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"Spindrift" Leo CD LR 883 Frank Paul Schubert – alto and soprano saxophone
Dieter Manderscheid – doublebass
Martin Blume – drums and percussions
Spindrift
01 Gale (34:08)
02 Leucothea (30:44)
total time: 64:54
All music by Frank Paul Schubert, Dieter Manderscheid, Martin Blume (GEMA)
Recorded live at LOFT Cologne on April 12, 2019
recorded, mixed and mastered by Stefan Deistler
Cover art by Karin Kahlhofer (1943-2017) „o.t. 1994“
Photos by Jef Vandebroek
Liner notes by Werner Hassler, translated by Melvyn Poore
"If this trio had not come together, someone would have had to invent
it. The three exceptional musicians of the german scene show what
Instant Composing can mean today, with their refined language and
continued expressiveness. All three originate from North
Rhine/Westfalia, in the meantime Frank Paul Schubert lives in Berlin.
Known among other things for his collaboration with British musicians,
such as Paul Dunmall or John Edwards, he is one of the most important
contemporary saxophonists, characterized by an idiosyncratic and
independent style. Dieter Manderscheid is one of the most sought-after
European bass players, versatile, elegant and virtuosic. The great
Ekkehard Jost called his playing ’addictive'. He has played for many
years now with Blume in various formations: together they perform with
somnambulistic certainty. Blume is one of the leading representatives of
European improvised music, characterized by his pronounced
quasi-compositional sensitivity, which "indicates a close connection to
new music" (Signal to Noise). Expect nothing less from this trio than
finely-honed, subtle and exuberant sound research."
Werner Hassler
(Manufaktur Schorndorf/D)
Frank Paul Schubert, Dieter Manderscheid, Martin Blume — Spindrift
(Leo Records, 2020) ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ (∗)
I’m a sucker for saxophone, bass and drum trios which seem to run through
the history of free jazz like a golden thread. It remains a format that
provides fresh inspiration, and here we have Frank Paul Schubert (alto and
soprano saxophones), Dieter Manderscheid (double bass), and Martin Blume
(drums, percussion) – all stalwarts of the European scene but their first
session as a trio – at LOFT, Cologne in April last year, and splendidly
recorded it is too doing full justice to the group’s scrupulous attention
to movement, weight and texture. There are two lengthy improvisations both
lasting about half-an-hour that unfold in a sequence of organically related
episodes, their breadth sweeping the listener along.
On ‘Gail’ Schubert’s serpentine themes grow inexorably from within their
own contours, swelling and contracting with an easy grace, from time to
time taking on an acerbic edge. Bass and drums fill out a resonant,
crackling space around the saxophone, labile forces alert to the
fluctuating balance. There’s a concentration on the intricacies of musical
ideas, a progression and focussing of purpose according to a generative
logic. Schubert follows implications, tests alternative possibilities, and
turns existing components into something new, all linked together and
reminiscent of the processes at work in the music of Steve Lacy and Evan
Parker. Cymbal strokes have the fragility of wind on water, drums scrape,
tiptoe and chatter, the bass delineates firm countermelodies overlapping
like tendrils with the saxophone. Collectively the trio creates the
impression of an ornamented fabric of shifting patterns.
This is also warmly expressive music with passages of great beauty. During
‘Leucothea’ (a Greek sea goddess) Manderscheid’s graceful bowing is framed
by multiphonics and percussive tinkles, layers that blend, surge and are
washed away leaving a fragile soprano melody, time-stopping and serene,
which gradually brings the trio together rising again in a slow crescendo
to close.
Colin Green, Free Jazz Blog
"Recorded nearly two years later, in mid-2019, Spindrift is Schubert
with the respected rhythm team of Germans drummer Martin Blume and
bassist Dieter Manderscheid who have similar experience with saxophonist
like Toby Delius and Frank Gratkowski.
A different situation, there seems to be enhanced maturity and
determination in Schubert’s playing on Spindrift. Perhaps it’s because
he can vary his textures between alto and soprano saxophones; or that
there’s more sonic space available with only two associates; and/or the
fact that the bassist and drummer have worked together for so long that a
certain level of accommodation is expected. That’s accommodation not
accompaniment, for the textures propelled from Blume and Manderscheid
are tough and layered as well. In response, by the time the saxophonist
completes the primary section of “Gale” his ferocious collection of
screaming multiphonics and jagged split tones are as explosive as
anything played by Charles Gayle, to take one saxophone avatar for
comparison. Unfazed by this overblowing, the bassist and drummer keep up
a concentrated dialogue to move the track forward. Before completing
the interface with clip-clop accents, Blume sticks to cow-bell pops
beneath a double bass expression that encompasses near
chamber-music-like swirls and sweeps. Although subsequent sequences
gradually lower the voltage to evenness, simple drum clanks, buzzing
strings and reed gurgles are replaced in the track’s final five minutes
with Schubert’s second wind which uses harsh runs to blow the piece to a
splintering finale aided by drum crashes. More restrained with single
bass string thumps and brushed cymbal accompaniment, “Leucothea” also
finds the band members expressing themselves in double or triple
counterpoint or with layered expositions – soprano saxophone on top.
