The band is stocked half-and-half with musicians from Germany and New Zealand, and its name initially sounds like a musical program with a 1970s orientation. The warm, forthcoming interweavings of the two wind players as well as of the wind and rhythm sections indeed prompts the suspicion that the sound of the 1970s or late 1960s would constitute a starting point. According to Wogram the music does not, however, draw its tension from the contradiction between tradition and avant-garde, but from the personal perspectives of the musicians. “We’re not concerned with a coming to terms with the past. The idea was to form a band with people who had already known each other for a long time. Musicians from New Zealand and Germany can have completely similar roots and working methods. Hayden, Jochen, and I have known each other since the beginning of the 1990s from Cologne. Matt and Hayden actually went to school together, and Jochen met Matt separately in New York. So there are a lot of cross connections in the band. We were all born in the 1970s. Hence the ‘root.’”
It isn’t hard for Root 70 to transform personal convictions into a homogenous band sound. Rarely has a band achieved a similar ease of tone given such collective intensity. The ensemble spirit of the quartet initially feeds on the great mutual respect the four musicians have for one another. It’s true, the pieces are written exclusively by Wogram, but when played together they become the joint property of the group. “We try not to perform as four individual musicians,” admits the trombonist, “but rather to create a sound where the individual voices can mix well. We have worked on that for years. We have learned to exhaust the various mixture ratios that exist within the band.”
The magic formula is “a culture of sound.” The band sound is more than the sum of the individual parts. The superior musical prowess of the four Root members can hardly be more unobtrusively presented than it is on Fahrvergnügen. Wogram and co. do not set performance goals that they have to reach but rather place their instruments solely in the service of the music. And suddenly they tease the listener into remembering: Ah, yes, jazz isn’t an athletic discipline after all, where maximum performance is what matters, but rather music. Wogram is a trombonist out of conviction, but he never wanted “to give priority to the technical difficulties. I want to be able to play everything that I hear. We have all worked really hard on bringing in our interests in other music and other instruments. Hayden is a globetrotter who has traveled to eastern Europe, India, and Africa and studied the music of these places. Jochen programs electronic music, and Matt has not only taken a serious look at the work of other bass players but of other instrumentalists as well.”
Thus it is not least in the handling of its solos that Root 70 reveals where its musical ambitions lie. Only a very few solos are perceived as solo efforts at all. They are rather individual shades of an entire network of constellations that are feasible in this band. The generosity with which Wogram hands over his material to his band members is reminiscent of the greatest moments in jazz. “In this regard Ellington, Mingus, and Miles act as major role models for me. They let the musicians play without explaining too much. Most of the time the result sounds better than what I originally came up with.”
There is no question that the four members of Root 70 are able to also pursue solo paths outside the band. From a purely business point of view a band arrangement in jazz is more of a hindrance, for when you’ve done all the festivals and clubs once, it is much harder as a band to be invited again than it would be under the names of individual musicians. But Wogram and Co. is much more interested in the reaction to long-term artistic challenges. “The advantage of a band consists in being so used to and so good at playing together that you can develop a sound that is completely your own over a long time. In short projects or sessions all those participating put on a big show, but often depth is lacking. With a band, the sports-like aspect no longer applies. You can try out far more unusual things. In Root 70 we are able, for example, to work a lot with uneven rhythms, like in eastern European music, or with Indian intonations. These things are brought in so subtly that they don’t really stand out at all. That’s only possible, of course, if you’ve worked together for many years.”
Fahrvergnügen, German for “driving pleasure,” is without reservation a listening pleasure. A record that appeals to the intellect only after it has reached the ear. Jazz that you don’t have to think about but can engage with and devote your attention to. Music full of character, strength, warmth, and a love of detail. Jazz with music and music with jazz."
Intuition Release Info
Root 70, Heaps Dub (Nonplace)
Not only my favorite album of 2006; this is probably one of my favorite albums of the last five years. The backstory is almost too clever for its own good: jazz quartet arranges and performs the music of Burnt Friedman and Flanger (Friedman's collaborative hyperjazz project with Atom Heart), then turns over the tapes to Friedman himself, who remixes it all in a dizzying game of round-robin. But there's nothing pretentious or cutesy about the final product, which simply offers 10 tracks of dizzyingly expressive fare. It's the kind of album that makes you think about music in the way you think about language, raising ideas about logic, communication, abstraction, games, connotation, secrets and hints. The playing is wildly accomplished: virtuosic without calling undue attention to its own virtuosity, it's muscular, tender, and brilliantly nuanced. Bonus points for the fact that every track on the album is exactly five minutes long, and yet you'd never know it from listening alone. (I didn't figure out that factoid until after about 20 listens, when I happened to glance at the "Time" column in iTunes; I thought there must be some kind of database error, but no. Mr. Friedman, you are a cheeky bastard.) More bonus points: Nils Wogram's trombone solo on the closing "Nightbeat" is simply the most perfect 24 bars of music this year.
PHILIP SHERBURN
