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To Satch And Duke

Axel Schlosser Quartet

To Satch And Duke

Price: € 14.95
Format: CD
Label: Double Moon Records
UPC: 0608917138221
Catnr: DMCHR 71382
Release date: 06 November 2020
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Label
Double Moon Records
UPC
0608917138221
Catalogue number
DMCHR 71382
Release date
06 November 2020

"Wonderfully swinging and reminiscent of the great era of the incomparable Duke Ellington - that's what's behind the formation of the great trumpeter (and cornetist) Axel Schlosser. Together with the outstanding pianist Thilo Wagner and the equally great bassist Jean-Philippe Wadle as well as the elegant drummer Jean-Paul Hochstädter, the four gentlemen work their way through the Ellington/Armstrong Songbook....  "

Concerto, Austria, 06-2-2021
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Artist(s)
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About the album

He can almost be called an old hand in the meantime, which is not meant disrespectfully at his age of only 44. But trumpeter Axel Schlosser has been in the business for quite a long time – so long that you can consider him in a good conscience as a living inventory of the German jazz scene. But when did the man with the long since unmistakable trumpet tone appear “officially” on the scene at all?

Born in Oberkochen in 1976, he came into contact with music at an early age, first played the recorder and clarinet at a young age before switching to the flugelhorn at the age of twelve. Already at the age of 18 – while still in high school – Axel made the leap into the BuJazzO (Federal Jazz Orchestra) under the direction of Peter Herbolzheimer and into the JugendJazzorchester Baden-Württemberg at the same time, for which Bernd Konrad was responsible. When he was studying at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Mannheim, the promising young trumpeter was recruited by Albert Mangelsdorff, among others, as lead trumpeter for the German-French Jazz ensemble. During a two-year period as a secondary school teacher in Munich, Schlosser founded the quartet “L 14/16” and won the Mangelsdorf German record critics' quarterly prize twice with it. In 2002, he finally found his dream job in the hr big band, to which he still belongs today.

In other words, a lot of accumulated experience, countless notes played and a lot of composed pieces. But where does all this come from? Axel Schlosser's roots go back a long way into his childhood and lead directly to his cousin, who brought him into contact with New Orleans jazz and swinging arrangements at an early age. If you go even deeper, you will inevitably come across two heroes who decisively shaped his further artistic life: Louis Armstrong, nicknamed “Pops”, “Satchmo”, or simply “Satch” and Edward Kennedy Ellington, called “Duke”.

The fact that the trumpet player now, together with pianist Thilo Wagner, bassist Jean-Philippe Wadle and drummer Jean Paul Höchstädter, takes a deep bow to “Satch” and “Duke” is for him a commitment and a project close to his heart at the same time. Schlosser and co-musicians scrape off the sheen from the pieces of the masters in a witty and dignified manner. There are rarities (“Chocolate Shake”, “Down in Honky Tonk Town”, and “Big Butter And Egg Man”) and curiosities, compositions that gained the status of world hits (“Basin Street Blues” and “What A Wonderful World”), pieces that formed solid cornerstones in the repertoire of both musicians, as well as pieces from Duke Ellington's rich stock, which he recorded in a studio together with Louis Armstrong (“Portrait of Louis Armstrong”).

Axel Schlosser impressed him right from their very first contact in the hr big band, chief conductor Jim McNeely wrote in the liner notes. He is a great but also modern trumpet player with clear connections to Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Dorham, Miles Davis, Clark Terry, Kenny Wheeler and Freddie Hubbard. Important: “Axel was inspired by them, but did not just imitate them. With their help, he found his own, most remarkable voice,” is McNeely’s judgment. And then, of course, there were Armstrong and Ellington, one of whom set the example on his instrument, the other in terms of composition and big band arrangements.

Axel Schlosser has been playing through the curious and fascinating collection of melodies since the beginning of his career. However, he, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle and Jean Paul Höchstädter handle the pieces by no means with too much care, as if they were valuable museum artefacts. Instead, the quartet succeeds in letting the tradition shine through in the background, but displays a contemporary, fresh and above all authentic narrative style on the surface. Extremely entertaining, stimulating listening pleasure full of intense emotion, in which the listener may feel like he or she is in a high-tech time machine.