Even when Manderscheid asserts himself with strokes that work their way
from the basement upwards, power is there without thematic flow
interruption. The other stand out sequence involves Schubert whose
instance of circular breathing evolves from near inaudible wisps to
expressively vibrated honks, backed by drum clip clops and bass double
stops before relaxing into a narrowed connection. When an unaccented
trill is eventually burbled by the saxophonist, the ending is confirmed.
With high-quality improvising from all concerned on both discs,
it’s almost crass to single out Schubert. But it’s his musical
sophistication that links these sets."
—Ken Waxman, www.jazzword.com
«Spindrift» – the album and the trio – brings together three
of the most experienced and exceptional German free-improvisers, all
originate from North Rhine/Westphalia region: sax player Frank Paul
Schubert, double bass player Dieter Manderscheid and drummer Martin
Blume, the binding link in this trio. Blume is a long-time collaborator
of Manderscheid and he has played in a trio with Paul Schubert and
Alexander von Schlippenbach. «Spindrift» was recorded at the Loft, Cologne, in April 2019.
These three musicians have played with the most innovative
improvisers, from Peter Brötzmann to Paul Dunmall, John Butcher to Ken
Vandermark and Barre Phillips to John Edwards. They have refined their
very own personal, expressive languages, but already established a
strong identity as the Spindrift trio. Their performance at the Loft
features two extended pieces, each over thirty minutes, and both stress
the trio work as a subtle and exuberant sound research.
The first one «Gale» begins with sparse gestures that almost
instantly are channelled into a layered texture that already suggests
strong compositional architecture. Paul Schubert offers a series of
ideas but Manderscheid and Blume are equal partners and often they take
the lead and their improvised strategies set the course and the tone of
this improvisation, from urgent to more contemplative but still a
restless one. Manderscheid bowed solo towards the end of this piece is
truly poetic and the inventive percussive work of Blume always shed
surprising colors on the ideas of his comrades, They play with natural
authority and affinity, strong, organic flow and playful-melodic sense.
The democratic interplay leans on free jazz and European schools of
free-improvisation but is more ambitious and embraces ideas from
contemporary music.
The second piece «Leucothea» begins in a similar manner, but the tone
is more quiet and introspective, still restless and searching. The trio
constantly shapes and refines its ideas and always injects new sonic
elements that disrupt the delicate balance and demand a new improvised
strategy, but there is a loose thread that connects all these phases
into a bigger whole. Towards the end of this piece the soprano sax of
Paul Schubert sounds like an exotic flute while the percussive work of
Blume and the bass playing of Manderscheid intensifies this mysterious
beauty. The trio sounds as one, three-headed organism that always
searches for more, challenging possibilities, with great conviction and
poetic sensibility.
If this great trio had not come together, someone would have had to invent it."
Eyal Hareuveni, Salt peanuts
"This recording was predestined: the musicians all
hail from the improvised music scene in Germany and all have played
together. They have such a highly developed empathy with each other’s
creative, working associations that what becomes apparent is that they
are working in order to advance, to progress rather than to arrive. The
goal is the method: instantaneous construction – improvisation.
The
affinity between them is drummer/percussionist Blume, long time
representative of the European avant jazz scene and collaborations with
such as Peter Brötzmann, Lol Coxhill, Phil Minton and Ken Vandermark.
He has also shared similar experiences with both Schubert and
Manderscheid who further include Harry Beckett, Paul Dunmall, Uwe Oberg,
Barre Phillips and Kenny Wheeler in their catalogues of meaningful
influences.
Spindrift is a live recording of the trio’s concert
at LOFT last year and their extreme subtlety and finesse are on display
throughout the two tracks, each of which is just over 30 minutes long.
This allows them space, breathing space if you will, to play freely –
there is no rush on any one of them. The album title and those of its
two tracks are related, though I do not know why; Spindrift is the spray
blown from the top of a wave in a Gale force 8 wind, while Leucothea is
a mythological, Greek, sea goddess. Even less explicably perhaps, she
appears in Milton’s Paradise Lost, in Robert Graves’ The White Goddess
and several times in Ezra Pounds’ Cantos. Back in the day she appeared
as a gannet with advice for the hero in the Odyssey.
