Fabian Willmann Trio at Jazz Hastings
VICTORIA KINGHAM
There’s a rare band coming to Jazz Hastings in December, one which reveals just how far the Jazz world extends, both musically and internationally. The trio is led by Fabian Willmann, a Berlin-based saxophonist, and is the first session of a European tour including dates in Hastings, London, Edinburgh and Belfast, then back to Germany for eight more.
Clockwise from left: Arne Huber, Jeff Ballard, Fabian Willmann
The band is both inter-generational and international, with an unusual mix of musical backgrounds and styles. The other players are Arne Huber and Jeff Ballard. Huber plays bass, and over the past fifteen years has recorded a stack of albums both with his own quartet and with other ensembles as co-operator or ‘sideman’. His quartet has appeared at various European jazz festivals (including London). He has won a number of European Jazz awards and is currently head of BA Jazz at the Jazzcampus (University of the applied arts) in Switzerland.
Jeff Ballard is well-known and-vastly respected by UK and American audiences alike. The band is an interesting development for him. An extremely talented and original drummer, he has been in demand for years, touring with major jazz artists – Brad Mehldau, the late Chick Corea, Avishai Cohen, Larry Grenadier (as part of the trio Fly), Joshua Redman and too many more to mention. He was also on the road extensively with Ray Charles, back in the day. A marvellous drummer of seemingly unlimited versatility, he has a string of awards to his name. Among his musical interests he lists ‘modern creative’, a developing genre that relates back to Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, perhaps somewhere between jazz and the avant-garde. Other well-known proponents include Bill Frisell, Kamasi Washington, the late Steve Lacy and Roswell Rudd.
Fabian Willmann, the instrumentalist and composer who leads the trio on tenor saxophone, is also its youngest member. He met Jeff and Arne in Basel at a student music convention, and after playing together a few times and talking over drinks, they formed a trio. The line-up presents certain challenges – there’s no piano or guitar or chord instrument, so the melody on each instrument is exposed. But Willmann is happy with this approach, and the harmony is implied rather than stated. “I guess I am trying to make a constant stream of music where all the players are equal, super-aware. Being open to anything that can happen.
“It’s sometimes very different from what was in mind to start with!” Writing a melody, he tries to ‘reduce it as much as possible’. “It might be just eight bars of a melody and a few chords,” he continues. “There’s a lot of putting it together in your mind. I can’t really write a drum part for Jeff that’s going to be better than what he comes up with himself.”
They’ll be playing tunes from their latest album, Freedom, but also airing a number of more recent tunes not yet recorded. It will be a night to remember.
The Fabian Willmann Trio perform at JazzHastings on Tuesday, 2 December, at EHSAA on the Stade. Doors open 7.30, music 8.30.
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