Frank Delle Trio - Enso (2020)

Enso - after a circular symbol from Japanese calligraphy, Frank Delle names the album, in which he brings the quick agility of his trio to the common denominator of the NDR Big Band. Enso stands for the universe, for strength and elegance as well as for the balance between irregularity and symmetry - you can easily recognize the aesthetic idea in this language picture: how big and small merge, strength in delicacy, flexibility in color splendor results from this the polarity between the big band, a powerhouse of musical colors, and the trio as the most fluid form of interaction, the musical world of the passionate saxophonist Frank Delle. By putting the extreme poles of his musical world under tension, he makes himself known as an individualist with his own vision.

While working as a saxophonist in the NDR big band week after week - surrounded by first-class music colleagues - working on new material at the highest musical level and in increasingly complex arrangements that continue the continuum of jazz history, Frank Delle enjoys in his trio with the Cologne team Robert Landfermann on double bass and Jonas Burgwinkel on drums, the opportunity to break open the structures of the music and spin it out in all possible directions. With these two musicians, who represent something like the gold standard for open-pore interplay in German jazz, he celebrates the high school of spontaneous interaction and improvisation without a safety net.

In order to outline a musical space in which the two spheres vibrate together, Frank Delle chose Geir Lysne, the musical director of the NDR Big Band, as an ideal partner and arranger. Lysne is known for being able to convert contrasts like that between the overwhelming force and color splendor of the large format and the fragile mobility of the trio into dynamic energy and imaginatively luminous timbres like no other.

Delle, born 1966 and raised in Bremerhaven, is a musician who knows how to combine passion and pragmatism without harming either side. The decision to strive for a professional position as a trained musical instrument dealer was pragmatic, the passionate urge to get closer to the content of the music. He studied saxophone in Hamburg and earned an excellent reputation as a saxophonist who is as playful and flexible as he is responsive and expressive, with the urge to dig deeper into music. For more than 20 years he has been playing in the NDR Bigband, one of the world's most famous radio big bands for public service broadcasting in Germany.