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Le Piccole Cose - European Jazz Legends Vol. 9

Günter 'Baby' Sommer

Le Piccole Cose - European Jazz Legends Vol. 9

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Intuition
UPC: 0608917132120
Catnr: INTCHR 71321
Release date: 13 January 2017
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Label
Intuition
UPC
0608917132120
Catalogue number
INTCHR 71321
Release date
13 January 2017

"Although Le Piccole Cose is the ninth volume in a series of “European Jazz Legends” recordings, Sommer remains an unknown quantity to plenty of American music lovers. Fortunately, the latest album by the drummer, cut at a gig in Germany on Halloween 2016, serves as a terrific introduction to a man who, though in his early 70s, remains a seemingly indefatigable force of nature."

Jazziz, 28-12-2017
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Artist(s)
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About the album

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
Unter Jazzfreunden kann man herrlich darüber streiten, ob „Europäischer Jazz“ ein nützlicher Gegenentwurf zur amerikanischen Tradition ist, eine originelle Ergänzung dazu oder „auf dem Markt weniger wert als amerikanischer“, wie es in einem Wikipedia-Forum nachzulesen ist. Außer Zweifel steht allerdings, dass es auch diesseits des Atlantiks begnadete Musiker gab und gibt, die den Jazz seit Jahrzehnten geprägt und geformt haben. Dabei haben sie ganz eigene Spielweisen entwickelt, indem sie europäische Musiktraditionen mit den amerikanischen Einflüssen zusammenbrachten. Diesen Pionieren des europäischen Jazz eine Bühne zu geben, das war die Idee zur Artikelserie „European Jazz Legends“, die im Magazin Jazz thing in seiner 100. Ausgabe im September 2013 startete – und die inzwischen auf mittlerweile 18 Folgen zurückblickt. Aus der symbolischen Bühne ist nun eine tatsächliche geworden – und sie steht in Gütersloh, mitten in Europa. Begleitend zu jeder Ausgabe des fünfmal jährlich erscheinenden Heftes findet in Kooperation mit unserem Label Intuition, der Stadt Gütersloh und WDR 3 ein eigens für diesen Anlass konzipiertes Konzert mit einem aktuellen Protagonisten der Serie statt, moderiert von Götz Bühler. Das Konzert inklusive Gesprächsrunde mit Götz Bühler wird aufgenommen und vom WDR 3 zeitversetzt gesendet; die musikalischen Highlights des Konzertes werden auf einer CD veröffentlicht.
Für jedes Jahr bis Ende 2017 sind also fünf Konzerte und fünf CDs zur Serie „European Jazz Legends“ geplant, am Ende wird ein Buch entstehen, für das die Artikel aus dem Magazin überarbeitet und ergänzt werden, u.a. um Eindrücke aus den Konzerten und Gesprächsrunden. Die CD von Günter „Baby“ Sommer ist bereits die neunte Veröffentlichung der „European Jazz Legends“-Reihe. Wir von Intuition sind stolz darauf, unseren Beitrag leisten zu können und danken allen Partnern und insbesondere den Musikern – und hoffen, dass sie den Hörern, die nicht live dabei sein konnten, Freude bereitet. Und denen, die im Publikum saßen, eine schöne Erinnerung darstellt.

„Wir nennen uns „Günter Baby Sommer´s Quarteto Trionfale“, betonte der 73jährige Schlagzeuger aus Radebeul bei Dresden direkt vor dem Konzert, um sicherzustellen, dass die Band korrekt vorgestellt wird. „Du weißt ja: wie `Art Blakey´s Jazz Messengers´“. Die Tatsache, dass sich Sommer mit den Afro-Amerikanischen Wurzeln tief verbunden fühlt, ist auch an seinem Spitznamen zu erkennen. Dieser kann zurück geführt werden auf den Schlagzeuger von Louis Armstrong: „Baby Dodds“. Das steht überhaupt nicht im Widerspruch dazu, dass dieses „Baby“ zu der Generation ostdeutscher Musiker gehört, die vor ungefähr vierzig Jahren für reichlich Aufregung sorgten: mit ihrer weitgehend frei improvisierten Musik in und um die damalige DDR.
Als Klangkünstler im Allgemeinen und Percussionist im Besonderen sowie als Solist oder Instrumentalist in einem Ensemble war und ist Sommer immer interessiert an der Ausdehnung des klanglichen Spektrums seines Schlagzeugs und an der Entdeckung neuen Repertoires. „Wenn man Afro-Amerikanische Kollegen fragt, woher sie kommen, antworten sie: `von Mutter Afrika´. Aber woher kommen wir? Diese Suche nach der Antwort begann mit dem Zentralquartett mit Uli Gumpert, und wir wurden fündig in den mittelalterlichen Liedern. Für westdeutsche Kollegen wie Brötzmann und andere war schon der Gedanke daran ausgeschlossen. Für uns aber stand das Wort `frei´ für die Freiheit, in jede Richtung zu denken“.

