Jürgen Friedrich Large Ensemble
Semi Song
Buy / Listen
2022 / nwog043
Line-Up:
Jürgen Friedrich (composition)
Pablo Held (piano)
David Helm (bass)
Fabian Arends (drums)
Nils Wogram, Shannon Barnett, Moritz Wesp (trombone)
Jan Schreiner (bass trombone / tuba)
Chris Mehler, Bastian Stein, John-Dennis Renken, Matthias Bergmann (trumpet / flugelhorn)
Johannes Ludwig (alto sax / soprano sax / clarinet / flute / alto flute / piccolo)
Leo Huhn (alto sax / clarinet / electronics)
Sebastian Gille (tenor sax / soprano sax / clarinet / flute)
Uli Kempendorff (tenor sax / clarinet)
Steffen Schorn (baritone sax / bass clarinet / c melody sax / bass flute / contra alto clarinet / tubax)
Some musical works open themselves up immediately. You listen once and know what you have. And then there are those that arouse your curiosity, want to be heard again and again until they reveal more and more of themselves from the depth of their own center, in order to manifest their overwhelming complexity in the end. Jürgen Friedrich’s large-scale program Semi Song, recorded by his Large Ensemble, belongs to the latter.
Semi Song is more akin to one of those epic TV series of the present whose narrative depth of field often goes far beyond the format of a singular film. In each piece on the album, Jürgen Friedrich describes a self-contained story that is, nevertheless, directly related to all the other pieces on the program.
The plot and dramaturgy of all these pieces are absolutely unpredictable. When a composition begins, the music does not tell us where the journey is going. Different components – of colorfulness, density, dynamics and melodicism – seek new paths in each piece. At the end of each track, the music aspires to find a balance between all its creative elements, just as a circle is closed at the end of the entire suite.
Semi Song is a musical palimpsest in which new layers of perception keep unfolding.
If we want to stay with the image of a filmmaker, Friedrich provides script, scenery and costumes, but leaves it to the actors to fill the plot with life according to their liking within the given framework. In other words, the respective soloist is situationally the bandleader.
Jürgen Friedrich's Large Ensemble is not a big band, but rather an orchestra. There are neither the typical brass salvos, nor an omnipresent rhythm carpet. Friedrich exploits the complete spectrum of an orchestra and also allows himself the time necessary to do so. In times of crisis, Semi Song is a stroke of luck, because the work reminds us that art – no matter how much it may have eavesdropped on life – can also be a triumphant luxury. A luxury that makes no claim to exclusivity, but simply reveals itself for what it is: a great, extensive and celebratory festival of the senses.
