner voice” of the interpreter; it seems to have become silent, or else the younger ones don’t hear it any more.

Gunther Klatt is somebody who knows how to listen to what’s within him, so that whoever loves ballads today cannot ignore or brush past him. Like no one else in the country, he has prescribed this mode of playing for himself, has made this his metièr. whether it’s ellington or Strayhorn, Kurt Weill or other standards, such brilliant compositions serve him actually only as a vehicle, he uses them to express himself, his personality, his inner state of being. People can feel it, he lets them participate in his gifts, which is why those who come are inspired, again and again, whether he’s performing in Munich, Calcutta or Mexico City. I can remember a legendary concert - that was in the late autumn of 1989 - a duo concert in Munich’s Pep, a little suburban theatre on the outskirts of Munich - and Tizian Jost. He’d learnt his craft fast and proved to be a congenial partner for Klatt and his unmistakeable sound, and that ‘touch of historical piano’ has never left my ears since.

Note:
This compact disc is a limited edition pressing, presented in an unusual digipack. Each and every one of them contains an original drawing of the musicians, also signed by hand. This ballad masterpiece will not be available in this form on the open market; a CD presentation will take place perhaps in Mexico City…or Munich…or even Venice…No advertisements will appear in any printed media. In Germany one such copy can be acquired directly from Tutu Records

Hardly anybody knows that Monty Waters is a multimediatalent. His idiom is bebop, and this not only comes out in his saxophone playing and in his poems, but also his painting is affected by the same dialect. He understands bebop to be that which its originators also mean it to be - Bird, Dizzy and Monk, that is, as a spring board for their own individual expression and he’s gone on working on this all his life. He’s the old spirit, that tells of the roots of jazz; not an academic performance, but rather a mélange that comes out of the Blues, jazz basements and Harlem; since he’s been through it all personally, all the way from Manhattan to L.A., his expression guarantees for authenticity. 

With the populistic imitations of modern traditionalists, Monty Waters has no truck. An inventive critic describes Monty’s stage presentation as “jazzoetry”, a melting together of jazz and poesy, in rhymed punch lines about love, life and dreams, which, put in bebop lingo could be taken as “Ric, Pig & Panic”. This is expressly clear in the duo recordings with his congenial partner on “talkin’ drums” - alias Tom Nicholas; his percussive spots mesh wonderfully with Monty’s vocalising, in the to and fro of dialogue, in his - so to speak - answers…

In addition to these, there are a couple of takes from the legendary Paris sessions (Monty Waters’ Hot House, ‘live’ in Paris). Spurred on by that volcano on drums, Ronnie Burrage, the old veteran for instance in Montville # Two, makes the so called wild young ‘uns seem passée, because this “let’s go wild” thing comes straight from Monty’s heart making a lot of the next generation seem old and ailing.

What makes the musician Uli Lenz so extraordinary? His piano playing is a synthesis of the entire history of jazz, a treasure trove: he’s not particularly interested in the so called spirit of the times, doesn’t seek orientation there. His thing is far rather reminting jazz classics. From Count Basie through Errol Garner, Monk, Peterson, McCoy Tyner or Don Pullen, he leaves his imprint upon the tradition of the classical jazz piano in his own way. He’s only prepared to pick up on what his inner voice dictates to him: the aptness and the sheer variety of musical riches, which he bestows upon us, the manifold colours, patterns, moods and musical metaphors he finds, always just a wink of an eye before the heart expects them! He knows how to put us in a permanent state of breathless excitement.

“The man who dances on the keys”, is how the maestro thinks of himself as a pianist. That unmistakeable, powerful left hand… because he’s left handed and the urgency of rhythm is second nature to him, his moving - astonishing - force. It’s like changing gears when driving a racing car. Lenz was once a rally driver. He knows how to make the turbo engines drive the piano.

Listen to the dramatic technique in the introduction to Love Channel, moving from the sound of splintering, glittering glass in the highest treble keys through the melodic middle registers to the circular dancing feel of the bass lines by that extraordinary Ed Schuller and of There is no Greater Love, in which the melody, broken into fragments with Brechtian finesse suddenly moves with the hiss of brushes on highhat from drummer Victor Jones and a doop-booping from bass player Ed Schuller, with an abundance of bright, shining notes and exquisite timing, into that classical swinging jazz thing.

