Cadenza by PLOT

With its unique conceptualizations, PLOT is in the forefront of new music. This is based on the astounding communication between the players of this well-rehearsed trio; instead of turning up the volume, or relying on musical orthodoxy, PLOT charges its play with sensitivity, emotion and sensual persuasiveness. It’s what makes the subtle virtuosity of Cadenza work.

Twenty miniatures. Deliberately, subtly, with an inner coherence, the pieces merge. One follows the other with logical precision. Everything is balanced, and yet there is an unfolding dramaturgy that creates an atmosphere of suspense. Sketches, ideas and pictorial inventions create a totality that has the feel of chamber-music, but nevertheless is inscribed with the improvisational soulfulness, sensuality and individuality of jazz. Their musical view is sharpened by details, nuances and differentiations. Small starting points serve as vehicles for the players' interactions. The results: an astonishingly self-enclosed work. There’s no swagger in these three. It is as if, listening and reacting to each other, they fill a blank sheet of paper with fine poetry or weave a multicolored carpet of sound in a stratified process of continuously changing meters and rhythms. Such lofty music requires that each musician’s play be persuasive. The music lives and breathes through its reductions; it has the courage to charge the pauses between the sounds with meaning as the listener absorbs the music’s emotive content. PLOT no longer plays service to the traditional jazz idiom, although jazz is an essential part of this courageous music. The music is self-contained in such a way that it seems to deflect the meaningless of our culture of instant gratification. It doesn’t try to overwhelm all the noise by becoming even louder. PLOT has emancipated itself from the overpowering American musical role-models as well as from the mixtape aesthetic. The three have moved beyond the American Standards Songbook and focus on their own music. Their creativity wells from a self-confidence that has grown through the continuous tours that have laid the groundwork for their art, an anemometer that detects and reflects which way the cultural wind blows.

Reviews

Vorhang auf für die junge Jazzszene, Vorhang auf für Sebastian Wehle (saxophone), Robert Lucaciu (double bass) und Philipp Scholz (drums), von der Besetzung her ein klassisches Saxofon-Trio. Wer auf deskriptive oder narrative Kompositionstitel gehofft hat, muss sich umorientieren. Das Trio verweigert Derartiges zwar nicht in Gänze, wählt stattdessen den Begriff der Sequenzen, also der Folgen, teilweise mit französischen Zusätzen versehen wie „la fille“, „île perdue“ und „mémoires“. Noch etwas fällt auf: Die Binnenstruktur der Sequenzen zeichnet sich durch die Kürze der Teilsegmente einer Sequenz aus. Insoweit ähnelt diese Struktur sogenannten Zwischenspielen und Miniaturen.

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