Reunions

We met up with old friends for a night at Jazzkeller in Frankfurt and the musos were also having a reunion. Sagmeister / Spendel were guitar / piano. They met at this club in 1979, have played together variously since and one or both were given professorships at the Frankfurt Conservatory in 2001. Our mates suggested at least Spendel had NYC history. That wouldn’t surprise me. He was the pianist and by far my favourite. Piano anyway allows for invention by its nature, but his approach was not just virtuosic but harmonically and intellectually rich. I heard fourths and diminisheds and whole tones and chromaticism and generally a rich and thoughtful freedom from the keys so he impressed. But the style of the night was mainstream, standards, swing, latin, Stella, Wine and roses, You don’t know what love is, Black Orpheus, rather than NYC contemporary. The others did this well, but I missed the harmonic colours and substitutions and polyrhythms and the other players did little of this. But they were hot. The feel was faster, fastest, fastest+ with avid drum solos and fluid, quick e-bass (with a great tone down low), and long, long 16-note runs scalar runs and the like from guitar. Not so much colour or rest or contemplation. Very capable and hard swinging and very mainstream. Bensonesque. But this was history beyond the meet-up. The Jazzkellar dates from 1952, there’s pic on the wall of Dizzy playing there. Louis gigged there and Johnny Hodges, Ray Brown, Lionel Hampton, Archie Shepp too. Sinatra and Dean Martin visited. It’s tiny but they lay claim to being Frankfurt’s Village Vanguard.

Christoph Spendel (piano), Michael Sagmeister (guitar), Thomas Heidepriem (bass) and Michael Küttner (drums) performed at the Jazzkeller, Frankfurt.