Mohnmarzipan

Straightahead / Mainstream Jazz
premiera polska: 2006-09-01
kontynent: Europa
kraj: Niemcy
opakowanie: plastikowe etui
opis:
Editor's info:
The Berlin-based saxophonist and clarinetist, Silke Eberhard doesn't trivialize Jazz into a style that one has to justify, but despite critical cries, turns it into a hallmark.

The title "mohnmarzipan" (poppy marzipan) can, at first, be misleading for the listener. It suggest Gemütlichkeit, snuggling and a bit of homely nostalgia. The music of the CD, however, seems to stand for just the opposite. Silke Eberhard sees her Jazz as a means of transporting contrasts. "That's just the way life is," is her passionate angle. "I can't just go on making beautiful music, when the world is so full of dirt. On the other hand, it is in this dirt that you can find unending poetic, joyful moments." On her record, Silke Eberhard tells us the exciting story of fundamental human conflicts, of holding on and letting go. She takes the transformation of the principles of controlled of compositional givens and the abrupt drifting away in collective and individual openness to extremes. At a time when the search for common middle ground has become intellectual consensus, she dares to take her narrative proclivity beyond the limits. She is too humble to call Ornette Coleman one of her main influences. Nonetheless, she internalizes in her music the harmonolodic emergence of personal idioms into a complex form of expression.

Silke Eberhard loves to create figures in her music, to draw patterns, to plan the course of events, and then with one gesture to demolish them all. Her destructive rage is totally charming, but she dares to live out in her music those things that drive her listeners day by day. As a child living in a Swabian village, she grew up with brass bands playing folk music and she learned to play the clarinet. With this narrow musical experience, she had to destroy bridges and find her own voice. She discovered Jazz as a teenager and was at first fascinated by the big bands, because they most resembled the bands in their traditional folk costumes. But then she discovered Free Jazz in which everything is simultaneously allowed and prohibited.

On "mohnmarzipan", Silke Eberhard finds a logical connection between all of the various elements of her own development and the collective self-discovery within German Jazz, which she rejects and accepts. She first had to conquer her own personal experience as the muscle-flexing sax-maniac, in order to find a more conciliatory place in her music. Hidden marches rub against urban grooves, soft caresses stand equal ground with bone-dry structures or collective improvisation without compromise. Even in the configuration of the band, opposites that limit each other, that release tensions, and in the end dissolve into the unity of the band, play a role. The individual voices penetrate each other in a way that it becomes difficult to follow the individual lines and intentions. Silke Eberhard does not initiate these processes consciously. They arise through the playing of the four musicians. Pianist Niko Meinhold and drummer Sebastian Merk provide the urban base, while pianist Jan Roder and the band leader embody more the jazzy stability of the group. Silke Eberhard herself happily provides the band with her own contradiction between luster and dust.

Silke Eberhard belongs to a new generation of Berlin-based Jazz musicians, who are attempting to form an idiom between reflection and change. Jazz made in Europe, which allows them to measure themselves against their American counterparts, but also allows them to stand with both legs in the Old World.

muzycy:
Silke Eberhard: Alto Saxophone, Bass Clarinet, Clarinet
Niko Meinhold: Piano, Melodica, Toy
Sebastian Merk: Drums
Jan Roder: Bass

utwory:
Die Rufnummer
Once Empanadas
Rundo
No. 4
Himno
Vibes
Kleiner Marsch No. 2
Mohnmarzipan
Guadalupe
Monika Nord
Mangua
No Más

total time - 63' 44''
wydano: 2006-08
more info: www.intuition-music.com