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Olivia Trummer: Threading Gold

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I don’t have too many heroes because jazz for me is about my own curiosity first.
—Olivia Trummer
Singer/pianist and composer Oliva Trummer is spreading her wings. After four albums leading bands, the Stuttgart-born musician is venturing out as a solo artist, with her latest album Fly Now (Contemplate, 2014) garnering positive reviews internationally. Since appearing at 12 Points in 2013 Trummer has played with Jimmy Cobb and supported Charles Lloyd, while her 2014 tour of Ireland and the UK was crowned by a sold-out gig at the EFG London Jazz Festival. If hitherto Trummer has mainly worked her native Germany and neighboring Austria and Switzerland, now she has her sights set much further afield. Of late, the world seems a little bit smaller for this talented musician.

Fly Now is not the first time Trummer has sung an album entirely in English but lyrically the material represents her most personal statement to date. Her songs are introspective and soul-searching on the one hand, groove-based and funky on the other; there are many colors to Trummer's palette. Good tunes deserve good musicians and for this album Trummer has gone for three of New York's best in drummer Obed Calvaire, bassist Matt Penman and guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel.

Recruiting the musicians for Fly Now wasn't too complicated: "I've known Matt for a couple of years. It happens that we have mutual friends and so we met when I was in New York visiting. Jazz musicians know each other; it's like family in a way,' says Trummer. "I've always loved his playing. He recommended the drummer. I'd never met Obed but once there's a purpose it's easy to reach out to someone. Obed was very open to the collaboration."

Though Rosenwinkel plays on only three tracks he informs the feel of album considerably, accentuating the contrasts in Trummer's writing and leaving his own indelible stamp. A resident of Berlin himself and living a mile down the road from Trummer, the guitarist ran into Trummer at jam sessions in the city: "We got talking about music first and then when I was playing he'd join on drums," says Trummer. We had fun playing together. He has a groove. He's a bit of a multi-instrumentalist because he also plays the piano very well. He has big ears."

The guitarist shines in tandem with Trummer on the hugely satisfying slow-burner "Sharing My Heart"—unleashing a trademark sinewy solo—and provides buoyant support to Trummer's vocals on the infectious "All is Well." The instrumental duet "Fly Now—Reflection" sees Rosenwinkel employ pedal effects as he dovetails playfully with the pianist: "The sound is a little genre-crossing," says Trummer. "It's not the typical jazz guitar and I like that."

Nor is Trummer herself typical of many jazz musicians who study the jazz masters and delve deep into the standards repertoire. In fact, oddly perhaps, Trummer admits to not having too many jazz heroes at all: "I don't have too many heroes because jazz for me is about my own curiosity first. It's not about heroes whose recordings I listen to. The self-made aspect of it is jazz for me."

Trummer acknowledges her passion for Brazilian music, particularly Elis Regina, Eliane Elias, and Antonio Carlos Jobim but she more or less figured jazz out on her own: "Since I began improvising on the piano aged four I have discovered so many harmonic details that one would find in a jazz theory book," reveals Trummer. "I didn't discover them by any books or recordings but through my hands. Of course I listened to jazz and discovered wonderful stuff like Bill Evans -he's definitely my all-time favorite pianist."

There's a touch of Evans lyricism on Trummer's beautiful ballad "Don't Ask Love" and in general her play is characterized by a tremendous lightness of touch and a refined economy where every note carries meaning.

"My classical piano studies told me that I'm more at home with music that requires a light touch, a sensitive touch," states Trummer. "I'm not really a Beethoven player, if you know what I mean. I'm not really a Rachmaninoff person, I never was. There's something that keeps me away from really hammering the piano. It's just not my personality. My classical piano teacher said a beautiful thing, when you touch the key it's not pushing the key but pulling the key. It's taking something from the key. My relationship with the piano is not one-way and that's probably what you can hear in my touch.

"Another reason why my touch is so light is because I try to hear everything inside, so it doesn't need to be loud. As soon as it's too loud it actually disturbs my imagination of the sound. The inner sound is very important. As soon as I have my fingers on the keys I already hear it. It just needs to be played for the audience," Trummer laughs.

Trummer is in a good place artistically and professionally in this moment. She's been compared to Gretchen Parlato and Norah Jones, added to which her delightfully light touch on the piano sounds like Bill Evans playing lullabies to New York. She's a single-minded jazz musician with serious cross-over appeal and her quiet determination to follow her muse is paying dividends.