Inzwischen darf man ihn fast einen alten Hasen nennen, was bei einem Lebensalter von gerade mal 44 Jahren keineswegs despektierlich gemeint sein soll. Doch der Trompeter Axel Schlosser ist schon ziemlich lange im Geschäft – so lange, dass man ihn guten Gewissens zum lebenden Inventar der deutschen Jazzszene zählen darf. Doch wann ist der Mann mit dem längst unverkennbaren Trompetenton überhaupt „offiziell“ aufgetaucht?

1976 in Oberkochen geboren, kam er schon früh mit Musik in Berührung, spielte in jungen Jahren zunächst Blockflöte und Klarinette, bevor er mit Zwölf zum Flügelhorn konvertierte. Schon mit 18 – noch während der Zeit am Gymnasium – schaffte Axel den Sprung ins BuJazzO (Bundesjazzorchester) unter der Leitung von Peter Herbolzheimer sowie parallel ins JugendJazzorchester Baden-Württemberg, dessen Verantwortung in Händen von Bernd Konrad lag. Während des Studiums an der Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Mannheim ließ sich der hoffnungsvolle Nachwuchs-Trompeter unter anderem von Albert Mangelsdorff als Leadtrompeter für das Deutsch-Französische Jazzensemble verpflichten. Im Laufe einer zweijährigen Phase als Realschullehrer in München gründete Schlosser dann das Quartett „L 14/16“ und gewann damit gleich zwei Mal den Vierteljahrespreis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. 2002 schließlich fand er seinen Traumjob in der hr-Bigband, der er bis heute angehört.

Eine Menge geballter Erfahrung also, unzählige gespielte Noten und jede Menge komponierter Stücke. Doch wo kommt das alles her? Bei Axel Schlosser liegen die Wurzeln tatsächlich weit in seiner Kindheit und führen auf direktem Weg zu seinem Cousin, der ihn schon früh mit New Orleans Jazz und swingenden Arrangements in Berührung brachte. Geht man noch tiefer, dann stößt man unweigerlich auf zwei Helden, die sein weiteres künstlerisches Leben entscheidend prägten: Louis Armstrong, der auf die Spitznamen „Pops“, „Satchmo“ oder einfach „Satch“ hörte, sowie Edward Kennedy Ellington, genannt „Duke“.

Dass der Trompeter nun zusammen mit dem Pianisten Thilo Wagner, dem Bassisten Jean-Philippe Wadle und dem Schlagzeuger Jean Paul Höchstädter eine tiefe Verneigung vor „Satch“ und „Duke“ unternimmt, ist für ihn Verpflichtung und Herzensprojekt in einem. Schlosser und Co. kratzen von den Stücken der Meister launig und würdevoll die Patina ab. Dabei treten Raritäten („Chocolate Shake“, „Down In Honky Tonk Town“, „Big Butter And Egg Man“) und Kuriositäten, Kompositionen, die vorwiegend durch Armstrongs Interpretation den Status von Welthits („Basin Street Blues“, „What A Wonderful World“) erlangten, Stücke, die solide Eckpfeiler im Repertoire beider Musiker bildeten, sowie Nummern aus dem reichen Fundus von Duke Ellington, die die dieser zusammen mit Louis Armstrong im Studio einspielte („Portrait Of Louis Armstrong“), zutage.

Er sei schon vom ersten Kontakt in der hr-Bigband an beeindruckt von Axel Schlosser gewesen, schreibt deren Chefdirigent Jim McNeely in den Linernotes. Dieser sei ein großartiger, aber auch ein moderner Trompeter mit deutlichen Bezügen zu Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Dorham, Miles Davis, Clark Terry, Kenny Wheeler oder Freddie Hubbard. Wichtig dabei: „Axel ließ sich von ihnen inspirieren, ahmte sie aber nicht nur nach. Er fand mit ihrer Hilfe seine eigene, höchste bemerkenswerte Stimme“, urteilt McNeely. Und dann waren da natürlich auch Armstrong und Ellington, der eine das erklärte Vorbild an seinem Instrument, der andere in Sachen Komposition und Bigband-Arrangements.

