Max Hacker – tenor sax, soprano sax, bass clarinet , alto flute
Tino Derado - piano
Paul Imm - bass
Heinrich Köbberling - drums
Meta Hüper – violine
Eve Wickert viola
Ulf Borgwardt - Cello
Facts:
Max Hacker is not a fierce revolutionary, grabbing the jazz world by its axis in order to establish a new order of his own. Neither is he a “young lion”, conjuring up the past to prove his reverence for the elders of jazz history. Consequently, he doesn’t echo the complaints of the middle generation of successful American jazz musicians, who claim that today’s saxophonists cannot play like the greats, thus implying a lack of respect for the tradition.
In discussing this issue, Max Hacker seems to stay very composed, while at the same time taking the pathfinders of modern jazz perhaps even more seriously than some of jazz´s self-appointed custodians. Hacker says he upholds the tradition of all those musicians he has listened to and whose music he has absorbed. And, of course, he still listens to the classic recordings of John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Joe Henderson. But he makes a definite distinction between the importance that these greats had in jazz history on the one hand and the impact they still have on today’s generation of creative jazz musicians. If it is really taken seriously, the legacy that Parker, Ellington and company left us cannot be misused as a mere blueprint for today’s musicians. At the same time, their importance will never disappear. Today, the goal should be (and has always been) the creation of an individual form of expression, a personal sound – regardless of whether one can ever reach the technical mastery of our heroes, says Hacker. Max knows that he is unlikely to revolutionize jazz history in the way that Charlie Parker did. But the fact that he, as well as Parker, were on a quest for a personal approach, does make them soulmates in a way.
With this refreshing self-confidence, Max Hacker has formed his quartet with Tino Derado (piano), Paul Imm (bass) and Heinrich Koebberling (drums). On his first recording with the delightfully self-effacing title “Who the Heck is Max Hacker?” (2005) he plays original compositions almost exclusively. This, by the way, stands in contrast to his work with the Hard Bop Quintet “The Toughest Tenors”, where meticulously transcribed, classic tenor-battle arrangements are played with great enthusiasm (so much for maintenance of the tradition!).
With “Deconstructing Max Hacker” he goes a step further, merging two musical worlds with which he has hitherto dealt separately – jazz and minimal music. Max has played the music of composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Terry Riley as a member of Ari Benjamin Meyers´ Redux Orchestra since 2001 and has already experimented with new compositional methods on his Philip Glass tribute “PeeGee”. Going a step further, he has deconstructed and minimalized his own jazz compositions on this new album. For this purpose he augmented his quartet with three highly compatible musicians in Meta Hueper (violin), Eve Wickert (viola) and Ulf Borgwardt (cello), with whom he has worked in varying minimal music contexts. Through the use of these additional instruments, the down-to-earth music of the Jazz Quartett achieves a new emotional dimension. This CD was recorded in a live setting in the Radio Berlin Brandenburg studios, and this has strongly influenced the homogenous character of the music.
It seems that Max Hacker is neither a revolutionary nor a young lion, but a musician with a strong personality and a clear imagination of “his sound”, qualities which Ellington, Parker and Coltrane would surely have held in high regard.
| Audio-CD / 17.50 € |
MAX HACKER WITH STRINGS > Deconstructing < IOR CD 77093-2
