Tilo Weber, Almut Kühne - Five Fauns (2024) [Hi-Res]

The aesthetic sound of FIVE FAUNS is the focus and is fed by the counterpoint of the Renaissance and Baroque. This music is sensual and transparent. Singer Almut Kühne is featured in this quintet by drummer and composer Tilo Weber. It is all about the most famous of all song themes, love, with unusual lyrics, from the Bible’s Song of Songs or from Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula alike.

Tilo Weber stands in striking contrast to a Jazz environment often oriented towards “serious music”. With his spiritual penetration of sound progressions, he reaches back from the Baroque to the Middle Ages, carrying with him his own compositions on the album. The oldest piece on the recording goes back to Guillaume de Machaut, a French successor of the Troubadours and representative of the Ars Nova in the 14th century. What fascinates our drummer about the music of the Middle Ages is precisely its gripping topicality, heightened by the focus of meta-epochal impartiality. What should be impossible – at least without concessions in one direction or the other – is managed by the quartet with remarkable ease. Everything flows into the sea of feelings and associations exactly where it needs to. The unifying element of all the pieces is their extraordinary festiveness (in any sense of the word). It is a celebration of music, a celebration of the senses, a celebration of internalization and a celebration of every single note played here. There is something startlingly familiar about even the most abstract idea in Weber’s compositions and arrangements. No prerequisites are needed to feel immediately at home in this record.

Line up:
Almut Kühne – vocals
Claudio Puntin – clarinet
Richard Koch – trumpet
James Banner – bass
Tilo Weber – drums, compositions

Tracklist:
1.01 - Tilo Weber - Song of Solomon (3:43)
1.02 - Tilo Weber - Postulate (4:11)
1.03 - Tilo Weber - Uppon La Mi Re (4:02)
1.04 - Tilo Weber - Hanacpachap Cussicuinin (4:06)
1.05 - Tilo Weber - La peine dure que tant j'endure (6:33)
1.06 - Tilo Weber - Rouse My Heart (4:49)
1.07 - Tilo Weber - Gentle as a Faun (7:26)
1.08 - Tilo Weber - I Too Can Love (4:54)