Für dieses Konzert in der Reihe „European Jazz Legends“ im Theater Gütersloh am 31. Oktober 2016 – präsentiert von WDR 3, Jazz in Gütersloh, Intuition und Jazz thing – hat Günter „Baby“ Sommer (nahezu) eine Band wiedervereinigt, die erstmals 1979 in der Jazzwerkstatt Peitz spielte. Um den möglicherweise „kompromittierenden“ Einfluss des westdeutschen Trompeters Manfred Schoof zu mindern, hat die Kulturbehörde der DDR verlangt, dass zu der Band auch Musiker anderer Länder eingeladen werden. So kamen dann der italienische Bassklarinettist und Altsaxophonist Gianluigi Trovesi und der amerikanische Bassist Barre Philips zum ersten Konzert des Quartetts nach Peitz. Schon seit einiger Zeit spielt nun statt Barre Philips der in Berlin lebende Italiener Antonio Borghini den Kontrabass – der übrigens auch in der Band Alexander von Schlippenbach´s spielte, veröffentlicht als European Jazz Legends Vol. 4.

Götz Bühler

Artist(s)

Günter 'Baby' Sommer (drums)

Günter Baby Sommer is one of the master musicians of contemporary European jazz. He belongs to the circle of extraordinary drummers that developed throughout the improvised music scene a highly individual playing and built up an unmistakable? Born in Dresden in 1943, Sommer studied at the Hochschule für Musik „Carl Maria von Weber“. Then his musical contributions the most important jazz groups of the GDR like the Ernst-Ludwig-Petrowksy-Trio, Zentralquartett and the Ulrich Gumpert Workshopband made it possible for him to get involved in the international scene. Thus, Sommer not only worked in trio with Wadada Leo Smith and Peter Kowald but took part in fascinating meetings with Peter Brötzmann, Fred van Hove, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Evan Parker and Cecil Taylor. His...
more
Günter Baby Sommer is one of the master musicians of contemporary European jazz. He belongs to the circle of extraordinary drummers that developed throughout the improvised music scene a highly individual playing and built up an unmistakable? Born in Dresden in 1943, Sommer studied at the Hochschule für Musik „Carl Maria von Weber“. Then his musical contributions the most important jazz groups of the GDR like the Ernst-Ludwig-Petrowksy-Trio, Zentralquartett and the Ulrich Gumpert Workshopband made it possible for him to get involved in the international scene. Thus, Sommer not only worked in trio with Wadada Leo Smith and Peter Kowald but took part in fascinating meetings with Peter Brötzmann, Fred van Hove, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Evan Parker and Cecil Taylor. His solowork enabled him for intense collaborations with writers as Günter Grass.
Sommer’s discography comprises around 100 records. As a professor at the Hochschule für Musik Dresden he has an influence on the professional imparting of the contemporary jazz to the next generations.

