Harry Allen & Martin Sasse - Live At Bird's Eye (Live) (2022) Hi Res

Now, the brilliant playing of the two can be followed and enjoyed on their first joint album "Live at Bird's Eye". Together with Markus Schieferdecker and Joost van Schalk as an exquisite rhythm section, they fill the space with compositions from their own pens that are as subtly as they are complexly interpreted, but also with a clever selection of the very finest standards. What unites the four is their deep affection for the melodies of the swing era as well as the mainstream jazz of the 1950s and 1960s. Together they immerse themselves in relaxed, yet highly intense moods, sometimes rhythmically furious, sometimes in pure balladic beauty.

It is anything but a matter of course to start an album right away with an atmospheric ballad: But here it happens, and Barry Manilow's classic "When October Goes" makes an impressive statement. Nancy Wilson, Carmen McRae, Rosemary Clooney, Kevin Mahogany or Inger Maria Gundersen each interpreted Johnny Mercer's lines in their own personal way, now Harry Allen finds his very own language on the saxophone, at first almost whispered, then more and more urgent and powerful, while Sasse on the piano evokes a lyrical fantasy world of rain-soaked city streets and autumn-colored rows of trees. No less powerful in imagery and association, the cheerfully spotted Ben Webster classic "See You at the Fair" from 1964 and the rather rarely played "Step Right Up," with which Oliver Nelson, as composer, arranger and conductor, opened the Count Basie album "Afrique" in 1971, glow. A special place is given to "Blue Skies" by Irving Berlin: The standard from the 1920s, famous thanks to singers such as Josephine Baker, Ella Fitzgerald and - decades later - Cassandra Wilson, rises here elegantly from broom-accompanied cautiousness to cheerful, occasionally "weird" intensity. Involuntarily, one would like to sing along with the lyrics: "Blue Skies/Smiling at me/Nothing but blue skies/Do I See..."

Organically grown, the original compositions of Martin Sasse and Harry Allen fit into the album, shifting tempos, moods and atmospheres again and again in a new and sophisticated way, swinging and grooving, straight and cool, soulful and sensitive - a captivating mixture of blues- and swing-saturated floating matter!