Max Frankl
72 Orchard Street
Buy / Listen
2022 / nwog 39
Line-Up:
Max Frankl
Nils Wogram
Reto Suhner
Patrick Sommer
Lionel Friedli
Zurich-based German jazz guitarist Max Frankl has already released seven albums of various stripes, won a host of awards, including the ECHO Jazz, and shared the stage or studio with a remarkable array of world-class musicians. But all of this plays no role in his eighth album, 72 Orchard Street, because Frankl confidently goes beyond zero and starts completely new. Together with trombonist Nils Wogram, saxophonist and clarinetist Reto Suhner, bassist and Guembri player Patrick Sommer and drummer Lionel Friedli, Frankl traverses very different states of sound on the album.
The fact that all these different pieces nevertheless share a common character has several reasons. On the one hand, there is the bandleader himself, who never pushes himself into the foreground. Nothing is further from his mind than a guitar album with accompaniment. Indeed, the five voices are woven into a closely meshed band sound. The star of the group is always the band itself; even the solos are never designed as individual performances, but always as colorings within the overall sound.
Another factor is a sound philosophy that, at first glance, seems very American. The fact that Frankl's teachers included the two Americans Kurt Rosenwinkel and Ben Monder, as well as Wolfgang Muthspiel, who has been based in New York for a long time, is less of a factor than a conscious decision.
Regarding the album’s titles, it is noticeable that three songs refer to places in New York, while four pieces deal with other topics. In this respect, 72 Orchard Street is half a concept album.
If one were to look for an equivalent to Frankl's music in the visual arts, it would surely be the American painter Mark Rothko, who was equal parts abstract expressionist and impressionist color psychologist; a large poster of Rothko’s work hangs on the wall of the six-string sound painter. Similar to Rothko, Frankl layers color surfaces on top of each other, from which, as soon as one immerses oneself in them, a dynamic of subtle movement emerges.
