What’s the best jazz combo today? An elder statesman’s allstar band? Some recent hotshot conservatory grads? A mid-career hero’s touring group? For my money, none of the above. Instead, an unassuming, mildly self-abnegating foursome from Berlin is the heaviest working band in small-group jazz. Die Enttäuschung – a name that invites its own comments (and deflates any grand self-assertion like the above), translated as “the disappointment” – has been around since the end of the ‘90s …
Playing intimate quartet music firmly rooted in free-bop, with an open sound, melodic improvising and a clear delight in swinging (and interrupting the swing), the group’s frontline is immediatley arresting, a gush of musicality …
Recorded 2009 in Berlin by Christian Betz. Mixed by Axel Dörner
The band takes the good old idea that charts are springboards for playing, for music that is not on the page. There’s an absence of rigidity, there is serious listening, a playful attitude, humility and musical ambition, all rolled into one. No disappointment, at any level. John Corbett, Downbeat |