When Badal Roy joined Miles Davis’ band back in 1970, he got a mysterious answer to his question about how to play. “Play it like a nigger…” is what Miles said. Miles liked the sound of tablas, but Indian classical music didn’t fit into his concept of electric jazz. So he wanted Badal to develop a cross-over style. A student and disciple of Alla Rakha, Badal Roy has received worldwide critical acclaim, also for his current work with Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time. An imposing discography includes - apart from Davis - Herbie Mann, John McLaughlin, Dave Liebman, Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Leni Stern, Nana Vasconcelos, Dizzy Gillespie. Studio owner Tom Tedesco wrote saying “… Badal’s playing of tabla in a jazz context far surpasses anything ever done..”

A guitarist, sitarist, singer and composer, Amit Chatterjee has gone through extensive training in Indian, European and American music He teaches at the Ethnomusicology department of the University of Miami. His ambition to forge truely global music is what he achieves on this recording. Amit has recorded and performed with great artists such as Joe Zawinul (from 1983 onwards), Carlos Santana, Eric Johnson, Glen Velez, Layne Redmond, Dave Liebman, Paul Winter and Paul Halley- and of course, compatriot Badal Roy.

This album, is a logical product of Badal’s and Amit’s friendship and long sojourn in a world where music is just music..”Sound must be divested of a caste system,” Badal said to us during his flying visit to Munich, “a sound or a note doesn’t know where it belongs - it can belong anywhere!” With a childlike gaiety and playfulness paradoxically acquired only through the courage to take risks - both musicians unfurl a myriad sounds, colours and moods, Amit phrasing with bent notes and quarter notes, Badal playing complex 6/4 or 7/8 time cycles. Though they’re varying pitch, pace and volume - combining the rainstick and the matak, the mridangam or the madol - the guitar sounding plugged or unplugged, or even sometimes like a sitar - they never lose the inner coherence, their story: They bring sunshine to the people - and eternal radiance.

“Getting this fusion to work means developing motifs and rhythmic patterns from the basic melody and at the same time keeping the mood of the song ….all about getting the right interplay between the musicians” Nicolas Simion writes. Most of these pieces were developed spontaneously right there in the studio - a very intense experience.

Vienna was a “melting pot” for precious and rare metal when New York was still a town. So it’s not an accident - this is where Mexican-American bass player Glen Fisher and New Yorker drummer Peter Perfido met Nicolas Simion, who arrived at this junction of old and new, at the confluence of the Balkan world and European culture, carrying a couple of precious volumes - the works of Béla Bartok. Latin-American rhythms on contrabass were the right prerequisite for Glen’s getting to grips with Nic’s complex metric patterns, his astonishing harmonies, which challenge, sometimes set aside, a major or minor scales’ system of music But it’s the soul feel that he gives his strings - the sting and bite - that moves the listener to sense how appropriate it is - con alma - as Glen calls it. Peter Perfido’s versatility and sensitive drumming picks up the music like a hi-fi mike - and drives it along! His fine, subtle wrist-work creates delicate designs like petit point embroidery, whilst the strong dynamo of the basic beat keeps the metric framework right out front. Transylvanian Dance, described by critics and friends as “a hit” recurs on this album, whilst in another notable ethnic fusion piece entitled Ancient Rituals, Nicolas makes the tenor sax sound like an alphorn, a bucium, used in days of yore to signal news of ceremonies from village to village.

Producer’s Note:
This is the fourth album that I have made with Nicolas Simion; it shows Nicolas’ great talent as a tenor saxophone player, even more because Nicolas has more space here, just playing with a rhythm section and without a second horn; he surpasses himself, warming up to acquire a form that the European jazz scene expects of him from the time he started playing with the Mal Waldron Quartet.

“In the past, we played harmonies with practised phrases that jazz musicians called “licks” - but today, fortunately, we don’t play licks any more, and play beyond and across harmonies… Younger musicians who continue to produce licks have not realized, that jazz is very personal music. They just play what is required of them today, go along with the trend and compromise the music!” Mal said to Thomas Fitterling at an interview done for his seventieth birthday.

