Gnigler Straight On Downstairs 2nd Door Left - Bce16004 - Jazz - by Col Legno

Founded in 2013 by the young Austrian saxophonist Jakob Gnigler, the sextet has created its own musical world, full of the unexpected and the unpredictable. The individual versus the collective, composition versus improvisation, listening habits versus artistic intention – everywhere contrasts are celebrated, established thought patterns questioned, hierarchies upended. The result of these musical ground erosions, fault lines, shifting of tectonic plates, is not experimental chamber music, not (free) jazz, not new music. It is all of these together. The Gnigler musicians say: “We play without being ruled by the question of may, might and should”. Or, to put it more exactly, “The balance is held between both positions – ‘nothing’s happening’ and ‘everything’s happening’.” In the end, then, no one knows what is coming next. And a good thing, too.