# CD review: Malin Wättring 4 – Live in Hamburg 2019: Video, CD cover
- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2019/03/11/cd-review-malin-wattring-4-live-in-hamburg-2019-video-cd-cover/
- Published: 2019-03-11T15:27:45+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU
**Swedish tenor sax player Malin Wättring has proved herself as an outstanding composer
with the first two albums of her Malin Wättring 4, the debut «Glöd» from 2015, which
featured the quartet augmented with another quartet, and the acclaimed «Harvest»
from last year, a collaboration with the Bohuslän Big Band (both released by Havtorn
Records). **
Her third album «Live in Hamburg», with the same quartet that has been working together
for seven years now, was recorded in the German NDR’s Radio Hall in September 2017.
This album highlights the qualities of Wättring as a wise and generous band-leader
and a charismatic soloist.
Wättring says that she is «never as brave as when I play with» her quartet and adds:«
we haven’t been afraid to be vulnerable, and to me that is the greatest accomplishment!
I believe that vulnerability is the key to your heart, and I really feel that we
are making music with our hearts!» She is absolutely right. The whole of this quartet–
pianist Nakoko Sakata, leader of her own trio, drummer Anna Lund, who plays with
Wättring in Anna Högberg Attack! and leads her Hurrakel spectacle, and double bass
player Donovan von Martens – is bigger than its separate parts.
«Live in Hamburg» features six extended pieces that allow the quartet to establish
its open but tight and organic interplay, flow and its melodic and often lyrical
atmosphere. These pieces emphasize the distinct personality of each musician. Sakata
can change suddenly her course, the mood of the piece or its level of intensity
and suggest alternative terrains. Lund colors the music with imaginative touches.
Von Martens anchors gently the emphatic commotion while building a flexible rhythmic
basis .
Wättring herself leads with confident yet modest solos that balance the thoughtful
themes and her passionate playing and distills the emotional core of each piece.
Take, for example, her phrasing on the new «Allegra» where she moves instantly from
the singing-lyrical tone to dense-raging one and again to fragile-gentle tone. You
may imagine a nuanced story about turbulent love, longing and loneliness, delivered
with engaging reserve and elegance. And just follow the mood swings of «Glöd», originally
featured on the debut album, that begins as an exquisite, chamber jazz piece and
shifts later into a playful and powerful piece. «Den blå timmen» features Wättring
in her most vulnerable state of mind, singing-crying her touching, melancholic phrases
with great emotional power, answered beautifully by the quartet on the last «Endings».
This piece brings back memories of a similar, captivating alchemy of another great
quartet, Keith Jarrett’s Scandinavian one with Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson and
Jon Christensen.
1. Natt
2. Allegra
3. Astral
4. Glöd
5. Den blå timmen
6. Endings
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