Olivier Le Goas with bassist Lukas Traxel and pianist Kristjan Randalu. Today he brought along no less virtuoso trio members.
The excellent Polish pianist Dominik Wania, who was a member of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet for many years and recorded several albums with the Maciej Obara International Quartet.
Yoni Zelnik was on bass. He studied jazz and double bass at the Jerusalem Music Academy and moved to Paris 30 years ago. He is firmly established in the French and Israeli jazz world and is highly valued as a sideman.
We have already had the pleasure of hearing him with the Shauli Einav Quartet, Géraldine Laurent Quartet and the Yonathan Avishai Quintet.
Double introduced drummers and composers like this: The French drummer Olivier Le Goas is one of the busiest musicians in his country. He has had his own bands for 35 years and has played with pianist Bojan Zulfikarpasic, the big band of pianist Laurent Cogny, bassist Jean-François Jenny-Clark, pianists Benoit Delbecq and Jean-Michel Pilc, trumpeters Kenny Wheeler, Avishai Cohen and Charles Tolliver, and guitarist Ben Monder. His own bands have featured such illustrious musicians as John Abercrombie, Ralph Alessi, Drew Gress, Manu Codjia, Nir Felder, Kevin Hays, John Escreet, and Larry Grenadier.
Antonio Vivaldi, Keith Jarrett, Arnold Schönberg… The C.Bechstein Center Tübingen was the perfect setting to present the compositions of Olivier Le Goas. It is music to prick up your ears! It is Le Goas’s further development of jazz, folk music and classical pieces, complicated rhythms such as a 15/16th time. The composer drew inspiration from Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins in A minor, among others.
“‘Key Song’ was inspired by the folk compositions of Keith Jarrett,” explains le Goas. “Both melodies function like a question and answer. This structure enables a very centered sound, in which the piano solo gives a completely different impression.”
“Residual Time” uses the principles developed by Arnold Schoenberg to create a flowing theme in which melody and bass react to each other. “When I lived in New York twenty years ago, I regularly went to the New York Public Library,” says le Goas.
“There I discovered Arnold Schoenberg’s unprecedented ‘Structural Functions Of Harmony’. The second chapter, ‘Principles Of Harmony’, is mainly about progressions in the bass line. The idea of removing the bass line from its accompaniment function and composing a second melody for the bass was like an epiphany for me.”
The audience in the C.Bechstein Center was visibly impressed by the performance. Applause only came when the last note had faded away. An encore was then loudly demanded and the audience was released into the cold night with the ballad “A Day Home”.
Dominik Wania – piano
Yoni Zelnik – bass
Olivier Le Goas – drums
