“Nothing new about Jazz? Maybe, that there will never be again an avant-garde in the militaric sense of pioneers, which the footman follow in a certain distance. But the big individualists, who in a personal union of creator and interpreter always determined the aura of Jazz like in no other music genre, are still there. And if they play in top form, what isn't always possible, they are irresistible and unique. Aki Takase for example, who always can produce her bizarre humour at it' s best, when she chooses brilliant Duo- partners and rubs herself at the utmost popular themes of others. This is what she does now with themes of the componist of many blues-classics, W.C.Handy. With Rudi Mahall Aki Takase has an old friendship of ' happy resonance vibrations', which resulted 1998 in the masterpiece ' Duet for Eric Dolphy'. Dolphy gave in the beginning of the 60's the bass clarinet as a new courted instrument a new home in the Jazz. But Intonation and common playing are difficult, and in extreme articulations relations with excited goose disturb the sense for art. Therefore there are few, which the 1964-deceased Dolphy would have given the dubbing. Rudi Mahall is one of them. The Dolphy- theme which Takase and Mahall treated at her first co- operation, was very complicated, but the pieces of W.C.Handy are evergreens, nearly easy like children songs, especially the ' St. Louis Blues', which formally seen isn't even a blues and the CD, on which he is performed two times has the name of this blues. Those melodies are very suitable as playmaterial for shrill phantasies and satirical lust. Thoughtful there plays a southern- state piano, while the bass- clarinet plays out off all harmonies. Honky- Tonk, musical box- idyll and slapstick- panic are undermined by Free- Jazz- experience, but free dialogues are intercepted again in strange arrangements; on all sides break outs, excesses, unseriousness, playfully, holded together in it's heart by brilliant trade, which has an effect on the tone colour arrangement at Mahall and at Nils Wogram, too. The most intellectual German trombonist with the best technique, is as completion of the group an enormous enrichment. Wogram demonstrated in the formation 'Underkarl' a related humour in the management of tradition like Aki Takase does. On the other side the dry deconstructions of the guitarist Fred Frith and the cranky drum- playing of Paul Lovens -they are occasional performers -fit very well too in the spiritual and ghost- world of the Japanese pianist. For her CD Aki Takase herself composed but Mahall and Wogram, too. With 'Lulu's back in town' she gave a hit- song, which is not from W.C. Handy, free to be slured.

Additional Details

Label: Yellowbird Records

Genre: Jazz

Run Time: 50 mins

Release Date: 01/01/19

UPC: 767522913026