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383: LISBETH QUARTETT. Release

Intakt Recording #383/ 2022

Charlotte Greve: Saxophone, Composition
Manuel Schmiedel: Piano
Marc Muellbauer: Bass
Moritz Baumgärtner: Drums

Recorded on November 30 and December 1, 2021, at Fattoria Musica, Osnabrück, by Nanni Johansson & Frida Claeson Johansson.

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Original price CHF 12.00 - Original price CHF 30.00
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CHF 12.00 - CHF 30.00
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Format: Compact Disc
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With Release, the highly acclaimed Lisbeth Quartett presents a greatly anticipated album on Intakt Records. After twelve years and five albums, Charlotte Greve, who has just been awarded the German Jazz Prize for “Artist of the Year”, has relied on her intuitive sensibilities to create the new mu- sic for Release. The result is an album marked by sensitive interplay – a collection of stunningly subtle and melodically pronounced songs that are both gentle and powerfully fluid. Even if the musicians are across the world in Berlin or New York City, all traveling and working on their respective proj- ects, they seem to meld and blend with ease because of their history together and their knowledge of each other’s instrumental styles. “They have all cultivated the ability to play their instruments gently and cleanly aligning with the style of even sounds and tone they have refined throughout their journeys together. Twelve years is a long time and the span of thousands of moments that they have shared having brought them to where they are today, working as a unit, cre- ating new music in this post-modern era and continuing their legacy as a leading band in the international jazz landscape”, writes Jordannah Elizabeth in the liner notes.

Album Credits

Cover photo: Tracy Maurice
Graphic design: Fiona Ryan
Liner notes: Jordannah Elizabeth
Photo: Dovile Sermokas

All compositions by Charlotte Greve except “Le Mistral” by Marc Muellbauer. Recorded on November 30 and December 1, 2021, at Fattoria Musica, Osnabrück, by Nanni Johansson & Frida Claeson Johansson. Mixed on February 15, 2022, by Martin Ruch at Control Room, Berlin. Mastered on February 21, 2022, by Martin Ruch at Control Room, Berlin. Produced and published by Intakt Records.



Customer Reviews

Based on 19 reviews
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M
Matty Bannond
The Free Jazz Collective

Emotional reactions to the pandemic have had a big impact on artistic output in the last two years – but new music for 2022 is different. These albums were conceived and recorded in a time of relief and cautious optimism, as lockdowns lifted. And that delicate, hopeful spirit is at the heart of Release by Lisbeth Quartett.

The band is led by multi-award-winning saxophonist and composer Charlotte Greve. It features Manuel Schmiedel on piano, Marc Muellbauer on bass and Moritz Baumgärtner on drums. They started playing together in 2009 and Release is their fifth album.

“We did a streaming gig in lockdown and it was really special,” says Greve. “Everything felt so connected, even though we hadn’t performed together for a couple of years. I started thinking… let’s keep it going, let’s make another record. But what feels honest and genuine? What’s our strength?”

Swamps

One major strength of the compositions on Release is their meandering, exploratory character. On Bayou, a simple rhythm underpins a wormy melody. Baumgärtner’s percussive textures resist and wriggle. As the mood starts to settle, the song reinvents itself. The bass hums over balladic piano chords and a lounging, laidback attitude emerges. Greve adds violin-ish long tones. The band builds to a yearning and aspirational climax, before the song’s original pattern returns like a half-forgotten memory.

“I was thinking about the swamps in Louisiana, raw and rough,” Greve says. “But then there’s a cut, where we go into a totally different thing, like opening another door.”

Mountains

The title track is another highlight. It starts with foreboding shapes and sounds from each instrument. Slowly, the sun rises and darkness recedes. Even difficult things are possible. The musicians hurry in different directions, teetering on the edge of the harmonic frame. Then a final passage opens up, the sax out of breath from the climb but gazing wide-eyed from the mountain top.

Wildflowers

Release is an open-hearted album by an open-minded and open-eared group of musicians. Greve’s compositions conjure waves of sound, while her saxophone voice evokes birdsong at daybreak. Lisbeth Quartett have created a record that resonates with hard-won freedom, like wildflowers pressing upwards through the last winter frost. The nectar is fresh and pure.

“Some of these songs are wide open,” Greve says. “That’s what naturally comes out when I think about the beauty of playing music with very little info on the page, just connecting with the band to lift something bigger than the composition itself. We know how to lift it together, without talking. And that’s a unique feeling that only happens with a lot of musical trust.”

https://www.freejazzblog.org/2022/08/lisbeth-quartett-release-intakt-2022.html

F
Filipe Freitas
Jazztrail Blog

Release marks the anticipated return of the German Lisbeth Quartett to the studio albums, 13 years after its debut, Grow (Double Moon Records, 2009), and ceasing a five-year hiatus since its latest release, There is Only Make (Traumton Records, 2017). This work, the first for the European Intakt label, generates more elegance than turbulence through eight impeccably written pieces - seven by saxophonist Charlotte Greve and one by bassist Marc Muellbauer - that gain an extraordinary poetic nature in the hands of four musical narrators.

