Yaroslav Likhachev Quartet - Occasional Sketches (2022)

Russian-born but part of the German scene for some years now, saxophonist Yaroslav Likhachev is a notorious example of a generation of musicians committed to renewing the jazz tradition, never afraid of going far in that task but at the same time respecting the past with particular devotion. A former pupil of the avantgarde reeds player Frank Gratkowski, one of the greatest in Europe, and like him very much focused on finding new paths for the practice of improvisation, be it in association with written music or completely free, Likhachev dives his personal style in the American jazz sound and uses the stylings and the vocabulary of bebop and hard bop as the solid basis of a methodic experimental work. His music is fluid, each situation driving us to the following one, without sudden breaks but always in surprising ways. Nothing is superfluous, and nothing is less than what is needed at the moment: the sense of balance is astonishing all along these "sketches" also thanks to an impeccable communication between the band's players Yannis Anft (piano), Moritz Baranczyk (drums) and Conrad Noll (bass). We needed something like this in the present troubled times.