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Manfred Schoof (trumpet)

Gianluigi Trovesi (clarinet)

'Composing or improvising creates, announces, underlines and develops emotion. The story creates the emotion, and the emotion creates the story. The emotion provides the form and consequently provides the characteristics of the possible improvisation.'  Gianluigi Trovesi, almost unchallenged among improvising clarinettists in Europe, was born in 1944 into a working-class family in the small Alpine village of Nembro, near Bergamo in northern Italy. Here folk and dance music were an intrinsic part of everyday life and the young musician absorbed them eagerly. He went on to study at the Bergamo Conservatory, gaining his diploma in clarinet in 1966. Hearing Eric Dolphy play at the Milan festival in 1964 was a significant experience, but Trovesi's interests and influences embraced virtually every type...
more
"Composing or improvising creates, announces, underlines and develops emotion. The story creates the emotion, and the emotion creates the story. The emotion provides the form and consequently provides the characteristics of the possible improvisation." Gianluigi Trovesi, almost unchallenged among improvising clarinettists in Europe, was born in 1944 into a working-class family in the small Alpine village of Nembro, near Bergamo in northern Italy. Here folk and dance music were an intrinsic part of everyday life and the young musician absorbed them eagerly. He went on to study at the Bergamo Conservatory, gaining his diploma in clarinet in 1966. Hearing Eric Dolphy play at the Milan festival in 1964 was a significant experience, but Trovesi's interests and influences embraced virtually every type of music, from Italian folk to the jazz avant-garde, which was to stand Italy’s pre-eminent musical archaeologist in excellent stead in his subsequent career. By 1978, Trovesi had won first prize in a national competition for sax and clarinet and got himself a job as first alto and clarinet with the Milan Radio Big Band, a position he would occupy until 1993.
Trovesi arrived at ECM in 1994, his alto saxophone and clarinets soaring into the Skies of Europe proposed by the Italian Instabile Orchestra, perhaps the most outstanding idiosyncratic soloist in a band chock-full of them. He provided the label's runaway surprise hit of 2001 when he teamed up with his old friend, accordionist Gianni Coscia, on In cerca di cibo, a left-field recording brimful of mordant humour, improvisational wit, unrepentant nostalgia, and exceptional musicianship that roved easily between jazz and chamber music, folk and soundtrack music, with a hint of klezmer.
The duo returned in 1995 with an album of Kurt Weill and Weill-inspired improvisations, and a few years later applied a similar approach to German-born composer of French operettas, Jacques Offenbach, on Frères Jacques. Their explorations are free-wheeling and wide-ranging, likely to break into swing or rhythm and blues at a moment’s notice. London Jazz News called their collaboration “irresistibly enjoyable”.
Trovesi’s other projects on ECM include Vaghissimo Ritratto, on which he appears with Umberto Petrin (piano) and Fulvio Maras (percussion, electronics), hailed by the Irish Times as “improvised chamber music of stunning quality and adventure, melodic grace and rhythmic freedom” and Fugace, a rampant genre-hopping adventure by an all-Italian octet. His 2008 album Trovesi All’Opera – Profumo di Violetta is a typically quirky Trovesi take on Italian opera performed, as Ivan Hewitt wrote in the Daily Telegraph, by “a turbo-charged version of a traditional Italian town band”.

less

Composer(s)

Manfred Schoof (trumpet)

Günter 'Baby' Sommer (drums)

Günter Baby Sommer is one of the master musicians of contemporary European jazz. He belongs to the circle of extraordinary drummers that developed throughout the improvised music scene a highly individual playing and built up an unmistakable? Born in Dresden in 1943, Sommer studied at the Hochschule für Musik „Carl Maria von Weber“. Then his musical contributions the most important jazz groups of the GDR like the Ernst-Ludwig-Petrowksy-Trio, Zentralquartett and the Ulrich Gumpert Workshopband made it possible for him to get involved in the international scene. Thus, Sommer not only worked in trio with Wadada Leo Smith and Peter Kowald but took part in fascinating meetings with Peter Brötzmann, Fred van Hove, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Evan Parker and Cecil Taylor. His...
more
Günter Baby Sommer is one of the master musicians of contemporary European jazz. He belongs to the circle of extraordinary drummers that developed throughout the improvised music scene a highly individual playing and built up an unmistakable? Born in Dresden in 1943, Sommer studied at the Hochschule für Musik „Carl Maria von Weber“. Then his musical contributions the most important jazz groups of the GDR like the Ernst-Ludwig-Petrowksy-Trio, Zentralquartett and the Ulrich Gumpert Workshopband made it possible for him to get involved in the international scene. Thus, Sommer not only worked in trio with Wadada Leo Smith and Peter Kowald but took part in fascinating meetings with Peter Brötzmann, Fred van Hove, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Evan Parker and Cecil Taylor. His solowork enabled him for intense collaborations with writers as Günter Grass.
Sommer’s discography comprises around 100 records. As a professor at the Hochschule für Musik Dresden he has an influence on the professional imparting of the contemporary jazz to the next generations.