Die eigenwillige und faszinierende Sammlung von Melodien bewegt Axel Schlosser schon seit dem Beginn seiner Karriere. Er, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle und Jean Paul Höchstädter hantieren mit den Stücken jedoch keineswegs übervorsichtig, als wären sie wie wertvolle museale Artefakte. Dem Quartett gelingt vielmehr das Kunststück, im Hintergrund die Tradition durchschimmern zu lassen, aber an der Oberfläche einen zeitgemäßen, frischen und vor allem authentischen Erzählstil zur Schau zu stellen. Ein extrem kurzweiliges, anregendes Hörvergnügen voller Herzblut, bei dem sich der Hörer wie in einer High Tech-Zeitmaschine fühlen darf.


Artist(s)

Axel Schlosser (trumpet)

Axel Schlosser is one of the best and most versatile trumpet players in Germany. Over the past 20 years, he has played in numerous big bands (Sunday Night Orchestra, Rainer Tempel Big Band, Al Porcino Big Band, Bobby Burgess Big Band Explosion, Ed Partyka Jazz Orchestra and hr-Bigband, among others) and smaller bands of traditional to modern jazz from Charly Antolini to Albert Mangelsdorff. In addition, he has conducted several of his own bands (he released the CD 'Tales From The South' with his quartet on Double Moon Records in 2013) and is a member in other bands, e.g., the quintet L 14, 16, which has won numerous awards (also at Double Moon Records: 'Elder', 2011).
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Axel Schlosser is one of the best and most versatile trumpet players in Germany. Over the past 20 years, he has played in numerous big bands (Sunday Night Orchestra, Rainer Tempel Big Band, Al Porcino Big Band, Bobby Burgess Big Band Explosion, Ed Partyka Jazz Orchestra and hr-Bigband, among others) and smaller bands of traditional to modern jazz from Charly Antolini to Albert Mangelsdorff. In addition, he has conducted several of his own bands (he released the CD "Tales From The South" with his quartet on Double Moon Records in 2013) and is a member in other bands, e.g., the quintet L 14, 16, which has won numerous awards (also at Double Moon Records: "Elder", 2011).

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Thilo Wagner (piano)

Composer(s)

Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington influenced millions of people both around the world and at home. He gave American music its own sound for the first time. In his fifty year career, he played over 20,000 performances in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East as well as Asia. Simply put, Ellington transcends boundaries and fills the world with a treasure trove of music that renews itself through every generation of fans and music-lovers. His legacy continues to live onand will endure for generations to come. Winton Marsalis said it best when he said 'His music sounds like America.' Because of the unmatched artistic heights to which he soared, no one deserved the phrase “beyond category” more than Ellington, for it aptly describes his life as well. He was...
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Duke Ellington influenced millions of people both around the world and at home. He gave American music its own sound for the first time. In his fifty year career, he played over 20,000 performances in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East as well as Asia.

Simply put, Ellington transcends boundaries and fills the world with a treasure trove of music that renews itself through every generation of fans and music-lovers. His legacy continues to live onand will endure for generations to come. Winton Marsalis said it best when he said "His music sounds like America." Because of the unmatched artistic heights to which he soared, no one deserved the phrase “beyond category” more than Ellington, for it aptly describes his life as well. He was most certainly one of a kind that maintained a llifestyle with universal appeal which transcended countless boundaries.

Duke Ellington is best remembered for the over 3000 songs that he composed during his lifetime. His best known titles include; "It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing", "Sophisticated Lady", "Mood Indigo", “Solitude", "In a Mellotone",and "Satin Doll". The most amazing part about Ellington was the most creative while he was on the road. It was during this time when he wrote his most famous piece, "Mood Indigo"which brought him world wide fame.

When asked what inspired him to write, Ellington replied, "My men and my race are the inspiration of my work. I try to catch the character and mood and feeling of my people".

Duke Ellington's popular compositions set the bar for generations of brilliant jazz, pop, theatre and soundtrack composers to come. While these compositions guarantee his greatness, whatmakes Duke an iconoclastic genius, and an unparalleled visionary, what has granted him immortality are his extended suites. From 1943's Black, Brown and Beige to 1972's The Uwis Suite, Duke used the suite format to give his jazz songs a far more empowering meaning, resonance and purpose: to exalt, mythologize and re-contextualize the African-American experience on a grand scale.

