In his work with his own formations STRUCTUCTURE and CIPHER and as a sideman in various ensembles, Roger Kintopf consistently pursues an artistic vision based on long-term processes and continuous development. This patient approach gives his music a unique intensity and expressiveness. This approach is particularly evident in his solo performance, which he has been constantly developing since 2021 and has already released on two recordings.
He likes to break up the sound into its acoustic "spectral colors", his solo playing gets structure and form through the free flow of improvisation and thus receives an undreamt-of authenticity. Instead of a conventional press release, there is a poem about his music: "It feels like / a flickering light at dusk, / soft shadows on the pavement, / a beating heart, / pressing against the ribs."
Roger Kintopf - b
It takes a lot for a double bass player to record his debut album as an unaccompanied solo improvisation. Robert Landfermann, born near Bonn in 1982, has taken this risk. He titled his debut "Null" ("Zero") only superficially. The title "Nullnummer" refers to a magazine that has not yet been published, but is already available to test its effect. It contains all the musical, aesthetic and technical qualities that have made Landfermann an internationally sought-after soloist ever since. He has an incredible command of the bow, he is interested in expanding the sound towards noise on the one hand, but also towards melody on the other. You can sense his sense of adventure when he ventures into unknown territory. And yes, you also experience something of Landfermann's first musical love: when the sixteenth-note chains clack furiously, his solo excursions also have something of heavy metal about them. At the Cologne Jazzweek, he plays a Baldantoni bass from 1858, made famous by Stefano Scodanibbio.
Robert Landfermann - b
The Leipzig-based guitarist Steffi Narr understood her instrument early on as a field of experimentation for free improvisation, on which she knows how to shape her individual artistic expression. It has always been important to her to enter into a creative exchange with like-minded people and to understand and stage the resulting artistic work as a joint effort. Her collaboration with Berlin drummer Oliver Steidle began in 2021 at the Leipziger Jazztage. Together with VJ and performance artist Saou TV, Narr has transformed this duo into an interdisciplinary, audiovisual laboratory. With her partners, she explores new, often unheard sounds by alienating the sound possibilities of her guitar and contrasts this with Steidle's rhythmically differentiated playing, while Saou TV shapes this acoustic event as a visual work of art, which the three of them transform ad hoc into a piece of sonic art in the creative process of improvisation.
Steffi Narr - gtr/efx
Oli Steidle - dr/efx/sampl
Saou TV - visuals