Aki Takase & Daniel Erdmann - Ellington (2024)

We hear juicy, fine and atmospheric jazz from two such unusual imitators, musicians and wonderful instrumentalists. Familiar themes take on completely new colors in their interpretation, especially since the closeness and intimacy of this musical encounter can be heard in their duo.

The nature of their interaction can hardly be described as anything other than telepathic. Inventiveness is combined with technical perfection. Aki Takase and Daniel Erdmann rehearsed together a lot and it shows. But above all, they have a lot to tell each other and us. The precision with which they master unison and rapid changes in tempo does not stand in the way of flying into the open, but rather opens the doors for it. What began during the pandemic with video connections between the Reims-based saxophonist and the pianist's Berlin apartment was continued live. The two soon felt that with their duo record "Isn't It Romantic?" We haven't said everything yet, but we've just started. The desire for free, personal expression and admiration for the jazz tradition led Aki Takase and Daniel Erdmann almost instinctively to Ellington.

Duke Ellington's work - his compositions, his orchestral pieces, the diversity of his work and his piano playing - proved to be an ideal starting point for the duo's playing adventures. Ellington became a fuel for the imagination. The two found a variety of approaches. The spectrum ranges from close proximity to the original to reinterpretations, from variation to deconstruction and alienation to the creation of something completely original, which is no longer inspired by the material of the originals, but by the mood and atmosphere of the compositions or original recordings leaves. Themes by Duke Ellington show the duo the way to the essence of their playing together: improvisation.

Aki Takase's preoccupation with tradition permeates her entire artistic biography. She has studied Fats Waller, W. C. Handy, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman and, again and again, Duke Ellington - always with the aim of penetrating deeper into the inner workings of jazz and finding inspiration for her own playing. In addition to the solo, she particularly preferred the duo format. With Daniel Erdmann, who also plays in their band "Japanic", the duo's track almost logically led to Ellington.

Duke Ellington's music is particularly suitable for the duo excursions because it is so universal and because it occupies a central place in jazz history. Ellington succeeded in bridging the gap between tradition and modernity, from tradition to the avant-garde. Just as Ellington himself referred to the continuum of African-American music, Aki Takase and Daniel Erdmann can now also project his work onto his predecessors, his contemporaries and his successors, i.e. place it in a context that extends from ragtime and stride piano Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell to Cecil Taylor, from Schönberg and Stravinsky to Conlon Nancarrow, from Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins to John Coltrane to the present day.

Each of the duo pieces opens up a different approach and develops its own color. Swinging happiness stands next to ballad-like passion and romantic melancholy, impressionistic lightness next to dense clouds of sound. All in all, a multi-perspective picture emerges and of course – as with all successful reminiscences in jazz – also a self-portrait, in this case a double portrait. They cut a perfect picture on stage: the tall Daniel Erdmann and the comparatively petite Aki Takase, who is completely engrossed in the piano. But it is only in the musical interaction, in the soulful togetherness, that the exciting psychogram of the duo emerges.

Ellington becomes the common point of reference. Even more than the sheet music, it's about the sound, one of the central categories of his work. And above all, it's about his spirit, which inspired Charles Mingus to write one of his most beautiful pieces - a piece whose title can also be read as the heading for these duo recordings: "Duke Ellington's Sound of Love".