Duke Ellington was partial to giving brief verbal accounts of the moods his songs captured. Reading those accounts is like looking deep into the background of an old photo of New York and noticing the lost and almost unaccountable details that gave the city its character during Ellington's heyday, which began in 1927 when his band made the Cotton Club its home.''The memory of things gone,'' Ellington once said, ''is important to a jazz musician,'' and the stories he sometimes told about his songs are the record of those things gone. But what is gone returns, its pulse kicking, when Ellington's music plays, and never mind what past it is, for the music itself still carries us forward today.

Duke Ellington was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1966. He was later awarded several other prizes, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969, and the Legion of Honor by France in 1973, the highest civilian honors in each country. He died of lung cancer and pneumonia on May 24, 1974, a month after his 75th birthday, and is buried in theBronx, in New York City. At his funeral attendedby over 12,000 people at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Ella Fitzgerald summed up the occasion, "It's a very sad day...A genius has passed."


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Press

Wonderfully swinging and reminiscent of the great era of the incomparable Duke Ellington - that's what's behind the formation of the great trumpeter (and cornetist) Axel Schlosser. Together with the outstanding pianist Thilo Wagner and the equally great bassist Jean-Philippe Wadle as well as the elegant drummer Jean-Paul Hochstädter, the four gentlemen work their way through the Ellington/Armstrong Songbook....  
Concerto, Austria, 06-2-2021

... It is to his credit that Schlosser's homage does not turn into a copy. And so "To Satch and Duke" has become a very successful mainstream CD...
Jazzpodium, 31-1-2021

... The whole thing culminates in Ellington's "Portrait Of Louis Armstrong", which brings both legends together and is brought into the here and now by the quartet not reverently, but fresh and vital. More than a history lesson.
Jazzthing, 25-1-2021

How devotedly the quartet of trumpeter Axel Schlosser has internalized the music of two giants of African-American music is already noticeable in "In A Mellow Tone". But this homage to Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington by no means gets lost in a retrospective true to the works: each of the seventeen popular traditional themes is updated with modern jazz full of verve...
Fono Forum, 12-1-2021

... The best imaginary 'After Hours' nightclub music I've heard re-recorded in a long time....
Na Dann, 16-12-2020

... But the band doesn't play these classics, but interprets them in their own way, dusting them off in a special way, leaving their origins intact and renovating them... And - very important - it swings excellently, it is fantastic just to listen to the Rhythm Section...
Musik an sich, 09-12-2020

Play album Play album
01.
In A Mellow Tone
05:17
(Duke Ellington) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
02.
Down In Honky Tonk Town
04:32
(Chris Smith, Charles McCarron) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
03.
Big Butter And Egg Man
03:19
(Percy Vanble, Louis Armstrong) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
04.
West End Blues
04:59
(Joe , Clarence Williams) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
05.
Everybody Loves My Baby
04:03
(Spencer Williams, Jack Palmer) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
06.
Limbo Jazz
05:43
(Duke Ellington) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
07.
Struttin' With Some Barbecue
05:27
(Lil Hardin Armstrong, Don Raye) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
08.
Basin Street Blues
04:20
(Spencer Williams) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
09.
Swing That Music
03:34
(Horace Gerlach, Louis Armstrong) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
10.
Just Squeeze Me
07:04
(Duke Ellington, Lee Gaines) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
11.
Chocolate Shake
03:33
(Duke Ellington, Paul Francis Webster) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
12.
The Shepherd (Who Watches Over The Night Flock)
04:45
(Duke Ellington) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
13.
How Come You Do Me Like You Do?
03:23
(Gene Austin, Roy Bergere) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
14.
You Can Depend On Me
04:13
(Charles Carpenter, Louis Dunlap) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
15.
Caravan
05:40
(Irving Mills, Duke Ellington, Juan Tizol) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
16.
Portrait Of Louis Armstrong
06:38
(Duke Ellington) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
17.
What A Wonderful World
02:55
(George David Weiss, Bob Thiele) Axel Schlosser, Jean Paul Höchstädter, Thilo Wagner, Jean-Philippe Wadle
show all tracks

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