less

Gianluigi Trovesi (clarinet)

'Composing or improvising creates, announces, underlines and develops emotion. The story creates the emotion, and the emotion creates the story. The emotion provides the form and consequently provides the characteristics of the possible improvisation.'  Gianluigi Trovesi, almost unchallenged among improvising clarinettists in Europe, was born in 1944 into a working-class family in the small Alpine village of Nembro, near Bergamo in northern Italy. Here folk and dance music were an intrinsic part of everyday life and the young musician absorbed them eagerly. He went on to study at the Bergamo Conservatory, gaining his diploma in clarinet in 1966. Hearing Eric Dolphy play at the Milan festival in 1964 was a significant experience, but Trovesi's interests and influences embraced virtually every type...
more
"Composing or improvising creates, announces, underlines and develops emotion. The story creates the emotion, and the emotion creates the story. The emotion provides the form and consequently provides the characteristics of the possible improvisation." Gianluigi Trovesi, almost unchallenged among improvising clarinettists in Europe, was born in 1944 into a working-class family in the small Alpine village of Nembro, near Bergamo in northern Italy. Here folk and dance music were an intrinsic part of everyday life and the young musician absorbed them eagerly. He went on to study at the Bergamo Conservatory, gaining his diploma in clarinet in 1966. Hearing Eric Dolphy play at the Milan festival in 1964 was a significant experience, but Trovesi's interests and influences embraced virtually every type of music, from Italian folk to the jazz avant-garde, which was to stand Italy’s pre-eminent musical archaeologist in excellent stead in his subsequent career. By 1978, Trovesi had won first prize in a national competition for sax and clarinet and got himself a job as first alto and clarinet with the Milan Radio Big Band, a position he would occupy until 1993.
Trovesi arrived at ECM in 1994, his alto saxophone and clarinets soaring into the Skies of Europe proposed by the Italian Instabile Orchestra, perhaps the most outstanding idiosyncratic soloist in a band chock-full of them. He provided the label's runaway surprise hit of 2001 when he teamed up with his old friend, accordionist Gianni Coscia, on In cerca di cibo, a left-field recording brimful of mordant humour, improvisational wit, unrepentant nostalgia, and exceptional musicianship that roved easily between jazz and chamber music, folk and soundtrack music, with a hint of klezmer.
The duo returned in 1995 with an album of Kurt Weill and Weill-inspired improvisations, and a few years later applied a similar approach to German-born composer of French operettas, Jacques Offenbach, on Frères Jacques. Their explorations are free-wheeling and wide-ranging, likely to break into swing or rhythm and blues at a moment’s notice. London Jazz News called their collaboration “irresistibly enjoyable”.
Trovesi’s other projects on ECM include Vaghissimo Ritratto, on which he appears with Umberto Petrin (piano) and Fulvio Maras (percussion, electronics), hailed by the Irish Times as “improvised chamber music of stunning quality and adventure, melodic grace and rhythmic freedom” and Fugace, a rampant genre-hopping adventure by an all-Italian octet. His 2008 album Trovesi All’Opera – Profumo di Violetta is a typically quirky Trovesi take on Italian opera performed, as Ivan Hewitt wrote in the Daily Telegraph, by “a turbo-charged version of a traditional Italian town band”.

less

Press

Although Le Piccole Cose is the ninth volume in a series of “European Jazz Legends” recordings, Sommer remains an unknown quantity to plenty of American music lovers. Fortunately, the latest album by the drummer, cut at a gig in Germany on Halloween 2016, serves as a terrific introduction to a man who, though in his early 70s, remains a seemingly indefatigable force of nature.
Jazziz, 28-12-2017

The band’s makeup (drums, alto sax and clarinet, trumpet and flugelhorn, bass) is just unusual enough to be interesting on its own; the music takes things to another level.
Blurtonline, 05-5-2017

(...) excellent and catchy music (...)
Rootstime, 15-3-2017

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