Trieders Holz - Vertraute Orte (2023)

“The flute was still classified under ‘other instruments’ as late as the 1950s.” That’s how the chapter about this instrument begins in Joachim-Ernst Berendt’s well-known book about jazz. Conni Trieder ist not bothered by this outsider status, on the contrary: she chooses to double the instrument in her quartet 'Trieders Holz’, which also features bass clarinet and double bass. And if you talk to her, it becomes clear she leaves no room for doubt that the flute is at the center of her work.

With herself on alto flute, Quentin Coppalle on soprano flute, Leonhard Huhn on bass clarinet and Athina Kontou on double bass, the band highlights the commitment of the bandleader to her re-positioning of the role of the flute in improvised music, going further than just adding a few new colours here and there. In utilising this unusual instrumentation, she creates harmony from layers of dissonance; allowing her chamber music-style jazz to blossom in rich tonal colours. Beautiful melodies alternate with free outbursts; sometimes advancing at a fast pace, only to pause again and celebrate the moment.

The two flutes can sometimes be beguiling, but then again powerful and gripping.

There is something else that makes ‘Vertraute Orte’ (Familiar Places) so special: the inclusion of spoken word passages, written by Conni Trieder about her childhood in Halle and recited by ac-tress Mareike Hein. Sometimes taunting, sometimes transfigured in the serrated, sepia-tinted rear-view mirror, she finds beautiful images to describe how easy it was in those days to capture happiness.
The adventures of children are evoked in an attic, going down Galgenberg mountain, in the two parts of Brüderstraße, or in the wild, sprawling greenhouse. Whether by foot or bike, the joy of children visiting the trusted places of Halle on the Saale river are no different from those in any other city.

Poetry and music form a unity here that never seems forced. The multiphonics of the flutes can rejoice, revel, whisper but also become loud and angry. The spectrum is broad and colourful.
Lyrics and sounds allow time for each other, stand apart and yet drift into one another, as if each of the elements were an interpreter for the other; enabling the beautiful moments to linger.