Regener Pappik Busch

In the organizer's words:

In the beginning there was jazz: when Sven Regener came to Berlin in the early 1980s, he initially wanted to make jazz. It then became an avant-garde version of jazz in keeping with the zeitgeist of the time: Regener was a trumpeter and played with the no-jazz band Zatopek, only later did he become the singer and songwriter of Element of Crime and the trumpet took a back seat. These roots connect him with Richard Pappik (drums) and Ekki Busch (piano), three musicians who trust each other musically, having played together in Element of Crime for decades. And when Regener turned to the trumpet and jazz once again in 2012, the three finally came together in 2018 to form REGENER PAPPIK BUSCH. With their debut, "Ask Me Now", REGENER PAPPIK BUSCH reached the top of the German jazz charts in 2021, the trio played at the Leverkusen Jazz Days, released their second album "Things to Come" in 2022, performed an evening of beat literature and bebop classics with Blixa Bargeld and played numerous concerts. "Field of Lights", her third album, is characterized by maximum immediacy. The trio line-up with piano, trumpet and drums creates a hard sound, something sparse and brittle in the music that opens up spaces. The music has room to breathe. On "Field of Lights" we hear classics such as "All Alone" and "Billie's Blues" by Billie Holiday and Mal Waldron, "Nostalgia In Times Square" by Charles Mingus and an extremely refined, pointed version of Thelonious Monk's "Bye-Ya". We hear these and other well-known pieces, but we don't always recognize them immediately - because REGENER PAPPIK BUSCH actually succeeds in giving them a new perspective. It is music that seems to come from another time, another world, but which in reality is simply timeless. A feeling that arises not least due to REGENER PAPPIK BUSCH's open approach: They approach the material with knowledge, passion and respect, but not submissively. Their three own compositions fit seamlessly into this framework. Anyone familiar with the atmosphere at Chamissoplatz in Berlin-Kreuzberg will easily recognize its echo in the piece "Chamisso Square". The melancholy in the trumpet reflects the sublime Gründerzeit facades, the piano the dim light of the gas lanterns, the eccentric drums the bumpy straightness of the cobblestones and the romantic fairy-tale art in the work of its namesake Adelbert von Chamisso. The same applies to "Round Top", in which one has the impression of witnessing a farewell to something, a mourning of a loss. Finally, the title track "Field of Lights", which stretches into infinity, reveals the musical understanding of these men: in every note you can sense the familiarity they have developed over decades, the intuitive knowledge of each other's next step. "Field of Lights" is therefore less bebop, less vaudeville than its predecessors, in favor of an even freer approach. The stride piano takes a back seat as the lead instrument in favor of a more lyrical, cool-jazz style of playing, as we know it from pianists like Wynton Kelly. In moments like these, you can sense the improvisational spirit with which REGENER PAPPIK BUSCH recorded "Field of Lights" in just two days in Berlin's Tritonus Studio in the fall of 2024. There is a special freshness and spontaneity that characterizes "Field of Lights". When REGENER PAPPIK BUSCH perform the new pieces live in April and September 2025, they may sound completely different again. Evening after evening