Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Heinz Sauer and Michael Wollny: Certain Beauty

196

Heinz Sauer and Michael Wollny: Certain Beauty

By

View read count
Heinz Sauer and Michael Wollny: Certain Beauty
Tenor saxophonist Heinz Sauer, who turns 74 this month, was a mainstay of the extraordinary European free jazz experiment of the 1960s. He played with late-sixties incarnations of the Globe Unity Orchestra, alongside a truly mind-boggling array of heavyweights (Derek Bailey, Han Bennink, Willem Breuker, Evan Parker, Alexander von Schlippenbach); he would enjoy an even longer-standing collaboration with trombonist and fellow Globe Unity alum Albert Mangelsdorff, who died in 2005.

Though Sauer's artistic productivity has never flagged, he has recently seized the imagination of the German jazz scene with a pair of duet recordings (Certain Beauty is the second) with pianist Michael Wollny. Wollny in turn is one-third of the critically acclaimed and typographically iconoclastic trio called [em]. The Sauer-Wollny duo's media appeal is eminently clear: the musicians are separated in age by 46 years. The "bridging-the-generations" ploy sounds like a gimmick (an impression encouraged by the inclusion of compositions by Björk and Billy Strayhorn), and the chasm in the players' ages probably helps get them into the newspapers. But it's the palpable empathy of their playing that has put this record at or near the top of so many European critics' best of 2006 lists.

Sauer's tone is tremulous, breathy, grainy, paradoxically fragile and firm at the same time; it's not hard to believe he is part of the Peter Brötzmann cohort, but he nevertheless embraces the classic melodies ("Nothing Compares 2 U," "Chelsea Bridge") with an wholeheartedness that some of his contemporaries would be incapable of. Wollny is essentially lyrical, but his approach to the piano is persistently irreverent, strumming the strings, muffling notes, and making the hammers stutter the way Gonzalo Rubalcaba does. Together the players exhibit an idiosyncratic abrasiveness that enhances rather than detracts from the considerable charm of the performances.

Fine readings of two Monk tunes mark out the musical territory covered by Sauer and Wollny. "Evidence" is all elbows and jarring but playful fits and starts; its restive energy is matched in an aggressive version of Gil Evans' "Blues for Pablo" and Mangelsdorff's title cut, perhaps the record's finest moment. "Ruby My Dear," the second Monk composition, is by contrast keening and bittersweet, as are the lovely Sauer original "Believe Beleft Below" and "Lush Life."

The setting—economical piano/saxophone versions of mostly familiar material—is entirely conventional, but Sauer and Wollny manage to make a record that sounds, subtly, unlike anything else.

Track Listing

Stay on "C"; Where Is The Line (With You); I Loves You Porgy; Evidence; Kieser's Exchange; Nothing Compares 2 U; Ruby My Dear; Blues For Pablo; Certain Beauty; Laughing At Dinosaurs; Lover Man; Believe Beleft Below; Chelsea Bridge; Tangent A; Lush Life.

Personnel

Heinz Sauer
saxophone

Heinz Sauer: tenor saxophone; Michael Wollny: piano, keyboards.

Album information

Title: Certain Beauty | Year Released: 2006 | Record Label: ACT Music

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.