Tributes pervade the history of art and music. Affinities. Dedications. To put oneself into context with somebody else also means to define one's own positions and ways. A homage states something about the honoured person, but also something essential about the person who formulates the tribute, in literature, in vision, in performance, with words, forms, colours, spaces, sounds, gestures... .
The jazz genre is abundant with tribute albums, records and programmes. Dedications are in vogue. There are surface phenomena, certainly, but there are also plenty of motivations for far-reaching and more profound tributes. In no other form of art do we find as many inter-connections on a personal level as in jazz. Improvising musicians refer to each other, meet each other on journeys and during the process of playing. Furthermore, there is also the historical dimension: referring back to predecessors and role models.
In jazz, each musician does not only play with his/her experien-ces, but also with those of others.
Manfred Bründl broadens his view and looks from jazz to the arts. What matters is personality. Distinctiveness. Profile. Signature. Significance. The bassist's personal portrait gallery is like an artistic confession. The quartet's playing is not so much about quotation or onomatopoeical consciousness, but about atmosphere, the very substance and the spiritual dimensions.
The pledge to the modern age is mirrored in the selection of its predecessors. Leonardo da Vinci's magic is conjured up and Gustav Mahler is greeted with melodic and rhythmic zest.
There is no jazz musician who could pass by John Coltrane. Far from an epigonical rehash, "Only U" breathes the spirit of Coltrane.
The musical portraits of Arnold Schönberg and Anton Webern reveal the closeness of contemporary musicians' endeavours to find innovative sounds to the forerunners of musical modernism. What evolved in “pure theory” from compositional calculation can now be transferred into the flow of spontaneous playing.
The reminiscence of Carl Czerny brings forward the development of life-long learning into artistic seriousness. The school of fluency does not only lead to technical ease but can also uncover the path to the essential things.
In the musical interpretation of Ernest Hemingway we discover a vulnerable and highly complex personality behind the picture of the daredevil.
Jacqueline du Pré appears full of passion in a life that can't be separated from her art, and vice versa.
The view of Egon Schiele focuses on uncompromising individual expressionism.And the musical portrait of Charles-Édouard Le Corbusier mirrors the tendency towards abstraction without the relinquishment of sensual clarity and conciseness.
Nelson Mandela is the only personality in this context who is from another sphere, the political, but at the same time the pursuit of new and free relations between individuals and groups in society can be regarded as the supreme work of art.
By looking at others, Manfred Bründl conceives of a kind of music in which compositional structures and free improvisation interlock with each other. Although the pieces are conceived on the bass, all voices are equal and equally important. Silent Bass does not mean that the bass cannot be heard. It is simply the relatively quiet instrument that provides the base, holding every-thing together and soaring solistically. And even when it seems to be inaudible, you could imagine it to be there. That would then be a twelfth picture in this portrait gallery, one that is dedicated to John Cage.
Dr. Bert Noglik
Translation: Jens Hirschberg