Andreas Willers In The North - Btl10196 - Jazz - by Between The Lines

One of the most convincing talents on the contemporary German jazz scene is the versatile Andreas Willers with his strong chamber-music orientation. Willers has already been presented by between the lines with his “Tin Drum Stories“ (btl 009), inspired by the Günter Grass novel “The Tin Drum“. Without a place or workshop for continuous work, a young artist has no future. This is why btl immediately arranged another production with Willers. This time it was to be a hommage to Jimmy Giuffre. In actual fact, however, “In the North“ goes beyond Giuffre’s dissolution of traditional patterns, penetrating far into the desolate realm of the second-hand existences of our age. Just listen to the spacious expanses and desert-like isolation of the title piece or the tonelessly breathed interludes of trombonist Yves Robert in the subtly de-constructed Giuffre classic “The Train & the River“ – like a meeting of people whose worst expectations of the future have come true. Art, it is true, is a reaction to its time, and this is very clear from the cleverly fragmented “Motif“ or the eerily beautiful “Glaswerk“ as well from a ghostly and very brief version of Giuffre‘s “Gotta Dance“, which breaks off abruptly. Like Giuffre’s legendary groups without drums, this line-up dispenses with drums of any sort, and pianist Paul Bley provides an original link to the – meanwhile historical – trio Giuffre / Bley / Swallow, while the virtuoso Willers and Yves Robert follow – in the widest sense of the word –Giuffre’s irresistible cooperation with Jim Hall and Bob Brookmeyer. Just listen to the flashes of genius by Bley in “Face Two“ or the dark, air-filled sound of Yves Robert in Bley’s tremendous ballad “Carla“, or the inspired nimbleness of all the players in ”Motion“. We are presented here mostly with intimate, low-key stories. But they certainly tell us more about where and how we are than much of the blaring, sycophantic stamping produced by the entertainment industry.