The tile of her new album is, as you might have hoped, significant: "Sometimes my songs are written very fast because the picture is that clear, like "Fly Now," for example," explains Trummer. "I had this picture of a man on top of a mountain who's facing the decision to either go back down to where he feels at home or to reach out for more and have the courage to leap and trust that he would actually fly. That resonated with me a lot at that time. It's a statement of courage, a statement of confidence, of trusting in imagination and other non-material assets that one has."

Trummer is not short of non-material assets. Determination, a strong work ethic, self-belief and an openness to new musical experiments are some of the qualities that have brought Trummer this far. It's been a natural evolution, as Trummer explains: "Everything has happened very organically. I broke away from the set-up that I had for a couple of years, which was my band in Germany. I moved to New York where I spent a lot of time and I got to play with many different rhythm sections and many different musicians."

Trummer has been playing more international gigs as well, so there seems little doubt that she has turned some sort of corner in her career: "I'm emerging as a soloist so it seems that I'm breaking away a little and that it's a new era but it's definitely part of an evolution. It's not a band product as much as it was on previous albums but when you lose something you gain something else."

The organic evolution has led Trummer from pianist and composer to singer-songwriter, in English then in German and now back to English. All her albums sound different to each other but there is significant continuity as well: "The compositions throughout the five albums are all my original music," says Trummer. "That's the golden thread."

Trummer's first two albums, Nach Norden (Neuklang, 2006) and Westwind (Neuklang, 2008) were both instrumental albums, showcasing her jazz piano chops in quartet settings: "I was very young and didn't feel like a singer at all at that time," admits Trummer, though the right moment would come shortly: "My first time in New York in 2008 opened me up that bit more to the personality that it takes to be a singer." Nobody Knows (Neuklang, 2010) was Trummer's first venture into singing in English though oddly perhaps, her next move was to record in German on the album Poesiealbum (Neuklang, 2011).

"Every album brings out a new color and it's all my style," Trummer explains. "In my head there are hundreds of other songs that don't sound alike so I guess that one of my traits is a certain diversity. I want to express myself in different ways and I could also imagine another instrumental album in the future. I like having the freedom to really do what I feel."

Lack of confidence was the only obstacle to Trummer becoming a singer but as Trummer relates it was just a question of time before she unleashed her crystal-clear pipes on her unsuspecting audiences: "It was an inner urge. It was something that I had done for years but never on stage. My parents are both professional musicians, they play piano and they were also singing and conducting choirs so I was singing all my childhood. Singing was very important and very liberating for me."

Trummer didn't waste any time upon returning to Germany from New York: "When I came back from New York I went straight into the recording studio—a place where I always felt very comfortable and very protected somehow. It wasn't difficult for me to open up and be that singer. I had written songs for years. They weren't any good," she laughs, "but during this year in New York I also wrote new songs."

The songwriting process for Fly Now was much the same as it had been for Trummer's previous albums: "I usually sit down at the piano and improvise and when something catches my attention, some nice harmonic shift or a melodic line or something, I'll keep that and try to develop it. I don't really write out much while I compose. I try to keep it all in my head because once I write it down it keeps it from evolving easily sometimes.

"I make it all about my ears but I'm not thinking about harmonic theories. I'm never aware of which key my songs are in before I write them down. Sometimes if I'm washing the dishes or walking in the park a melody together with lyrics will cross my mind, like the seed of a song, and then I try to develop that on the piano. Sometimes I imagine there's a drawing and I just have to jump into it, like in that Mary Poppins scene. To write a song I look at the full picture and the architecture of the picture."

For the first time Trummer turned to the Hammond organ as well as the Fender Rhodes on several tracks: "It's like a filter I send my musical vision through," explains Trummer. "I like the softness of the Fender Rhodes on "Stay Awake" but I don't really showcase each instrument. I just make use of their colors. It's an orchestration decision. It's not about the instrument; it's about the dramatic development of the song. I never really play the instrument, I'm the instrument," she says laughing.

Inevitably, having grown up studying classical music, Trummer's idiom carries something of her influences, particularly Bach, Debussy and Ravel. She also professes her love of twentieth century composers Dmitry Kabalevsky, Dmitri Shostakovitch and György Ligeti: "It's something that I have deep inside and that informs my taste but I never consciously draw on it. It had developed my harmonic background probably, also reaching out for more then the typical ABA form to have modulations. I don't shy away from it. I don't try to keep it simple; I just try to keep it essential."

