Oberg, Uwe/ Heinz Sauer
Sweet Reason
Sauer's 1980 recording of Ellingtonia Revisited with Bob Degen is one of my favorite records - of course I wanted to record with Heinz. We'd played together now and again over the years, just the two of us or in a quartet. A concert in June 2017 at the time-honored festival in Peitz. Right afterwards recording session in the rbb studio in Berlin. Improvised music always depends on the acoustics of the site: how the room sounds, the piano, how the instruments mesh together in the room, what comes back to us - the studio sounds fantastic! We wanted to play as freely as possible: that sets a process in motion, we had both brought pieces with us that we wanted to play with openness. The whole thing should be spontaneous. That's how it happened that my piece Due to... acquired a character totally different from what was originally planned. Heinz's Hafenrundfahrt refers to a painting by Johannes Heisig of the same title, and it is dedicated to him. Its wonderful melody line somehow reminded me of Coltrane (Heinz disagrees!), even though it is pure Sauer. We found new musical tones together here too, there was minimal consultation. With free improvisation you are basically standing there naked, you just begin, turn on all your senses and give yourself over to the free flow of inspiration and communication. We are not trying anything out, everything is meant just the way it is played. How to follow each other. Where is the music going. A few central themes are sound, melodic progress, texture, rhythm - that might sound technical but when you're playing it's not at all. Emotions are always there, we vibe together in the sound. We enjoy the challenge, the uncertainties. Sensations emerge anyway when we hear music, it does something to us. Music has to be actively heard, listened to. Get something out of it! Twombly originated in the studio as a trilogy, you can hear the separate parts. Chant is a minimal composition by me, we played it at the beginning and end of the recording session so it is now immortalized on the CD, too. The CD title Sweet Reason refers to a beautiful small valley in the Taunus mountains, which connects us both: Susses Grundchen.