Press:
» Lauer is a sensitive composer who extends his radius concentrically.
His second album “Less Beat More” is a leap into life in all its
intensity. Lauer has definitely succeeded in combining his highbrow
standards of musical thinking with his urban zest for life. The
powerful Spree Blues of the trombonist and his men is as angular
& unwieldy as Berlin itself. Yet it is full of cheerful
memories that are heaved bravely into the chaos of the present time. In
reality this courageous translation of Ellington´s inheritance into the
Berlin setting earns the rating ‘extra large’. «
(Wolf Kampmann, Jazzthing Nov/Dec 2011
» This is the contemporary German answer to the Dutch ‘Instant
Composers Pool’, the ‘Italian Instable Orchestra’ or the ‘Copenhagen
Art Ensemble’. All connect the same spirit: the pleasure of discovery
and an instinctive feeling for producing a fruitful combination of free
improvisation and planned orchestral structures. (…)
This is music for the whole body. And the soloists of the orchestra are
brilliant. (…)
With the ‘Konstanz Suite’ Lauer Large has produced in the best meaning
of the word a complex and extraordinary CD-opus, a wild nature reserve
of dizzying music. «
(Christian Munch-Hansen, Jazz-Special 02/03 2010, DK)
→ Original Version in Danish
At the end of the concert when the 16 musicians had woven their bows
into a suggestively springy sound pattern, you were properly drawn and
sucked into the hermit's hut in the Bayerischer Wald, where the
trombonist Johannes Lauer, 27, had composed this suite.
At the beginning of the 30th year of the “Art of Jazz” series in the
Tafel Hall the audience stamped their feet in applause for this new
sounding work of art, even if this prominent big band hardly feels
responsible for absent-minded foot tapping, rather for twitching brain
cells.
Extraordinary, this project. «
(daer, Abendzeitung, 27.01.10)
» Lauer's Suite is autonomous, and
that's just because he is conscious of the tradition of orchestra jazz
from the classic big band to the global unity orchestra and uses this
as a catalyst for the conversion of his own musical language.
Furthermore he is a polyglot storyteller who knows as much about the
acceptable pattern of composed music as about tonal und metrically
independent improvised music. (..) Here the transformation from
existing becomes a basis for timeless improvisational music.
«
(Martin Laurentius, Jazzthing April/May)
» This 28-year-old Johannes Lauer (…) is an extraordinary talent – as a
soloist on the piano but especially on the trombone, as a composer
crossing borders between jazz, modern classic and ‘musica nova’. A
third talent is his sensitivity in uniting other musicians into
ensembles with quite a unique sound.
Suddenly there is no longer a band leader but groups of two or three
playing enthusiastically. Then there are completely contrary poetical
passages with soft areas of disciplined musical unity. Every instrument
is played with radical decisiveness but at the same time the overall
sound of the ensemble is just as distinctive in each title. Not a
general uniform sound. Brilliant! «
(Wolfram Frommlet, Schwäbische Zeitung, 25.01.10)
» "Haute couture of acoustics"
Lauer, born in 1982, does not only seek the violent eruption but loves
as much the risky sound experiment of chamber musical dialogues.
Whether small, medium or large: the complex acoustic pictures seem
capable of adopting any size in a versatile way. Even those acquainted
with the patterns of contemporary big band jazz, will not cease to
wonder how unorthodox, brilliant and rich in unusual applications the
musical ‘haute couture’ is tailored and modelled here. «
(Peter Löw, Nürnberger Zeitung, 27.01.10)
» With “Lauer Large” the trombonist
has succeeded in bringing together musicians who are so devoted to
their playing and who have made the compositions so much their own that
they can anticipate and simultaneously shape the music's development,
with closed eyes listening to themselves and to the others for every
musical turn, every movement, its dynamism, without being conducted by
their leader. This was yet another reason for the audience's
fascination of Johannes Lauer's music. «
(Beate Sampson, BR-Klassik, 10.3.2010)
» A big band with the ideal of a
combo. Here decidedly acoustic jazz from today is being played. Tonal
is not from the devil, just as little as vigorous rhythm. Clear
structures are always apparent despite excessive freedom. These are
performed quite discretely and due to their casual lightness remind us
of the sound magician Gil Evans.
Lauer composes music which relies on such a great reservoir of voices
but which can do entirely without the hefty flexing of muscles from the
forceful wind instruments. It is his secret that he knows how to employ
the tone colour of each individual musician. «
(Thomas Fitterling, Rondo, May 2010)
» The deep recognition and thinking
of musical statements are typical of the trombonist, composer and
bandleader. (…) No battle is being waged between American and European
jazz. Here both traditions merge into one but have nevertheless their
own independent standing. «
(Alfred Krondraf, Concerto 2/2010, A)
» Although I know of less than half
of these musicians previously, I was
most impressed nonetheless, as Jazzwerkstatt continues to support an
emerging German underground of strong musicians, both known &
little-known. "Klumpatsch" begins with an inspired duo of tenor sax
(Weidner) and acoustic bass (Sieverts), while the rest of the horns
slowing enter, sizzling and simmering. Two trumpeters (Peter Evans
& Matthias Schriefl) kick off "Karies/Baktus" with some strong
interplay and intense soloing, before the rest of the large ensemble
enters tightly playing those crazy charts with Tyshawn's dynamic drums
kicking up a storm. I dig Lauer's writing for the horns since he blends
the harmonies superbly around whoever is soloing with just the right
balance. Pianist Colin Vallon play a feisty solo on "Tekno" interacting
intensely with Tyshawn while the rest of the horns swirl around them.
It often sounds as if Johannes is directing since the interaction and
charts are so tight. This is yet another winner from the ever-growing
catalogue of gems from the fine folks at Jazzwerkstatt. «
(Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery, NYC)
» "The return of the big bands"
(…) to the sound experiments of Lauer Large, a band led by the Berlin
trombonist Johannes Lauer, which designs its sound landscapes in the
spirit of the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock. The big band is a
field of unlimited possibilities. «
(Stefan Hentz, der Freitag, 8.4.2010)
» The trombone player and composer
Johannes Lauer produces here in a tender sound direction and
thought-provoking developing times the encounters with his brilliant
players from East and West. It's reminiscent of Gil Evans' colourful
magic; in the freer passages now and again the articulations of the
riskier handling of instruments explode. «
(Ulrich Olshausen, FAZ, 24.04.10)
Exerpt from the liner notes to
"Lauer Large -
Konstanz Suite" (Wolf Kampmann):
» Lauer Large is not the sum total of its individual members’ talents;
it is a homogenous entity. In terms of line-up it is a big band, yet
Lauer shatters all expectations regarding what is probably the most
conventional jazz combo. Seldom has a large jazz group seemed so
intimate, so much the product of an almost symbiotic conspiracy among
its members. Lauer is a psychologist of sound who plays not only with
his fellow musicians’ voices, but also with their energy as people.
When bass and sax dreamily swirl around each other in the opening
number, encircled at a distance by the rest of the band, they open up
areas of warmth and anticipatory energy that demand to be conquered
anew with each piece to come. The pressure to justify oneself that is
so widespread in the jazz world seems completely foreign to Lauer. He
provokes the listener’s ear, wresting it from the lethargy induced by
satiated expectations and returning it to its primordial soul, freed
from all prejudice. Provocation is a means of purification with which
to sharpen the senses rather than a revolutionary end in itself. « |
