Christoph Busse Quartet - The Velvet Gentlemen / Satie (2018)

While many classical pianists touch his musical heritage with sharp fingers, Satie experiences a little revival in the jazz scene. Christoph Busse - the observer of the best German jazz pianists - has now dedicated an entire album to the French eccentric with his quartet. "The Velvet Gentlemen" is the winking title in allusion to Satie's wardrobe, in which seven identical velvet suits hung, which Satie wore when he reached into the keys in the Parisian nightclub. For Busse and his bandmates Omar Rodriguez Calvo (double bass, inter alia, Tingvall Trio), Grammy winner Nene Vasquez (percussion) and Ray Kaczynski (drums) proved Satie's musical legacy as a treasure trove. Often it is the - for a quartet - unusual double-cast of drums and percussion, which provides for timbres of a special kind. Sometimes Conga and drums run parallel as if on rails, sometimes the Venezuelan Nene Vasquez enriches the spheres of the compositions in exactly the right place with his intermediate tones and sounds. A wonderful melange of world-jazz, quartet's own ideas and the original compositions to which professional gymnopedist Erik Satie would certainly have liked.