CD REVIEW

ARTIST: ULRICH GUMPERT / GUNTER BABY SOMMERTITLE: LA PALOMALABEL: INTAKT CD 198

TUNES: GAMME/ TWO FOR FUNK/ LOVESONG FOR KA/ FRITZE BLUES/ INDIAN LOVE CALL/ LIKE DON/ PREUßISCHE ELEGIE/ SHUFFLE TO WH/ ES FIEL EIN REIF/ LAMENT FOR J.B./ LA PALOMA. 55:32.

PERSONNEL: Ulrich Gumpert, p; Gunter Baby Sommer, perc. 10/10 & 5/11, Villingen, Germany.

Although I was more than a little surprised to hear these styles on 1), from the forward-looking Intakt label, I was having plenty of fun listening to the blues and boogie music of this piano and percussion duet before I read the liner notes. Then I had even more fun. Christoph Wagner’s detailed essay informs us that both pianist Ulrich Gumpert and percussionist Gunter Baby Sommer grew up in East Germany and each played in bands at dances and parties as youths. Invariably they were asked to play “La Paloma,” and as Gumpert says, a trifle ruefully, “You’re almost at the end of your life and then you play ‘La Paloma’ yet again.” But there’s a reason that the song has retained its popularity for over 140 years. Somehow, almost magically, that familiar melody will put a smile on your face. And that’s how this masterly duet will leave you: smiling. If one of the meanings of “free jazz” is the ability to freely choose anything to play, then tuneful and instantly crowd-pleasing music is just of the choices. Sommer’s composition “Gamme” begins the proceedings, a free exercise that has Gumpert at times sounding like none other than Vince Guaraldi. The wonderful sound is courtesy of a Bösendorfer Imperial piano, the same one that Oscar Peterson, Red Garland, and so many others recorded on in Villingen, Germany, an inspiration in itself. Sommer and Gumpert have a lengthy history together. They first met in the mid-Sixties, recorded together as members of an orchestra in 1972 and as a duo the following year. They’ve continued to perform as a duo and also as members of Zentralquartett. While the emphasis of this delightfully varied program is on pre-bop styles of jazz, the two men also have their way with Gumpert’s impressionistic “Preußische Elegie” (Prussian Elegy) and Manfred Schoof’s “Like Don” in a deliciously upbeat call and response arrangement by Sommer. On pieces like the down and dirty “Two For Funk” and the woozy “Shuffle To WH,” the music is sheer pleasure, with the relaxed after-hours feel of musicians working on tunes that they clearly relish playing. “Lovesong For KA,” an original by the drummer, puts them into gospel territory, with echoes of both Duke Ellington and Keith Jarrett in Gumpert’s carefully phrased lines. Sometimes I wish that the warm call and response that Sommer and Gumpert engage in on the old-fashioned “Fritze Blues” could go on forever, chorus after chorus spun into the night. The pair dispatches it in about four minutes before moving on to Sommer’s bossa nova chart for Rudolf Friml’s Indian Love Call. It’s another charming performance, spare and lyrical and even danceable. You might think that veteran “outside” players would have a tongue in cheek approach to such hoary melodies, but there’s almost no hint of that here. Instead it’s much more of a meeting of musicians and material on equal terms, and the result is a thorough engaging and deeply appealing disc, warmly recommended.

Stuart Kremsky

CD review from Volume 38, No. 4: October issueFor more information, go to www.cadencemagazine.com

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