Quintet Jean Paul: Gabriel Coburger (composition, saxophon, flute), Ken Norris (vocals, lyrics on #3 & 5), Matthäus Winnitzki (piano, rhodes), Sven Kerschek (bass), Derek Scherzer (drums)
(p) Gabriel Coburger f. Z-Paradise / Label (c) wismART / Verlag: MV-NRW
The emphasis has been shifted on Bright Water, Quintet Jean-Paul’s new CD. It flows in multiple and opposing directions. On the one hand, Norris (who meanwhile teaches jazz vocals as professor at the Hamburg’s University of Fine Arts) underlines the strength of words to create images and at the same time their potential to blur these inner images. Using original texts and poems from Walt Whitman, he delivers tension to such classic contrasting ideas of modern US verse as body and soul, self and non-self, understanding and reason, nature and culture. In so doing he delineates the individual’s uninhabitable place within the consume collectivism of the (post-) industrial age. At the same time Norris underscores the music’s semantic vagaries, and its ability to free itself from the straightjacket of meaning. He accomplishes this by randomly allowing the text to sporadically trickle through the music’s accelerated energy. Too quick, too muted, too concise, to reveal their meaning, the words actually function here as a storehouse of universal secrets that can be read as an ancient oracle divining the connections between Goethe’s “Mehr Licht” and Byrne’s Stop Making Sense”.
Ken Norris’ exploration of the text’s implications is reflected in Quintet Jean-Paul’s play, personified in Gabriel Coburger. As composer and saxophonist, Coburger has systematically propelled his ideas further into the extremes. His horn sings along in smoothly bending melodies, yet he doesn’t hesitate to shout and scream when the music’s strength and depth demands. The subterranean propulsion of Sven Kerschek’s bass creates a unique balance between the sophisticated harmonic structures, the shifting modern funk rhythms, and the unconditionality that punk brings to the party. And then there is drummer Derek Scherzer’s wide-eyed reliability. He absorbs every impulse swirling around him and grounds the music’s every new turning in the kinetics of the groove. On Bright Water, Quintet Jean-Paul succeeds in squaring the circle as the compositional structures’ crystalline clarity give free reign to the music’s energetic improvisational flow. (Wismart)
CD Presse:
“Frei fließende Jazz-Improvisation mit Gesang zu verbinden, ist immer so eine Sache. Der Hamburger Saxofonist Gabriel Coburger findet jedoch überzeugende Scharniere. In seinem Quintet Jean-Paul legt er treibende Jazz-Teppiche aus, die eine gewisse informelle Nähe zu John Coltrane und mehr noch zu Michael Brecker erkennen lassen. Dem Strom seiner Musik ist aber auch eine Affinität zu kraftvollem Rock eigen, weshalb er sich hervorragend für Ken Norris´ Gesang eignet. Der Sänger verschmilzt mit dem Saxofonisten zu einem dynamischen Doppel, in dem der eine die Intentionen des jeweils anderen kongenial auffängt. Coburger singt auf seinem Horn weiter, Norris macht dem Bläser seinerseits Vorgaben. Die Größe der Platte besteht nicht allein in den individuellen Leistungen, sondern darin, dass es zu 100 Prozent Jazz ist und doch weit über den Tellerrand des Jazz hinausschaut." (Wolf Kampmann)
— JazzThing (12.2015)
