Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Music is a timeless force, constantly ebbing and flowing, a steady sea of sound. At once reliable and unpredictable, there are few people who personify the ever changing and evolving nature of music- of Jazz in its freer forms in particular- better than Gunter Hampel. Going on eighty at the time of this live recording, he plays bass clarinet, vibes, flute and saxophone, and contributed all of the compositions here. “It is important to never stop learning, to stay curious,” he says during the interview at the end of this album. “And that’s why the joy never left- and then you get to be so old doing this.” Born in Gottingen, Germany, Hampel has been living and playing Jazz around the world for more than seven decades, befriending and recording with likeminded masters such as Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Steve McCall, Leo Smith, John Tchicai, Archie Shepp, John McLaughlin, as well as Miles Davis, Charles Mingus or Thelonious Monk. The concert starts from the back, literally, with Hampel and his “Berlin-New York Quartet” with Johannes Schleiermacher on sax and flute, Bernd Oezsevim on drums, and his daughter Cavana on vocals, entering the venue from the rear of the auditorium and making their way to the stage in a Conga line to the aptly titled “Kindred Spirits.”

Classical Music

Henri Texier (b. 1945) is a true jazz legend. The Paris-born French jazz double bassist is most known for his work with Don Cherry in the 1960s and with his band the Transatlantik Quartet in the 1980s alongside fellow musicians Joe Lovano, Steve Swallow, and Aldo Romano. What’s remarkable about Texier is that he is a self-taught bassist. He credits Wilbur Ware as his biggest influence. This release includes seven original compositions by Texier, the connecting theme being the culture and history of the Native Americans. As a special feature, the eighth and final track on the album is an interview with Texier conducted by Gotz Buhler. Texier is joined by fellow jazz heavyweights Sebastian Texier, Francois Corneloup, and Louis Moutin.

This release of Gunter “Baby” Sommer is the ninth publication in the “European Jazz Legends” series. “We are called Gunter Baby Sommer’s Quarteto Trionfale,” the 73-year-old drummer said right before this concert to make sure the band would be announced correctly. “You know, like Art Blakey’s Jazz Messenger’s.” The fact that Sommer feels a deep connection to the African-American roots of Jazz also resonates in his nickname, which can be traced back to Louis Armstrong’s drummer “Baby” Dodds. It is no contradiction, that this “Baby” belongs to the generation of East German musicians, who, some forty years ago, caused a stir with their mostly improvised music in and around what was then the GDR. As a sound artist in general and a percussionist in particular, as a soloist or an instrumentalist in an ensemble, Sommer is and has always been interested in widening the instrumental range of his drumset and discovering new repertoire. For his concert in the series “European Jazz Legends” at the Theater Gutersloh on October 31, 2016, Sommer reunited a band he first played with at Jazzwerkstatt Peitz in 1979. In order to “counter” the possibly compromising influence of trumpeter Manfred Schoof from West Germany, the cultural bureaucracy demanded that the band also included Gianluigi Trovesi, bass clarinet and alto saxophone, and the American bassist Barre Philips.

This recording of Miroslav Vitous is the eighth publication in the “European Jazz Legends” series. In hindsight, “Infinite Search,” the title of Miroslav Vitous’ first album as a leader from 1970, which featured players like Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Jack DeJohnette, or Joe Henderson, seems prophetic. The bassplayer, composer, educator, former member of the Czech Olympic swimming team, co-founder of the trailblazing group “Weather Report,” and the man behind “the go-t string library for producers and film composers,” is still constantly on a quest, and never without a project. At 68, Vitous is far from retiring, working on a symphony, preparing gigs with a Big Band or the Prague Symphony, and occasionally presenting his music in concerts with his current group. This live recording from the Theater Gutersloh presents him with his band- featuring Aydin Esen on keyboards, Roberto Gatto on drums, and Gary Campbell and Robert Bonisolo on saxophones, interplaying with Vitous on his singing upright bass. The music is a fascinating fusion of modern Jazz traditions and new musical ideas and concepts. In the magazine Jazz thing in April 2016, Vitous says, “I can’t copy, because the original music in me is so strong, that it will always come out. I’m lucky.”

Among jazz fans, you can have a lot of fun arguing whether “European Jazz” is a useful counterpoint to the American tradition, an original supplement thereto or “is worth less than American jazz on the market” as it can be read in a Wikipedia forum. There is no doubt that there have been and are gifted musicians this side of the Atlantic, who have molded and formed jazz for decades. They have developed very unique playing styles by merging European music traditions with American influences. To give these pioneers of European jazz a stage was the idea for the series of articles “European Jazz Legends,” which has been launched in the magazine Jazz thing on their 100th issue in September 2013. Accompanying each edition of the magazine a concert is planned especially for the occasion is organized and the highlights recorded and released. The multi-instrumentalist from Bayonne, who had turned eighty just a few days before the interview, masters various clarinets and saxophones as well as the bandoneon, and is also recognized as a composer. His wit and wisdom, and the youthful energy and curiosity he brings to his astonishing improvisations are only some of the reasons Portal has enjoyed such a fruitful and enduring career. Having helped to kick start the Free Jazz movement, he went on to form “New Phonic Art” to encourage collective improvisation and instant composing.

We must not complain, we must fight'', is motto Louis Sclavis repeats almost like a mantra. The 64 year-old from Lyon likes the process this triggers. The son of a photographer, whose own photographs have been shown in exhibitions and adorn the covers of is newer studio aubms, began playing the clarinet at ten. His inspiration back then was the music of Sidney Bechet, France's biggest Jazz star at the time. From there he went on to the conservatory, where at sixteen he saw a concert by the Workshop d'Lyon and immediately began playing their sophisticated style of Free Jazz. ''You could say that I experienced a very fast transition from new Orleans Jazz and the music of Duke Ellington, which I also liked back then and still like a lot, to Free Jazz'', he laughingly admits. ''I only found out later what happened in Jazz musically inbetween.'' True to his fighting spirit, Sclavis soon engaged himself in the French - and European - Jazz scene with a vigor to match his extraordinary talent, winning the Prix Django Reinhardt in 1988 already and recording many ground breaking albums, such as ''Carnet des Routes'', inspired by a tour of Western and central Africa with Henri Texier and Aldo Romano. The concert documented on this album opened the WDR 3 Jazzfest at the Theater Gutersloh on February 2, 2017, which also happened to be Louis Sclavis' 64th birthday. As a present to himself and to his audience, he presented a new quartet that evening, with Sylvain Riffet, who more than stepped up to the plate as the second reed-voice on saxophone, the excellent Christophe Lavergne on drums and Sarah Murcia on bass. Sclavis adores this eclectic group and explains that especially Sarah Murica, best known in France for accompanying chansonnier George Moustaki or writing the score to a successful movie about Serge Gainsbourg, brings a different flair and freshness to the music. ''I like drummers and bassplayers, but they just did not appear on any of my last albums'', he says. ''So I was very happy to be playing with a real ''Jazz rhythm section'' again in Gutersloh.''