Anke Helfrich on the piano.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
Anke Helfrich and Franco Ambrosetti know each other well. Not only because they have been with the same record company for a long time. But above all because the jazz pianist and the trumpeter are so close in style and expression that they always like to search and find the stage together. On Saturday there was an opportunity to do so at the final evening concert of EBE-JAZZ 2021, the “Enja Label Night”, which crowned the festival’s dedication to the 50th anniversary of the label.
Both use them for a performance in perfection. No experiments, no rides into strange worlds, but straightforward, melodic jazz, often in ballroom mode, sometimes close to the big band sound. To which the Weilheim saxophonist Johannes Enders contributed in stoic calm and with the precision of a diamond cutter, who, although a newcomer to the ensemble, but a proven expert on the tenor saxophone, contributed precisely that clever, witty and trend-setting component that delights jazz fans who do not come to terms with everything to have heard.
The house was fully occupied with its audience. They didn’t skimp on applause at the end of the show.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
What the interplay of Helfrich, Enders and Ambrosetti almost imposes on you is the appreciation for maximum professionalism – both on your own instrument and in the interplay. Seamless changes in genre, tempo and expression, in a blind understanding of each other, in the flexibility to add a chorus or to work against an effective final chord, yes, even to have a little musical joke and then confidently return to the common track: That kind of thing, with Benny Golson celebrates “Stablemates” only works with people who can.
Pianist Helfrich is a prime example of this. Their combination of fantasy, looseness and concentration turns the piano into a jazz instrument, a stationary pole and a centrifugal force generator at the same time. The way she picks up the flawless approaches of trumpeter and saxophonist and transforms them into emotionally charged melodies inspires. Not only the audience, but also the mostly very disciplined teammates. The fact that bassist Dietmar Fuhr does not get his big solo until the last encore doesn’t seem to bother him much – the release of collected feelings gives “You’ll see” the emotional fullness of a chanson for a few bars.
A star guest concert was presented in the Alten Speicher in Ebersberg on Saturday evening. Among others with Dietmar Fuhr on bass and drummer Jens Düppe.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
That goes well with Ambrosetti’s fondness for Latin rhythms. You quickly learn to appreciate and enjoy them. One time it was Sergio Mihanovich’s “Sometime ago” celebrated as Bossanova, and later the bossa samba “Silli in the sky”, which he himself wrote as a film music for his wife, an actress. With all the serenity and routine that he has acquired in around 70 years as a musician, his intonation spoke as much passion and love as only someone who lives his art with all his heart can manage.
What one could argue about that evening was the occasional use of the broom with drummer Jens Düppe. Although his desire for a powerful contrast to the wind sound was clearly recognizable, the result turned out to be too metallic at times. It was no longer the barbershop employees who swept up their cut hair to the music, they were more like stevedores in the port who pulled sheet iron across the quay. Jazz fans ask themselves the question: should one be amazed, annoyed or just listen away? Given the quality that Düppe usually produces with his percussion, this aggressiveness was definitely strange and seemed colder, more distant than it did the sound image good.
What you can look forward to at a performance by Franco Ambrosetti are the stories from an eventful musician’s life. The one about his spontaneous engagement at a Miles Davis concert in Milan, to which he was ordered as a young man for lack of alternatives and played “Sometime ago” live for the first time. The star had asked for an Italian trumpeter. He reports that it got exciting after the gig, when you jammed in a bar until five in the morning. As he sat down at the piano, he suddenly heard someone plucking the bass behind him.
Franco Ambrosetti on the trumpet.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
Herbie Hancock, who imposed secrecy on him about this instrumental excursion. Well, not forever apparent. The idea that arises when listening to the story is tempting: What if everyone took turns to change their instruments during a performance? Where, if not in jazz, is that possible? Where, if not in jazz, would something audible come out of it? Such an experiment would have been wished for on the flawlessly orchestrated Saturday evening: a little more “dirt”, a little less “polish”. The fully occupied house nevertheless gave its appreciative applause intense and ample.
You can listen to the concert on December 10th at 11:05 pm in BR-Klassik’s “Jazz Time”. Then the recording sounds as a homage to Ambrosetti’s 80s on that day.