Mal Waldron balks at populist compromises of every sort, so that the stringency of his lyricism demands ever more space in his musical creation. To be aware of what is not acceptable, one has to become increasingly strict, exceedingly wary of the inflationary trend of the cult scene. Here the old grey wolf gives the impression of being like a very slowly growing tree…like the Teak, the king of noble woods…

Therefore Mal Waldron’s performances are seldom euphoric events of total identification - they go deeper; those who understand his music turn homewards quiet and impressed, with the sure feeling, that this happening will continue to work within them for a long time. The present album may be assessed as a reflection of such a happening. In an era of ‘cult albums’ and ‘mega sellers’, superlatives have been worn threadbare long ago. Let it be for that reason - an album like Mal, Verve, Black & Blue has scarcity value. It’s not a sensation, not a spectacle - but just simply an intense experience.

With a simply inexhaustible melodic imagination and joy of experiment, the ground is cut from under the feet of all attempts to force music into hide bound categories. If we’re talking about World Music here, then it’s about integrating music elements and ways of playing from different cultural circles at the highest possible artistic level.

Surprising stylistic metamorphoses make life difficult for any academic attempts to approach the music. The Englishman Geoff Warren puts his finger on it when he describes the “art of the duo”, that he celebrates here with Tartar, Enver Izmailov: “We make music that just comes out of our physical, psycho-spiritual and intellectual personalities. This duo finds a somnambulous balance of these forces and thus forms a unique organization of tonal possibilities”.

Both Enver Izmailov and Geoff Warren are masterly craftsmen, instrumentalists. The one taps on the guitar strings with all ten fingers and creates the impression of an entire orchestra playing, whilst the other, on flute and soprano saxophone, provides the suppleness of almost never-ending expressive power. On the appointed basis of a seven-eight or eleven-eight time, stories of the occident and of the orient are unravelled in mulitfacetted communicative improvisation; so do new forms of musical expression come into existence.

If you listen, you will glide away into worlds beyond and over the moon - where not only your feet shall be dancing!

«Cook’s improvisations, like his tunes, are well-balanced and lyrical. His tone is full and his lines have an understated fire.«
David Dupont, Cadence Magazine, New York, May ‘92

Aus der New Yorker Loft-Szene kam der Posaunist Marty Cook einst nach München. Dort ist er zu einem eigenständigen Stilisten geworden, ob er sich nun kraftvoll als Solist auf seinem Instrument exponiert oder als Komponist und Arrangeur betätigt. “Phases Of  The Moon” profitiert außerordentlich von der Mitwirkung des Baßklarinettenwunders Rudi Mahall und ist wohl das bisher spannendste Album Cooks. Vergnüglich erinnert manches an Ornette Coleman, und selbst wenn verloren geglaubte Züge des klassischen Mangeldorff-Quintetts hier aufscheinen, bleibt die Musik stets aktuell.
© Stereoplay

“This two-day-session at the club Unterfahrt in Munich will make history!”
Peter Wiessmueller, producer

»Schuller has a supple tone, enough technique to do anything on the instrument, and enough taste not to…«
Dave Dupont, Cadence Magazine, New York, May 1992

»One of the most lyrical concerts of Jim I’ve ever heard!«
Peter Wiessmueller, producer

»I’ve heard a lot of musicals, that have been attempted here in Germany… dozens of scripts and cassettes have been sent to me. But I’ve never ever heard such fabulous music before. How did you manage to get such a highly professional recording and such fantastic singers?«
Rainer Walraff, Show Time, BRF 2, Interview, Juni 1993

SONGS FROM POKER

When we first met Frank Ku-umba Lacy - we were sitting and talking at the Sweet Basil, a jazz club in the Village - he said to us, “there’s a whole big band playing up here inside my head, and it keeps me awake on those long summer nights here in New York …”

So when composer and flautist, Geoff Warren told us he wanted a music director, who could make the music he’d written for this jazz musical reflect the entire history of Afro-American tradition, Ku-umba was obviously the man for the job. Because as a kind of Shamaan in the African Diaspora,
as Lacy calls it, he allows this tradition to flow through him. Like the two CDs he put out for Tutu Records, Tonal Weights and Blue Fire and recently, Settegast Strut. On this album he plays the trombone, the trumpet, the French horn, the congas, keyboards - and sings lead vocals on top of everything else!!