Back with
Spindrift, Gale starts off tranquilly, until almost indiscernible
variations in the energy levels draw attention to the method of these
changes – not brought about by individual interventions, but by energy
channellings by the band as an entity. The music moves into and out of
phase changes, maintaining variations in tension that will draw you to
the front edge of your chair.
Leucothea sets out more serenely,
but its energy level increases at the insistence of the drums,
definitely in the driving seat. The complexity of its abstract, musical
architecture is such that it binds the musicians to their compact: to
progress rather than to arrive. They do this with considerable aplomb
with this album: it’s cerebral, it’s beautiful." Ken Cheetham Jazzviews
Spindrift | Instant Composing voller Finesse und SchönheitText: Heinrich Brinkmöller-Becker
Drei Ausnahmemusiker der NRW-Szene der improvisierten Musik geben ein neues Album heraus: Spindrift
– ein Live-Mitschnitt von ihrem Konzert im Kölner Loft aus dem letzten
Jahr. Man hört den beiden jeweils über 30 Minuten langen Stücken der CD
an, dass Frank Paul Schubert (as, ss), Dieter Manderscheid (b) und
Martin Blume (dr, perc) schon häufig miteinander gespielt haben und
geradezu traumwandlerisch ihre improvisatorischen Einfälle voller
subtiler Finesse aufeinander beziehen können, dass man als Hörer den
Eindruck gewinnen muss, hier handele es sich um ein durchkomponiertes,
akribisch abgestimmtes musikalisches Konzept.
Instant Composing – das bedeutet nicht nur auf die Rezipientenseite
bezogen ein der Situation verhaftetes „Instant Listening“, sondern ein
solches auch der beteiligten Musiker, die das Aufeinanderhören abstimmen
auf den ständigen Prozess des eigenen Weiterentwickelns von
musikalischen Ideen im Sinne des Miteinanderspielens, des gemeinsamen
Weiterspinnens von Ideen zu dem Zwecke, weniger ein Kunstprodukt zu
schaffen, sondern eher einen Prozess zu generieren. Der Begriff des
„Flows“ beschreibt diesen Ansatz am treffendsten, die Metaphorik von
Formen, die sich aufs Wasser beziehen, sind für die Beschreibung dieser
Musik nicht von ungefähr sehr verbreitet. Beim Album-Titel Spindrift und dem der beiden Tracks Gale und Leucothea
bewegt sich das Trio ebenfalls in dieser Bildwelt. Bedeutungen wie
Gischt, Sturm, Orkan, Meeresgötter, Quallen eröffnen Assoziationsräume,
die mit dem Musizieren der Drei wunderbar korrespondieren und einen
entsprechenden Ideenfluss schaffen.
Gale beginnt mit einem ruhigen, fast kontemplativen
Herantasten, Frank Paul Schubert bläst ununterbrochen Phrasen, die vom
Bass und den Drums in einem energiegeladenen Kontinuum sekundiert
werden. Ganz allmählich, fast unmerklich steigern sich Tempo und
Energie, das Alt-Sax wird mit schnellen und exklamatorischen Läufen
expressiver, die Begleitung hält und bekräftigt das Energielevel mit
vielen variantenreichen Einfällen. Nach ca. zehn Minuten leitet ein
Bass-Solo eine neue Sequenz ein, ein für den ersten Track typischer
Wechsel, der belegt, wie einfühlsam-spontan das Trio seine musikalischen
Ideen entwickeln und auch wieder ausklingen lässt, um einen neuen
Anlauf zu nehmen. Zunächst ohne Saxophon, nur mit „singender“ Perkussion
unterstützt, streicht Dieter Manderscheid den Kontrabass, Saxophon und
Perkussion nehmen das Material auf und verdichten es im anschwellenden
Tempo zu einem ähnlich konzentrierten Block wie in der Anfangssequenz.
Einen bluesartig klingenden Zyklus läutet das Saxophon mit einem
expressiven Growling ein, der Bass kommt mit Flageolett-Tönen hinzu.
Klangliche Farbtupfer des Saxophons und eine unermüdlich arbeitende
Perkussion lassen bei schnellen Bassläufen eine ausgesprochen
fokussierte Klangreise entstehen. Die unterschiedlichen Phrasen werden
jeweils von allen Dreien raffiniert aufgegriffen und bis zum
ekstatischen Siedepunkt am Schluss zusammengebracht.
Leucothea arbeitet zunächst in ruhigerem Fahrwasser und
entwickelt nuancenreiche Wendungen, um im weiteren Verlauf mit den
vorwärtstreibenden Drums an Fahrt aufzunehmen. Die Musik erreicht dabei
mit ihrem verhaltenen Schwebezustand eine verblüffende Suggestivkraft,
eine hochkonzentrierte Dichte. Das Saxophon schlägt virtuose Haken,
während Bass und Percussion für eine komplexe und differenzierte
Dauerbewegung sorgen. Bei aller Abstraktion von Harmonie und Melodie
beziehen die drei Musiker sich geheimnisvoll aufeinander und lassen ein
klangexperimentelles Gebilde entstehen, das man als gelungene akustische
Übersetzung eines submarinen Perpetuum mobile auffassen kann.
