Christoph Stiefel Inner Language Trio - Chutes and Ladders (2021)

The Swiss pianist Christoph Stiefel is a free musician in every sense of the word. Yet, at the beginning of his career, he couldn’t do much with free playing for quite a long time.

The new album by Christoph Stiefel's Inner Language Trio is playfully titled Chutes And Ladders. Behind the allusion to the popular ladder game, especially with children, is a reference to the corona-induced lockdown and its consequences, specifically for musicians.

Chutes And Ladders is the second album on which the Swiss musician works with bassist Lukas Traxel and drummer Tobias Backhaus.

Isorhythms can also be heard on Chutes And Ladders, but Stiefel focuses more closely on an aspect that has been driving him more and more in the last ten years: his commitment to the jazz tradition. No, Chutes And Ladders is by no means a traditional jazz album, and yet the pianist explores the meaning of various aggregate states of the jazz tradition for his own vocabulary.

To this day, reduction remains a key feature of his aesthetic, which now finds a new peak on Chutes And Ladders.

On Chutes And Ladders the reserved keyboard philosopher tells us a lot about himself. Accordingly, the attitude of his two fellow players also changes. Unlike how they performed on Embracing, Traxel and Backhaus play a tribute to the bandleader, so to speak. It is his story. In times of uncertainty, he quietly but confidently pulls himself to the shore and makes his position manifest.

A long time ago, Christoph Stiefel postulated that if the concept becomes more important than the music, the music falls apart – an approach that is also evident on the new album. Of course, the pianist can’t get out of his own skin. He loves planning and thinks through every single note, every harmony, every melodic arc, and yet he does not pass on the concept to the listener, but leaves it to the pure poetry of sound. This ability to let go distinguishes him here more than ever. When you’re a composer, performing player and producer all at the same time, it’s not easy to let go, Stiefel laughs, but only when that succeeds can something special happen.