Reggae, Rap, Gospel, jazzmatazz, jazz goes Latin - you name it, he’s got it. And so have these songs. The Poker Big Band is a star line-up, a cast of musicans with an excellent track record, including among others, Bill Bickford, Kim Clarke, Ed Schuller, Bruce Ditmas, Larry Porter, Nicolas Simion, Monty Waters, composer Geoff Warren himself, whose duo album with Enver Izamilov, Dancing over the Moon is due for release shortly.

And of course, Nomakosazana. We looked for a singer, a woman with a voice, expressive, experienced, old and young at once, who could sing from the heart and sing from the belly - and she was the one! Half Zulu and half German, Nomakosazana had been singing professionally since she was 15 years old. In her mid-twenties, she already had a lot of experience, of which she gives adequate evidence on her first CD with Tutu, Trouble in Paradise in dialogue with Uli Lenz. Songs from Poker unveils an impressive sculpture-in-sound, comprised of manifold rhythms, jazz piano, screaming rock guitar and groovy el-bass, funky, genial arrangements, with red hot horn sections and futuristic ballads, which draw an arc from Africa through Europe and Spain to America and Manhattan Island. Lyricist, Ruth-Sharon Koch writes …”in a way, POKER is a product of my confrontation with Europe and the modern world”… and her lyrics are unsparing: passionate and yet ironic, bitter-sweet, tough and timeless: about men and women, sex and money, success and failure, drugs and dreams - all this and heaven, too.

»Soaring at unanticipated heights, the towering personality of jazz legend - Mal Waldron, who has turned this quartet into one unity, something one seldom comes across nowadays … This is in every way world class!«
Willi Geschwendtner, Jazz Podium, April 1990

»No other music makes equally great demands upon itself for eternal renewal as does jazz … Creative and passionate, Simion’s exciting melodies are nourished by the strength of Rumanian-Transsylvanian folk music. European jazz comes into its own when it recollects its own ethnic roots.«
Klaus-Peter Mayer, AZ, Kemptner Jazz-Frühling, April 1993

»Afro-Zulu music and contemporary jazz combined with poesy and playfulness also by accompanying Berlin pianist Uli Lenz, whose clear stroke and percussive virtuosity are a perfect foil to the expressivity and variety of mood in the dark, smoky timbre of Nomakosazana’s voice - a bridge between cultures.«
Ulrike Fehl, SZ, January ‘93

;»Far away from the West, tucked away in Ferghana, Uzbekisthan, Enver Izmailov developed his own technique of playing the electric guitar which enables him to be his own harmonic-melodic and percussive-rhythmic accompanist. As if two musicians were playing perfectly naturally with each other, the Mediterranean canzone is heard, or the rhythms of the Far East are intertwined with raga meditations from Indian heights.«
Thomas Fitterling, Stereoplay, December 1993

»To lend the saxophone wings as Charlie Parker once did - he can do it: Monty Waters! No technical fiddle-faddle intrudes between the idea and the act, only the good old Blues slips in between the Be- and the Bop, and that ’s where it belongs!«
Jazz Correspondent, New Westphalian Daily, June 1993

»For many the centre of attention will be the late Pepper’s reedy but emotionally supercharged sax tone and his compositions built on native American chants, both qualities much admired by Jan Garbarek, incidentally!«
Chris Clark, Jazz, The Magazine / London, August 1993

»Two compositions by Lee and three by Pepper suggest a similar musical concept, especially as they comprise attractive melodies and - a pleasant change from the eternal Bop - have a lilting, modal form. Into this flow Lee’s largely melodic style and Pepper’s intensity, which made him -apart from everything else- the most famous integrationist of his own Native American music and contemporary jazz.«
Gerhard Ambrosius, Platten, Station to Station, Kiel, October 1993

»The spectrum of this highly complex and exciting music includes not only dreamlike ballads, rich with ideas, but also scintillating, prickling Free Jazz passages in the style of Ornette Coleman ….«
Rainer Guerich, CD Tips, Saarlouiser Rundschau, Germany, February 1993

