This repertoire was written, rehearsed, played almost from within, at a time when the health crisis was keeping us apart, preventing us from transmitting. We had to keep the energy necessary for the music to be able to build itself, to continue to give meaning to our lives beyond what was necessary.
These engraved tracks, therefore fixed at a given moment, but also open as many territories to be explored were essential to project ourselves in the aftermath, that of the return of the stage.
Listening to this album, one discovers a fluid but fortunately sinuous universe, which is part of the history of jazz, of what it says about the times without ever trying to say about the past.
It all started with long improvisations from which the main motifs were extracted like so many pretexts, like so many beacons, landmarks in the harmful ambient fog, as if to better reach the shores hoped for in such moments of uncertainty: "Say, what is the future?"
The counterpoint in the writing for viola and tenor clearly speaks of the connivance of the protagonists and beyond, of the perfect interplay between the five sides of this peaceful pentagon that shared the Berlin stage together for years.
To conclude these few words, impressions, I would like to salute the sound of the ensemble, the quality of its collective interpretation and in particular to marvel at the sound of the tenor, that of Musina Ebobissé: strongly timbred, deep in all registers, it is the mark of great instrumentalists and, beyond that, of musicians who go to the essential.
 

Philippe Ochem, Jazzdor

RELEASE ON 31 MARCH, 2023

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