Some musical constellations are so obvious that the question
arises why they hadn’t become reality long ago. And when they finally do see
the light of day, they appear so familiar to us as if we’d known them for ages.
One of these constellations is the duo formed by the Berlin trumpeter Till
Brönner and the Freiburg bass player Dieter Ilg. They are, in the full sense,
soul-mates, no matter how threadbare the term might sound. They often seek to
do the very same thing on their antithetical instruments, even if they express
it in quite different ways. As a result, they fit each other to a tee. This
osmosis is now plain to hear on their joint début album, Nightfall.
In recent years some people have been able to savour the
privilege of hearing the Brönner-Ilg duo live. Both musicians have long
numbered among the major protagonists of German and European jazz. Brönner has
recorded albums in a very wide range of formations, worked as a producer for
artists as varied as film diva Hildegard Knef and baritone Thomas Quasthoff,
plunged into spontaneous live performances with free jazzers such as Baby
Sommer and Christian Lillinger and played in the White House at the invitation
of Barack Obama. In the 1990s Ilg discovered German folk song for jazz,
supported musicians such as Randy Brecker, Charlie Mariano or Nguyen Le with
his sonorous, thoughtful but always uncommonly open-minded delivery, and played
in the legendary quintet with Albert Mangelsdorff and Wolfgang Dauner. When Ilg
and Brönner happen to meet, they bring together not only a chapter of jazz
history and lots of jazz stories, but a good part of the future.
For all their personal fame, these two never strike the
attitude of two superstars at a summit meeting. They’re simply two musicians
who have a lot to say to each other. That’s why they took their time before
entering the studio, and why they take their time when playing. A good story
needs time to unfold and breathe. It wants to be spelled out and filled with
life. But it also wants to be heard. Brönner and Ilg don’t rush from one
musical climax to another, but let their stories come as they will. The most
important thing is what they have to say and how they say it. Instead of melody
line and accompaniment, they prefer a balanced dialogue on an equal footing at
every moment. The nature of their instruments ensures that Brönner’s part is
perhaps a bit more lithe and pliant, and Ilg’s a bit more forceful. But every
tone has weight and stands for itself, a mirror reflection of its counterpart.
The choice of pieces is sufficient proof that the musicians
did not want to pin themselves down to a fixed classification or pigeonhole. If
jazz was ever an expression of individual liberty, then this independence is
manifest here, devoid of myths, in their approach to the material and their
spontaneous treatment of it. Anything can be done if you only want to do it,
and Brönner and Ilg certainly do. Songs by Leonard Cohen, the Beatles and
Britney Spears, pieces by Jerome Kern, Johnny Green and Ornette Coleman,
compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach and Melchior Vulpius, even a few
creations of their own: the range of intentions and influences on display is
almost unparalleled. In each song the two men find inventive new angles and
perspectives. There aren’t any solos in the classical jazz sense. As in any
good conversation that unfolds naturally, the lines of argument fall now on one
side, now on the other. The flow of thoughts is completely free. It’s pressed
here into a narrow riverbed only to expand a moment later into a broad delta.
On Nightfall, Brönner and Ilg open up limitless realms of
association for the listener. They make it easy for their recipients to enter
the dialogue. Depending on the time of day or year, the songs cast completely
different shadows. There’s no “just-the-two-of-us” mood that so often turns
jazz duos into affairs for so-called aficionados. Nightfall is exactly what it
is, and nothing else. Dyed-in-the-wool jazz fans will see themselves reflected
in the light-heartedness of this interchange no less than young pop listeners
who may never have come into contact with a jazz album.
Nightfall is many things at once. It’s a début album and, at
the same time, the fruit of a long and intensive collaboration between two
great storytellers. It’s at once a consummation, a stocktaking and a promise
for the future. It’s a resolute dismissal of entrenched prejudices and a
passionate affirmation of the freedom and miracle of jazz. The organic blend of
willful abandon and understatement celebrated on this album is anything but
run-of-the-mill. Not least of all, the album is a refreshing counterfoil in the
age of perfectionism. It projects the cathartic discovery that no matter how
much one has achieved in life, it’s always worth starting from scratch, over
and over again. And if proof is needed, here it is!
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