Johannes Barthelmes, Uli Lenz - Trane's Tree (1993)

Tracklist

01. Anita
02. Steam
03. Love Channel
04. At Least
05. Naima
06. Trane's Tree
07. Passive Tolerance

This album grew out of a live performance in Berlin where the duo of saxophonist Johannes Barthelmes and pianist Uli Lenz played a program of music dedicated to great influences who had passed on but were still living in sound. That program included Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Fats Waller, Art Tatum, and a few others. Here, in trying to incorporate their discoveries into a studio recording, some things were kept and others were left out (for one, only one of the Coltrane pieces survived, "Naima," of course). Supplanted in this mix are Archie Shepp's classic "Steam" and a host of originals. The originals are beautiful, there can be no doubt. Mostly ballads, they show a surprisingly intimate and warm interplay that evokes the spirit of Coltrane's balladry and an intricate, gradually developing tension that is resolved and begun continually, such as on "Anita," "Love Channel," and the title track. Neither player is particularly interested in being a soloist per se, but in engaging the other to smooth out the rough edges to a point where the music becomes almost pastoral, rising from the ether fully formed and lilting, drifting on the air and disappearing only to emote once more. An exception, of course, is "Steam." Here Lenz creates the intervallic structure and tempo at a furious tempo and Barthelmes careens right into the middle with Shepp's unmistakable melody that calls to mind Basie, Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, and even Tatum. Barthelmes' tone isn't as meaty and prophetically insistent as Shepp's, but so much the better as he takes the bluesier angle in the tune and turns it into an elegant, if lightning-quick dance of rhythmic shifts and turns. In all this is a deeply satisfying recording of a duo whose symbiotic musical relationship is all too rare.

Piano – Uli Lenz
Tenor Saxophone – Johannes Barthelmes

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