Heidi Bayer - Korsh (2022)

Where is this music going? To where we feel comfortable, where familiar sounds trickle into your ears? Or in inhospitable, thorny terrain, where the air is thin and the danger great? With her new, unconventionally instrumented band, trumpeter Heidi Bayer, who lives in Cologne, vividly demonstrates that life is full of contrasts. In addition to the boss, bass clarinetist/tenor saxophonist Sven Decker rubs against the cheeky accordion of Norwegian Kalle Moberg, while Robert Landfermann and Oliver Steidle build a rather asynchronous rhythm springboard on bass and drum set. The album title is derived from the first names of the protagonists. That means: Something completely unknown emerges from the individual aesthetics of five exceptional musicians, like a discussion in real time, the results of which are at the end of unpredictable stories. As in "Once In A While", where the accordion digs into the standardized jazz context of trumpet, saxophone, bass and drums with such vehemence, as if it wanted to set the direction on its own. A celebration of contrasts, light years away from any comfort zone.