While Americans Bob Stewart and Howard Johnson gave the tuba its rightful place in twentieth-century jazz, French tuba player and snare drummer Michel Godard has taken the instrument into unexpected realms in Europe. He readily traverses the paths of jazz and classical music, and his explorations have led him to some highly eclectic and rich musical associations. His Franco-German trio with pianist Florian Weber and drummer Anne Paceo may come as a surprise, given how unusual it is for a piano and percussion instruments to be led by a tuba, but it is the powerful bass instrument that sets the rhythm and drives the music on a journey into unsuspected worlds of sound.

 

While some French audiences only recently discovered him in Michel Portal's quintet, the flamboyant German trombonist Nils Wogram is anything but unknown. Active on all fronts of European jazz for nearly 25 years, he is now, at the prime of his 50s, establishing himself not only as an undisputed master of the instrument but also – at the head of his Roots 70 quartet – as one of the most brilliant leaders and composers of his generation. Drawing his inspiration as much from the cool American jazz of the 60s as from free improvisation or the most complex and refined Western academic music, he distils, with a blend of lyrical suavity and playful sophistication, a hybrid music that is at once sensual, deliciously groovy and subtly experimental.  
 

Jazzpassage: Franco-German evenings programmed in partnership with Kulturbüro Offenburg / With the support of AJC