2023-05-28 16:00:00
Admittedly, it’s not particularly innovative to compare a music album with a journey. If the press release of Martin Listabarth’s third studio work does this, there are good reasons for it: the local pianist, together with his trio (Gidi Kalchhauser on double bass and drummer Alex Riepl), presents a loose collection of musical “postcards” – small tone poems, if you will, which once once more identify their author as a smart jazz composer and also as a subtle soloist.
The composed passages are remarkably long (for jazz standards), the harmonies are sometimes striking, the melodies are tangled, but the pieces themselves never seem brain-heavy. This is due to the variety of stylistic devices: wiry swing alternates with dark romanticism, frenzied rhythms (sometimes also in irregular meters) with set grooves. And last but not least, the abundance of tones on this Listabarth album, with which the pianist sometimes paints a nocturnal Istanbul, sometimes shimmering northern lights or a portrait of the big city bustle in Madrid, is also inspiring.
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#Jazz #Martin #Listabarth #Sounding #postcards