Jan Garbarek Group - Dresden

-Jan Garbarek: soprano and tenor saxophones, selje flute

-Rainer Brüninghaus: piano, keyboards

-Yuri Daniel: bass

-Manu Katché: drums

This one is very eagerly-awaited: it has been six years since Jan Garbarek’s last album as a leader (“In Praise of Dreams”). And, moreover, this double-album – recorded in Dresden’s Alter Schlachthof in October 2007 – is also the first-ever live set from the highly-popular Garbarek Group. The band, now including Brazilian bassist Yuri Daniel, powers through repertoire old and new, and the Norwegian saxophonist is in top form, his exchanges with Manu Katche’s bold, emphatic drums particularly exciting. Material includes “Twelve Moons”, “There Were Swallows”, “Voy Cantando”, an ecstatic version of “Paper Nut” (last heard on Shankar’s “Song for Everyone”) and much more.
The new group tackles its repertoire head-on; with the interaction between Jan Garbarek and drummer Manu Katché at the centre of the music. Yuri Daniel, a Brazilian bassist living in Portugal whose previous associations have ranged from Maria João’s group to the Lisbon Underground Music Ensemble, helps to anchor the pulses and rhythm patterns. Rainer Brüninghaus, a Garbarek Group member since 1988, maintains his long-established role as colourist-in-action. While both bassist and keyboardist claim their own solo space, more often they help to shape a climate in which Garbarek’s hymnic, declamatory and intensely melodic solos can find full expression, drawing energy also from Katché’s hard-driving drums. As The Guardian wrote of the group on this leg of the 2007 tour, “The contrast between an intense jamming sound and the songlike simplicity of the tunes is always Garbarek’s magic mix, but this version of the band has an exhilarating intensity.”