Schlippenbach trio
Alexander von Schlippenbach – piano
Rudi Mahall – clarinet and bass clarinet
Dag Magnus Narvesen – drums
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The Schlippenbach trio has been an institution on the European improvised music scene for over fifty years now. Von Schlippenbach started the trio In 1970, with Evan Parker on saxophone and Paul Lovens (in recent years Paul Lytton) on drums.
Except for many performances on different continents, in December each year they went on their famous European Winterreise.
In 2020 the line-up of the trio changed, with clarinetist Rudi Mahall and Norwegian drummer Dag Magnus Narvesen joining Von Schlippenbach.
Alexander von Schlippenbach about the trio:
“To my earliest favorites in jazz, wich also gave me an idea of sound, certainly belong the Benny Goodman Trio’s with Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa 1940/50.
The absence of the bass – nowadays often overturned – gives the music a certain context: more clearness and transparence.
Later I got further confirmation of that by listening to the live recordings of Cecil Taylor, Jimmie Lyons and Sunny Murray at Café Montmartre.
Evan Parker, Paul Lovens and myself started a trio in 1970. From the very beginning we were playing just improvised music. Within 40 years we produced a good amount of albums on FMP, Psi, and INTAKT Records.
We performed on many important European festivals and the Goethe Institut has sent us on tour to Asia, Australia, the USA and Brazil. Every year we did the Winterreise: an established regular tour in the beginning of December.”
Globe Unity Orchestra
Alexander von Schlippenbach’s Globe Unity Orchestra, the oldest and most important freejazz orchestra in the world, celebrates it’s 60 years’ anniversary in 2026. The line-up will consist of circa 17 musicians, including George Lewis, Evan Parker, Paul Lytton, Rudi Mahall, Daniel Erdmann, Axel Dörner and Aki Takase, playing four-hands piano with Schlippenbach, who also will be conducting.
Watch some footage of the original Globe Unit Orchestra and listen.
Monk’s Casino
Alexander von Schlippenbach (piano)
Axel Dörner (trumpet)
Rudi Mahall (bass clarinet)
Jan Roder (bass)
Michael Griener (drums)
Monk’s Casino was formed in its original line-up in the mid-1990s and in 2004 set itself the remarkable task of recording the complete works of Thelonious Monk (1917 – 1982). In 2005, Intakt released a triple CD recorded live at the A-Trane in Berlin the previous year. An update: 2022’s Live at AuTopsi Pohl, was released on 2:19 Records as a double vinyl album.
Monk’s themes are concise, usually quite short and extremely catchy.
Exactly the right material for the musicians of Monk’s Casino: they take the Monk titles and – since they are all primarily at home in free jazz – don’t waste much time with the traditional sequence of theme introduction and extensive solo escapades.
They get down to business much faster and more collectively, using the original angularity of the compositions to weave it into the pieces.
Tracks are combined and layered, the musicians’ interaction is extremely dense and spontaneous.
From time to time they seem to surprise each other with crazy turns of phrase – and the wit of Monk’s compositions, which occasionally teeter on the edge of farce, is not neglected.
In the end, this is the highlight of the evening: Monk’s Casino goes to work with the irreverence that the “Genius of Modern Music” (the title of one of Monk’s LPs, 1951) deserves.
That’s how Monk should be played.
Watch and listen