More Than Four - Keep the Beauty (2022) [Hi-Res]

After two brilliant concerts by the newly founded band More Than Four at the turn of the year 2021/2022, the first album "Keep The Beauty" now follows with 15 tracks in the field of jazz & lyric. With one exception, all of them are brand new and proven original compositions from the band's premiere concert.

Keep the Beauty is the title track of the new album. It is a composition by bassist Florian Döling, an urgent appeal to preserve the so vulnerable beauty of our planet. In correspondence with the lyrics recited by Petra Gack, the other titles also take up sensitive current topics of our common and yet so torn world.

The quartet "More Than Four" is not a new formation. Behind it are four thoroughbred musicians who are known throughout the region: Saxophonist Mike Schweizer, composer and pianist Albrecht Haaf, drummer Rolf Kilchling and last but not least composer and double bass player Florian Döling. The four musical veterans were already on stage together in their student days.

The Freiburg musician and actress Petra Gack is known for writing and performing her own works, among others in the Alte Klavierdepot in the Breisgau metropolis. In the course of her thirty-year career, she has toured all over Germany and performed at the city theatres of Heidelberg and Freiburg, among others. She enriches the repertoire with poetry and literature from four centuries.

"The story of the band More Than Four is told relatively quickly: In the summer of 2021, Albrecht Haaf took the initiative to organise two concerts at the turn of the year 2021/2022 under the motto "Don't get tired". After telephone calls to us, all of whom had been his musician colleagues for many years, the band was quickly assembled, driven by the prospect of finally being able to play in front of an audience again after almost one and a half years of a Corona-related cultural (live) drought. Thanks to his good contacts, the Martinskirche in Müllheim/Baden was a wonderfully suitable concert venue. We are grateful that the concerts could actually take place in the Martinskirche, which seemed increasingly unlikely in the last few metres. Until the very end, a cancellation was on the cards. In the end, the concerts took place, not quite as we had hoped in the summer - without masks and without too strict conditions - but they were still two moving concerts in a sold-out church, still under the project name "Happy New (Y)ear Quartet".

The premiere programme consisted of original compositions and subjectively selected songs by well-known musical companions and inspirations, and was partly in the tradition of combining jazz music with lyricism.

Petra Gack, recitation
Mike Schweizer, soprano and tenor saxophone, bass clarinet
Albrecht Haaf, piano, flutes
Florian Döling, double bass
Rolf Kilchling, drums, percussion