Nils Wogram & Simon Nabatov

Moods & Modes

Buy / Listen

2011 / nwog 002

Line-Up:

Nils Wogram – Trombone

Simon Nabatov – Piano

Sometimes something quite difficult, once it has been accomplished, gives the impression that it is actually very simple – this is a certain sign that it has succeeded. The duo CD, Moods and Modes of the Nils Wogram/Simon Nabatov duo, trombone and piano, can be considered completely successful in this sense. A great sense of lightness, a poised matter-of-factness dominates in the most difficult terrain. There is a pulsing, constantly changing and never dwindling intensity of interaction, a wonderfully balanced sense of separate and together, and always an emphatic duality.

Photo: Promo

Moods & Modes begins far above, hurries there, then emerges a floor below and finally lands on its feet, where Simon Nabatov waits with his emphatically structured left, a quick tone sequence; piano and trombone get caught in each other melodically in order to have enough time, despite the haste, not to have to wait for each other. But then it takes a little time until things can slow down a bit.

What was difficult about it? In contemporary jazz, there is nothing more difficult than a duo. In a duo one has to do everything oneself, even when that sounds at first like a paradox. The smallest possible group acts like a magnifying glass, which enlarges everything one does and makes it completely unavoidable. As soon as one stop doing everything – indeed, everything that should happen – one leaves the duo partner high and dry, who then also has to do everything himself.