Fabian Dudek releases his new album This Every Place on 9 May
NICA artist Fabian Dudek is releasing his fifth album under his own name with This Every Place. His quartet, consisting of Felix Hauptmann (piano, also a NICA artist), David Helm (bass) and Fabian Arends (drums), is expanded for the first time to include another saxophone - Dudek chose none other than the bustling composer, improviser and saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, who has been living and working in New York for several years. With a great understanding of structure and freedom, Dudek created a work that fits effortlessly and with audible growth into the musician’s already considerable discography.
His quartet’s second production, »Isolated Flowers«, was nominated for the German Record Critics’ Award, with the jury of the Horst and Gretl Will Foundation praising, among other things, the “captivating mixture of […] instrumental virtuosity and ambiguously original sound design”. In 2023, Dudek presented the multi-layered album »Protecting A Picture That’s Fading« with the sextet La Campagne, whose ‘density of events in gravitational compositions’ (FAZ) earned him a nomination for the German Jazz Award. Last year, the quartet production »Distant Skies, We Dream« was again celebrated by the press and public. The Badische Zeitung was enthusiastic about the ‘secure balance between formal rigour and unrestrained playing’, NRW Jazz heard ‘breathtaking music with crooked metres, played against traditional norms’ and summed up: ‘an expressive, dense, almost unlimited, contemporary jazz in a class of its own.’
The new album »This Every Place« also reinforces the impression that Fabian Dudek seems to have an inexhaustible wealth of ideas at his disposal. At the same time, his individual sound (both as an instrumentalist and as a composer) is becoming more and more concrete, his creative drive more far-reaching. For the first time, the bandleader has added an internationally renowned personality to his quartet, namely saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock. ‘After three quartet albums, I felt it was a logical and exciting step to add someone else,’ explains Dudek. ‘Laubrock was the first and only person I asked because she has been inspiring me for a while, both in the way she plays and in what she composes.’ Apparently the interest is mutual, as the joint project is set to continue. But that’s just in passing.
‘I had sent her my compositions for a complete concert programme and when she came to Germany, she was very well prepared,’ recalls Dudek. Two days of rehearsals were followed by two concerts, in Rüsselsheim and the Stadtgarten in Cologne. The latter was recorded and there was time for further recordings the next day. ‘We were lucky enough to be able to leave our live set-up in the hall and simply continue playing the next day, again under live conditions, but without an audience.’ From the recordings, Dudek selected four pieces of seven to eighteen minutes in length, which offer an intense, at times energetic and condensed, then again transparent essence of the recordings.
‘I don’t want the albums to be extremely long,’ explains Dudek, comparing them to his experiences in museums: if the exhibition is too big, the first impression is gone by the end. ‘Basically, I want to reach people with the music, leave room for interpretation and offer scope for offence, but not overwhelm the listener.’ In fact, the compositions and improvisations on This Every Place are so rich that they reveal new details on repeated listens.
He had never written for two saxophones before, says Fabian Dudek, which is why he was initially concerned with the question of how the expansion would affect the structure of his band, which has existed since 2018. However, the supposedly challenging composition process turned out to be quite straightforward and largely intuitive. Some of the new pieces were subsequently tried out and formulated in the quartet even before Laubrock joined the band.
Dudek’s flowing, constantly changing rhythms were already striking on last year’s album. This concept of ‘morphing grooves’, which take on a different shape from bar to bar, can be found again on the new work. The tension between flows and experimental contrasts is important to Dudek. And that the flow can be felt, even though it may not be possible to fully analyse the complex rhythms. ‘Distant Skies… opened up the barrel by switching to electric bass and making greater use of the synthesiser. We have now built on this foundation with Ingrid and created new forms, some of them ad hoc.’
Music that appeals emotionally and through intellectual sophistication, that offers entertaining aspects and at the same time represents an art form. This is what Fabian Dudek has in mind and is realised by This Every Place. With his clever to sophisticated compositions, extremely attentive and variable players as well as enormously expressive saxophone duets with guest star Ingrid Laubrock, he once again makes a striking mark on the contemporary international music landscape.
•••
Fabian Dudek - alto-saxophone, flute, compositions Ingrid Laubrock - soprano- & tenor-saxophone Felix Hauptmann- piano, synthesizer David Helm - bass Fabian Arends - drums
Alle Kompositionen von Fabian Dudek Alle Titel erschienen im Traumton Musikverlag Aufnahme, Mix und Master von Martin Ruch Aufgenommen im Stadtgarten Köln Artwork von Benjamin Rückert
