Subway Jazz Orchestra - Still Screaming (2020)

Still Screaming, the fourth and latest album by the Cologne Subway Jazz Orchestra, is a phenomenal narrative that not only passes on acoustic information, but also unfolds its own emotional story with each piece. This leads through a total of eight chapters of a musical reader that looks like the soundtrack for a film that has not been made. The kinematics of the big band sound body unfold in a virtuoso manner within the coordinates of time, space and speed.

The dynamic works like a sequel: With “Primal Scream” the SJO made its CD debut in 2016, now the primal scream is followed by the (self) assurance that you still like to “scream” with relish. "Still Screaming" testifies to the self-confident further development of the orchestra and is the clearly audible result of both individual and collective maturation processes. The timbres in the interplay of sheet metal and wood unfold even more self-confidently, even more diverse, the organic architecture of composition, arrangement and instrumental art condenses even more impressively as a landscape of variety of forms and complex harmony.

"Still Screaming" pours out from a cornucopia of sounds, harmonies and improvisations. Modern Big Band sound can sound so exciting, so creative, so pulsating in the full wind sound, so rich in nuances in the interaction of the instruments, so gorgeous in the soloistic freedom.

The works were all composed and arranged by the three founding members Jens Böckamp, ​​Johannes Ludwig and Stefan Karl Schmid. After seven years of continuous, joint work with the orchestra, they bundle the experiences and individual preferences in their works to form a complete work of pictorial emotionality and collective energy.