Her childhood studies and personal explorations apart, Trummer points to her time in New York as fundamental in shaping the musician she is today: "When one speaks of musical development it's also speaking of personal development. Just being in a classroom with thirty absolutely motivated and talented young musicians from all over the world, where everybody was really working hard and reaching out to make the best music they could and be the best musicians they can be—the energy in the room and being with people who were that energetic—it opened my mind a little bit," recognizes Trummer.

"Many of the students were talented in several fields and were multi-instrumentalists," Trummer adds. "They didn't know any borders and used all the talent they had quite openly. That was like a wave taking me with them. It was much easier to go for gold, if you want, if you're surrounded by people who do the same. In Germany it seems that ambition has to go on a little bit under the surface. You can't really show too much ambition in Germany—at least that's true for jazz music. Getting rid of all that understatement was very liberating."

The motivating environment of the Manhattan School of Music and the energy of New York took Trummer on a voyage of self discovery: "It was liberating also in terms of singing," Trummer expands, "not having to be only the pianist that everybody expects me to be but being Olivia, whatever that is."

Trummer has recorded in both English and German: "It covers different parts of my personality because the languages have different ways of expression. I have a slight change of perspective when I use different languages." Switching from one language to another has arguably proved less challenging for Trummer than for her audiences: "It wasn't difficult for me. I think it was sometimes more difficult for people to listen to me being a German singer then an English singer.

"Since English music is played a lot on the radio and listened to a lot in Germany English seems a very natural choice to be singing in and I felt very comfortable writing English lyrics. The biggest decision for me was to have that German album in between two English albums because it's rather unusual to sing jazz with German lyrics."

In concert, Trummer can sing in both German and English, according to the setting: "When I had the Irish tour last year I decided to start off the concerts with one German song. That was for me to feel comfortable on stage and it was for the audience to know where I'm from. It was also to introduce them to the beauty of the German language because I think German can sound quite beautiful.

"It has a reputation of being a harsh language so to make that cliché leave the room I decided to start my set with a German song of mine before going into English songs and instrumentals. Whenever I have a new audience I like to give them a broad repertoire of music I have, including a bit of German."

The new audiences have warmed to Trummer and vice versa: "So many people, especially in England and Ireland want to talk to me after the concerts and want to express how much they enjoyed the show and it's such a nice habit that I've found there. I hadn't been to England or Ireland much before 2013 and now I'm finding myself falling in love with the culture and the people and with the humor and with so many things. It's great."

The media too, has received Trummer's music enthusiastically. She was recently featured in the UK Jazz magazine Jazzwise while The Irish Times referred to her "sparkling piano playing." Fly Now was the London Evening Standard's Jazz Album of the Week and has been picked up by radio stations too. Jamie Cullum is the latest to get on board and will feature Trummer's album on his BBC Radio 2 show in January: "I'm really over the moon to find that acceptance in English speaking countries," enthuses Trummer. "I take it as a compliment for the songs, for the lyrics and that makes me very happy."

For the time being Trummer is content to work as a solo artist, picking her projects and her colleagues as she sees fit: "Me and my music is the strongest team I have available at the moment," says Trummer. "I'm experimenting with different rhythm sections and also a guitarist so I'm not really committed to one band."

Trummer has been in Berlin for two and a half years but as she's been traveling a lot in that time: "I'm still checking out the music scene in Berlin and still growing into it. I have a little concert series where I invite people for a duo. I miss a little bit having a band now that I've been off as a soloist for two or three years. I would definitely like to have a band again and experiment."

Neither does Trummer lack for ambition or imagination: "I also see room for my music being played by other people, without me. I would love to see that happen," she says. That particular dream is maybe coming sooner rather than later. A first step in that direction will be Trummer's collaboration with the celebrated NDR Bigband next year: "It will feature me and my original music as pianist and vocalist. Someone will arrange my music for the big band and I'm really excited about that," says Trummer.

Prior to that Trummer will enter the studio to record an album of variations on Bach with Swiss vibraphonist Jean-Lou Treboux. Meanwhile the singer/pianist continues to promoteFly Now: "This album is a new beginning in a way and also the audiences," says Trummer. "The tour in Ireland last year opened my eyes to how warmly the audience reacted to my music in a country I'd never been to before. That was really an eye-opener for me. That's why I'm in the mood to travel and introduce my music to new audiences."

Writing and performing songs in English, Trummer admits, has facilitated her new-found international appeal: "It wouldn't have been so easy with the German album but Fly Now is going much more in the direction of an international career. It's been well received and it's able to fly bit further now than just to Switzerland and Austria. That's my hope and what we're working on next year is to find those audiences who might enjoy the music."

Phot Credit: Courtesy of Dietmar Scholz

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