Christof Lauer & NDR Bigband - Petite Fleur (2014) [Hi-Res]

„It is the authenticity, music constantly on the move, full of energy, lightness, and melancholia, that I find so fascinating about Sidney Bechet. His spirit, which transforms music into wonderful images, seduced me to delve into his cosmos. Given a contemporary arrangement by Rainer Tempel and played by a large band, a unique dynamic emerged that makes Bechet's music seem timeless.“ (Christof Lauer)

Only very few of today's Jazz musicians and fans still know who Sidney Bechet is: one of the founding fathers of Jazz. He played the soprano saxophone like no other, and with his French-Creole-inspired compositions, he was a forerunner of Jazz's openness to all musical styles. More than ten years ago, ACT owner Siggi Loch, whose passion for Jazz was aroused by a Bechet concert that he attended at the age of 15, asked Christof Lauer whether he could imagine doing a project that focused on this Jazz pioneer. What Loch was hoping for was an entirely new way of looking at the genius of this New Orleans native, born in 1897, interpreted by someone from a Free-Jazz background who had developed his unmistakable sound playing with Albert Ayler and Stan Getz, collaborating with the Frankfurt School of Albert Mangelsdorff and Heinz Sauer, and working with American Jazz musicians and the French avant-garde around Michel Godard and Marc Ducret. In a similar way, the collaboration had also become more intense with Rainer Tempel in recent times, one of Germany's leading bigband arrangers and composers, who also works for the NDR Bigband. It was with him that Lauer revisited the subject of Sidney Bechet, 'and I found myself relating to Siggi Loch's idea as a bigband thing, because Rainer knows how I play and how you can realize a project like that. And because he always totally engrosses himself in every venture he commits to.'

'Petite Fleur' was recorded in four days in the studio. Unmistakable Bechet classics appear in an entirely new light thanks to Lauer's distinctive tone and the multilayered arrangements. Sidney Bechet's typical vibrato is replaced by Lauer's intense and expressive sound, which can draw long lines just as readily as swirling garlands. And so Bechet's sound cosmos is given new clothes, with Lauer, Tempel and the NDR Bigband intelligently and profoundly interpreting the contrasts that lie between the lines in these catchy and emotional tunes: on standards that Bechet lent his inimitable signature to, such as Harry Barris' 'Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams' and 'On The Sunny Side Of The Street'; but even more so on his own famous songs from his Paris period, from the title track 'Petite Fleur' to 'Les Oignons' through to the Magrebinian-influenced 'Casbah - Song of the Medina'.

Christof Lauer, soprano & tenor saxophone
Hubert Nuss, piano
Patrice Héral, drums
NDR Bigband
Rainer Tempel, conductor

Recorded at Studio 1 at NDR Hamburg, 16.09. - 20.09.2013, except September recorded by Hrólfur Vagnsson at Kehreinstudio Frankfurt, 02.04.2014
Engineered by Michael Plötz
Tonmeister: Hrólfur Vagnsson
Mixed by Sven Kohlwage
Mastered by Klaus Scheuermann