Als Zuhörer ist man froh darüber, dass ein solches Konzert als CD
vorliegt und man nicht auf ein „Instant Listening“ des Live-Konzertes
beschränkt bleibt. Die digitale Reproduktionstechnik ermöglicht ein
mehrmaliges Hören von Spindrift und erschließt einem erst recht umfänglich die Schönheit und Finesse dieser CD.
Frank Paul Schubert, Dieter Manderscheid, Martin Blume: Spindrift. Leo Records LR 883 2020 nrwjazz
musiczoom
"Trio
saxophones – contrebasse – batterie co-piloté par trois improvisateurs
expérimentés. On ne louangera jamais assez le percussionniste Martin Blume
pour la qualité de son travail, son sens aigu de la multiplication /
croisement des rythmes, des frappes et des pulsations auprès
d’improvisateurs remarquables voire incontournables : John Butcher,
Georg Gräwe et Hans Schneider (Frisque Concordance), Phil Minton et
Marcio Mattos au violoncelle (Axon), Phil Wachsmann, Jim Denley, Axer
Dörner et de nouveau Mattos (Lines), Birgit Uhler et Damon Smith
(Sperrgut), Frank Gratkowski etc…. et avec qui on découvre toujours une
facette de sa personnalité en osmose avec ses partenaires. Sans parler
des autres formations (duos etc…) avec les précités. En compagnie de
l’excellent saxophoniste alto et soprano Frank-Paul Schubert (entendu avec Olaf Rupp, Alex von Schippenbach, Willi Kellers…) et du fidèle contrebassiste Dieter Manderscheid,
c’est son approche plus « jazz libre » qui fait surface donnant la
répartie au lyrisme anguleux du souffleur en phase avec le travail
méticuleux du bassiste aussi à l’aise à l’archet qu’avec les doigts de
la main droite sur le bas de la touche. Plutôt que soutenir, voire
« pousser » le flux et les articulations des timbres du saxophones avec
une énergie trop affirmée, le tandem basse-batterie choisit la légèreté,
la subtilité, complétant la trajectoire du souffle et ses multiples
modes de jeux de manière à étendre la palette sonore et la dynamique
pour plus de lisibilité. Lorsque le premier morceau, Gale
(34 :08) dépasse la moitié de sa durée le volume sonore décroit, le
batteur frappant légèrement les surfaces et le bords de ses tambours et
le sommet de ses cymbales. Chacun offrant à l’autre l’initiative
consécutivement changeant le cap des échanges vers d’autres directions
et configurations sonores. La facilité mélodique de Frank Paul Schubert
se joue des méandres des enchaînements d’intervalles qui obéissent à
des relations harmoniques complexes et mouvantes. La quintessence d’un
souffle free savant, même s’il vocalise et s’emporte en fin de parcours.
En maintenant la légèreté et la lisibilité de ses frappes, Martin Blume
entretient la flamme en s’activant de plus belle croisant et
multipliant à foison les pulsations avec une science remarquable et un
maîtrise peu commune de la qualité de chaque frappe. Ces micros
roulements sont superbement modulés nous faisant découvrir différents
points sur la caisse claire d’où naissent des sons bien distincts.
Laissé à lui-même, le contrebassiste contribue à enrichir la
construction collective. Dieter Manderscheid a longtemps travaillé avec Frank Gratkowski, Martin Blume, Hannes Bauer, Gerry Hemingway, etc... La deuxième improvisation (Leucothea
30 :44) voit Blume solliciter ses accessoires métalliques à même les
peaux. Petit à petit les volutes du souffleur entourent et font
tournoyer le jeu précis et fluide du batteur et les rebonds des cordes
du bassiste et s’élancent dans un souffle continu fracturant et hachant
le timbre en croisant des doigtés alors que l’archet fait chanter le
gros violon avec un ronflement d’harmoniques. C’est le moment choisi
d’un fin duo percussion – contrebasse intériorisé et arrêtant le temps :
on entend une voix intime poindre au creux de l’échange. Ces trois
musiciens ont l’art de développer et faire durer l’expression collective
et leur écoute mutuelle en découvrant méthodiquement et spontanément
les champs sonores inhérents à leurs capacités instrumentales et
musicales et leurs trouvailles qui rencontrent ici un aboutissement sans
appel. Magnifique !" Jean Michel van Schouwburg https://orynx-improvandsounds.blogspot.com
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