If there is one figure in jazz who remains similarly inexplicable, it is Charlie Parker. Charlie Parker has contributed so much to the syntax and grammar of jazz that no contemporary jazz musician exists today who is not influenced in some way by Bird’s jargon, either directly, or in echoes. Of course, every language has to be able to change with the times, otherwise it could not describe the atmosphere, the reality of the present. This mutability and the will to change is what makes Charlie Parker's dialect so special.

Common Ground plays music that pushes into new areas, preserving the commitment to expand feel, harmony and pulse. Matthias Akeo Nowak's new album ORIMUSIC features compositions of all four band members, inventing sound narratives with high intensity and a sovereign, calm fire.

The CONTACT 4TETT plays experimental improvised music with elements of Jazz, Art Rock, Modern Chamber Music and Sound Art. The history of CONTACT 4TETT begins in 1970, when bassist Alois Kott, drummer Michael Jüllich and clarinetist Theo Jörgensmann formed the CONTACT TRIO. After initial small successes, the group played as a newcomer at the Frankfurt Jazz Festival and toured several times through southern Germany and Switzerland, but the band broke up after two years. Theo Jörgensmann was replaced by guitarist Evert Brettschneider, with whom the group had already worked in an extended line-up. This occupation was internationally successful.

At the beginning of 1980, Michael Jüllich left the CONTACT TRIO, which was also one of the first progressive, professional jazz groups in the Ruhr area and had released 3 LPs by then. With Peter Eisold on drums, the group played until 1984 and then disbanded. Since 2015 there has been a new edition of the band as CONTACT 4TETT, which includes the former soloists in the band Theo Jörgensmann, who now plays alto clarinet, and Evert Brettschneider. New members are Kai Kanthak, electric bass and Sascha Sauerborn, drums and electronics. The CD WUNDERTÜTE is the first by CONTACT 4TETT for the label jazzwerkstatt.

SoKo Steidle + Alexander von Schlippenbach was recorded on 6.5.22 and 15.5.22 at the XJazz Festival / Berlin. Oliver Steidle: For me, freedom and spontaneity as well as rival competition until harmonious interaction, is the main core of the Berlin sound of Jazz, rich as a whole wheat bread. It arises a pulsating movement, a organic body, full of energy and virtuosity.

The trio has released a half dozen albums over the last 20 years, each with the freshness of a first encounter. There’s always a sense of discovery in their playing, as if it were their first time meeting. The trio seems somehow to exist perpetually at dawn. So the encounter in Lucerne in December, 2021, documented on this recording but it was, at any rate, the first time they played this particular concert: there’s wisdom in the conversation. None of the participants rush to dominate the discussion.

1989: the wall falls – freedom at last! What could be more obvious than a German/ German jazz band. The musicians claim it as the first German/ German jazz band, as contact among them already existed before the wall came down. Not the form, but the musicians and their being are the quintessence - the form adapts. Every note, a statement. It's about creativity and improvisation. 1992 is the time. 30 years after the fall of the wall, much has changed in Germany. The mood is completely different. It is no longer a time of change and exploration, and now uncertainty and radicalization dominate. The music sounds different, but remains just as brilliant. Polyphonic melodies and rhythms characterize the sound. Jazz becomes even more of a home. The metamorphosis succeeds! The music fits into the new era.

We are memory and repetition. We repeat familiar sounds and communicate in this way, we call them language or music. We vary the repetition and create something new out of the old, shifting behavior and perception. Without a counterpart, our ego would be without borders - but our spirit also perforates the borders. Change occurs. Art, or in another word, communication. Tenor and soprano saxophonist Bruno Angeloni has worked with many fine musicians, including Reggie Workman, Andrew Cyrille and Michael Zerang. Although primarily regarded as a Free Jazz musician, his playing actually comprises virtually all types of music. The inner and outer struggle to find his way in the '80s music business, as a then young improvising saxophonist, without having to work in a commercial and adapted manner, eventually made him abdicate the market entirely and to earn a living on construction sites. Through perseverance he eventually travelled to Iran, South Africa and Russia, where he could rediscover his own sound, sharpen and strengthen it in such a way as to let music once again govern his life. After a short orientation phase in Rome at the beginning of the noughties, invitations to the Monterrey Jazz Festival took him two years in a row to Mexico, further broadening his musical pallet. Since 2016, back in Leipzig, he has had several rather coincidental meetings at public sessions with the 24 years younger drummer Steffen Roth. Henceforth, together they formed the duo 'Spirale' and have recorded this fascinating album.

On SEVEN WHITES the three musicians (Peter Ehwald - saxophone, Stefan Schultze - piano and Tom Rainey - drums) sketch out a complex musical structure, whose brilliance and depth lies precisely in the way they elaborate upon shades. Crucial are the shades and intricacies with which the musicians immerse themselves in a rhythm that is sometimes an energetic shared quest, and sometimes a contrapuntal pulsing, which dissolves into a frame of each other. The music on this album has a magnetism far beyond that of a black and white painting.