“Full Circling” is an impassively quiet solo-less piece whose mantric roundness purposely eschews heaviness. The next two tracks demand close listening. “Bayou” is an old song, revisited with a drum recital upfront. Comfortable behind the kit, Moritz Baumgärtner keeps his thing going after pianist Manuel Schmiedel echoes a 12-beat-cycle piano figure with class and groove. Saxophonist and bassist function in parallel, but it all shifts in texture and tempo with astonishing candor. There’s solo piano introspection before Greve’s heartfelt statement announces the curtain-close of a journey that suddenly returns to a streamlined rhythm in the last 30 seconds. Then it's Muellbauer’s “Le Mistral” that arrives, almost touching on a medieval troubadourism and expanding with incisive chordal work, pulsing bass lines that feel as loose as gripping, and tight complex lines delivered in unison by piano and saxophone. A magnetic alto solo with significant discursive range is brought before the main theme.

The emaciated “Ellipsis” spreads both emotional honesty and intimacy, trailed by a beautiful melody that sails across the enchanting accompaniment with lightness. It includes elementary bass pedals, cymbal scintillation, and modal piano intersections characterized by harmonic nuance. With “Arrow”, the trio shows some rhythmic bite, pressurizing the atmosphere with a rock-hard collective commitment, fine solos, and an exciting finale.

Before the short, intangible “Outro” that concludes this strong body of work, there’s the title track, which has Baumgärtner weaving exquisite details and throwing syncopated responses against the serene instrumentation that surrounds him. The last third of the song welcomes an insistent bass pulsation that doesn’t spoil the appealing nature of the song.

This quartet synthesizes their influences in an original way, and the result is a strangely affecting album to be savored many times with a guarantee of newly discovered elements at each listening.

https://jazztrail.net/blog/lisbeth-quartett-release-album-review

Reviews in Other Languages

S
Sergio Liberati
Jazz Mania

Lisbeth Quartett est un groupe allemand actif depuis 2009 (mais son dernier disque datait de 2017) et qui nous propose ici son 6ème album. A sa tête, la jeune (34 ans) saxophoniste (alto) Charlotte Greve, qui a remporté la distinction d’artiste jazz 2022 en Allemagne. Cette musicienne réside principalement à New York et s’est fait un nom aussi bien en Allemagne qu’aux Etats-Unis où son autre projet, Wood River (dans lequel outre le saxophone, elle joue du synthé et chante), avec un son plus électrique, voire rock, rencontre un certain succès. Revenons à Lisbeth Quartett : à ses côtés, Manuel Schmiedel (piano), Moritz Baumgärtner (batterie) et Marc Muellbauer (contrebasse) complètent le combo quasi depuis ses débuts. Nous voici donc devant un groupe qui joue depuis longtemps ensemble et cela s’entend très vite, tant l’interaction entre les musiciens est limpide, tant tout semble s’associer aisément. Sur ces neuf splendides compositions (huit de Greve et une de Muellbauer), le quartet nous propose une musique moderne, originale, raffinée, apaisée, pleine d’émotions, impeccablement interprétée par des musiciens qui pensent d’abord à collaborer à un ensemble, à cette atmosphère de sérénité plutôt qu’à se mettre en évidence (peu de solos). Belle œuvre poétique qui sonne vraie, profondément intègre.

https://jazzmania.be/lisbeth-quartett-release/

S
Steff Rohrbach
Jazz'N'More Magazine

Charlotte Greve hat uns schon vor zwei Jahren im Trio mit Vinnie Sperrazza, Chris Tordini und ihrem voluminösen, runden und warmen Ton begeistert und dieser Ton ist hier in derselben Qualität zu hören. Dass sie im vergangenen April den Deutschen Jazzpreis als Künstlerin des Jahres bekam, erstaunt folglich keineswegs. Das Lisbeth Quartett wurde 2009 gegründet es funktioniert bis heute im selben Line-up. Das sechste Album, das erste für Intakt, überzeugt auf der ganzen Länge. Acht Stücke sind von der Saxophonistin zu hören, dazu "Le Mistral" von Marc Muellbauer, nach eher ruhigem Beginn ein lebendiges Piece mit pulsierendem Bass und teils unisono gespielten Linien von Alto und dem Klavier, das sich auch zurückzunehmen weiss. Dazu mit Moritz Baumgärtner ein Drummer, der das Stück in der richtigen Mischung auf Trab hält. Überhaupt gefällt die feine Interaktion, die auf dem ganzen Album zu hören ist, der Raum, den man sich gibt, die Dringlichkeit, die neben einer gewissen Lockerheit einhergeht, die enorme Klarheit des Quartetts und seiner Aussagen. Eine kurzweilige und abwechslungsreiche Platte, die Freude macht.

L
Luc Bouquet
Jazzin France

En douze années et cinq albums le Lisbeth Quartet (Charlotte Greve, Manuel Schmiedel, Moritz Baumgärtner, Marc Muellebauer) a eu le temps de peaufiner son art de l’épure. Quasi inconnue chez nous Charlotte Greve dispose d’une suave sonorité d’alto doublé d’un lyrisme feutré.

Avec ce qu’il faut de timidité et de persuasion, elle déploie une musique que certains pourront trouver soporifique. D’autres y puiseront une subtilité-stabilité toujours entretenue, jamais soumise à l’aléatoire. En jouant d’une amplitude ciselée au plus près de la mélodie, jamais sombre, jamais embrumée (un cousinage certain avec les dernières formations de Charles Lloyd ne peut se taire), le Lisbeth Quartet creuse l’intime et y libère une harmonie sereine, pacifiée.

https://www.jazzin.fr/lisbeth-quartet-realise/