»Guitar and vibraphones in a thrilling duo recital with timeless, inflammable ideas … Thus warm ballads burgeon beside provoking, avant-garde sound plasma, forming their own integrated musical system of co-ordination.«
Rainer Guerich, CD Tips,
Saarlouiser Rundschau, Germany, March 1993

»This CD is a starlight hour for the baritone saxophone. This heavy instrument seems to lose all of it’s slow and ponderous weight in Bluiett’s hands…«
Wolf Kampmann, NM! MESSITSCH / June-July ‘92

A recent live broadcast on New York radios’ WKCR FM prompted guitarist Sonny Sharrock’s remarks:

»I was driving home and when I heard these guys I had to pull off the road to listen… very intense… exciting!«
Cadence Magazine / New York. July 1992

»This is an exciting, thought provoking album by a group of musicians functioning as an ensemble, without jeopardising their individuality.«
Linton Chiswick, New Note Magazine / London

»Schuller goes beyond writing catchy heads, supplying plenty of smart comping and transition devices that keep longer cuts simmering…if the Jazztimes had power ratings, he would be leap-frogging over a lot of bassist/composer/leaders in the next listing on the strength of The Eleventh Hour.«
Bill Shoemaker, JazzTimes/ New York, Sep. 1993

As long-playing shellack, this recording was greatly in demand and as a compact disc, it’s a jazz classic. Marty Cook’s illustrious compositions, the singing, melodic saxophone lines of the wonderful Jim Pepper, sometimes garnished with the magic touches of the great old Fakir on the piano, Mal Waldron; and upon the hand-woven carpet of rhythm made by the unbeatable bass and drums tandem Ed Schuller and John Betsch, the climate for primary combustion comes into being; what takes place is a feast, a banquet! Marty Cook succeeds in bringing together the various artistic temperaments of his fellow musicians, the “colours of jazz”: Red, white, black and blue! Get up with it!

“If Ray Anderson is way out on his own, Marty Cook must be leading the contemporary trombone pack. Whatever their respective merits, there is certainly no quantitative comparison to their respective outputs. Anderson is everywhere, while Cook’s most noted recorded work before the mid-1980s was a too brief appearance…!” So says the newest issue of the Penguin Guide To Jazz.

The musical statement of the album stands as a symbol for the wide stream of various colours in Cook’s music; he has a genial understanding of how to give his fellow players the right position, from which they acquire freedom unimagineable; each one of them responds thankfully, with an almost inconceivable kind of expressivity in their solos.

“Les saxophonistes baryton sont souvent des musiciens à forte personnalité; ce n’est certainement pas Hamiet Bluiett qui fera exception à la règle…”
Albert K. Ottengam, Nouveautés, Jazz Hot, France, Dec. ‘92

OH WHAT HAPPEN TO ME !

There are indeed dozens of tenor saxophonists in jazz, all of whom can be placed on the same level. But as regards the baritone saxophone, the picture is totally different. From the moment when Gerry Mulligan put down his baritone sax for the last time some months ago, there’s really actually only one name, one protagonist of note on this instrument: Hamiet Bluiett!

From African rhythms to blues, whether free or avantgarde, Bluiett lets the breath of his entire personality flow through his horn. It’s a soliloquy, a conversation with himself, with all manner of facets: sometimes deeply touching, melodic and harmonious, sometimes the talking horn, vocalising, with un unbeatably witty ironical touch; Hamiet Bluiett has the rare gift of being able to listen to his own inner voices and is able to entrance one and all with it; we are immediately completely convinced of the predicament of the soul that he reveals and gives spontaneous expression to.

With an “Oh, what happened to me!” Hamiet Bluiett bows out at the end of Walkin’ & Talkin’ and completes a self-portrait in the manner of an El Greco, able to do without any superficial complacency, without sparing himself. This is what’s fascinating about his music. Regina Veritas - Truth will Rule!

»This skillful recording belongs in every jazz oriented household…I can only repeat my advice to our listeners - buy ‘Borderlines’ …buy, buy, buy!«
Christian Hetz, Cable Radio Berlin, Jazz Service