Benjamin Schaefer / Quiet Fire
Quiet Fire
Buy / Listen
2015 / nwog 013
Line-Up:
Benjamin Schaefer – Piano
James Wylie – Alto Saxophone
Kathrin Pechlof – Harp
Igor Spallati – Bass
Max Andrzejewski – Drums
A wonderful romantic album full of surprises by pianist and composer Benjamin Schaefer and his quintet. The harp adds a warm and special colour to the bandsound. New and personal piano jazz beyond the everage clichees. A little master piece.
Photo: Lutz Voigtländer
Quiet Fire features five of the most exciting voices on the young european jazz scene. The extraordinary quintet explores a wide range of tension grades and emotional states between "quiet" and "fire", going about their quest with "quiet fire". The band loves the storm as much as the calm before it, it embraces certainties before joyously throwing them overboard, it creates timeless beauty for the fading moment. Its goal is to create music that is as rich in content as it is emotionally accessible.
The group's repertoire consists mainly of originals by pianist Benjamin Schaefer, combining his love for composing with a lust for experiment and spontaneous interaction. The 34-year-old treasures making group music as conversing in an abstract language. For his latest conversation, he opens musical rooms for five fascinating personalities to unfold, challenge and support each other. The band notably features the harp, a very special instrument not often heard in a jazz context. Just like a piano, the harp can be used for melodic, harmonic and rhythmic playing alike, thus offering a whole new set of possibilities for the group.
"Benjamin Schaefer is a master of contrast. 'Quiet Fire' combines abstraction and concrete harmony, free, experimental playing and clear-cut arrangement in one artistic concept without any contradictions. (…) From this, Schaefer develops a fascinating and ambitious sonic narrative, inviting you to listen closely."
- Ralf Dombrowski, AUDIO (1/2016)
"The album is full of quirks and surprises. (…) Quiet Fire combines five highly individual voices of the young European jazz scene, the music leaves enough space for each of them and forms a visionary whole in which an intensely luminous calmness unfolds. The music's time-feel is casual in an exciting way, the sonic threads are finely spun, yet sustainable, and the whole band is a wonderful introverted surprise."
- Hans-Jürgen Linke, Jazzthetik (11+12/2015)
"Benjamin Schaefer has long developed his own musical identity in European jazz. In his strikingly poetic and original compositions he has created a very singular set of acoustic colours."
- Jana Heinlein, Deutschlandfunk (12/2015)
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