This CD is a sensation. We are not exaggerating and do not want to make any false pretences. But one has to listen to it in order to understand what’s really happening here.
The duo of Rüdiger Carl and Sven-Åke Johansson is well known, they’ve been working together for over 25 years. First in the legendary Bergisch-Brandenbrugischen Quartet (reinforced by Hans Reichel and Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky), from the middle of the 80’s then in the familiar twosome (GROB plans a studio production of the duo in 2004). The music is radical because it detonated the concept of the musical: their performances or better: performances are constantly gesticulate and theatrical and can afford to play around with clichés, because their music fulfills no cliché. Seldom does improvised music gain such a committed as well as always surprising expression.
Their public appreciates this and doesn’t trust its own ears, when, after a performance, Rüdiger Carl, the clarinet virtuoso and accordion meister, sits on the piano and intones old standard, to which Sven-Åke Johansson, the BeBop archeaologe and drum genius, sings – and of course the original texts! This was not a gag, not an interlude, but rather a new program, which is perhaps the most radical step in the evolution of their cooperation. In November 2001 Carl and Johansson met in Johansson’s Berlin studio, grabbed the bassist Joe Williamson (see his fresh solo CD on GROB, The Ungrateful Carjacker, 536) and played a homage to New York: ”No Moon at All,” ”The Breeze and I,” ”I Should Care,” ”You and the Night and the Music,” and of course, ”Autumn in New York”: Glittering Crowds and Shimmering Clouds in Canyons of Steel. They interpreted a total of 13 standards, true to the original and full of respect. Recorded in two takes. For the first time we hear Carl play only piano on record, and Johansson sing only standards. And always when Sven hits his snare (and only his snare) with the brushes, there is in the middle of autumn an anticipation of the next spring.
The cover art work is from Sven-Åke Johansson, David Grubbs wrote the liner notes: a reflection upon forbidden songs in the New York Autumn of 2001.

Rüdiger Carl (also on GROB538, GROB650, GROB653)

Sven-Åke Johansson (also on GROB650)

Joe Williamson (also on GROB321, GROB536)

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