Georg Wolf + Frank Gratkowski

AFTER ALL is the second release of my longstanding imrovising trio with bass player Georg Wolf and drummer Jörg Fischer. After our first release entiteled LO (Leo Records) we decided to invite guests from time to time. Indian trumpet player Rajesh Mehta was the first, later came German sax player Heinz Sauer, then Frank Gratkowski, who plays exclusively clarinet on three pieces on AFTER ALL.
Uwe Oberg

Liner Notes:
Starting all. A piano searching. Jumping melodies, condensing into chords only to loosen up again. Suggesting possibilities rather than giving directions. Enter drums, then bass, bringing the music up to new levels of energy, without taking away it's freedom. You can hear it: drums and bass know just what the piano wants. Let‘s call it stillness in motion – a paradox of course, but not the first one to become music in free improvisation. Gradually the powerlines shift: the music grows increasingly more dense and energetic. The well-valued approach of music developing steadily. Organic music as if breathing. Growing, evolving rather than just being there.

Nothing new? So what! Uwe Oberg has always found history to be elastic. And strong enough to survive extensive stretching, even if historical references become hardly recognizable. The trio with Georg Wolf on bass and Jörg Fischer on drums - occasionally added by Frank Gratkowski on clarinet - plays without explicit references. Rather, it is their own history which provides the framework for free improvisation. Oberg, Wolf, and Fischer play together since 1994, their first album, Lo (Leo Records), came out in 1996.

Listening today you hear this background: the music is beyond overambitious striving, cleansed of all exterior expectations. So we hear spaces being opened, not cluddered up but left free and open (loose all). All of this is happening in the instant, without a score, without defined agenda, but based on a long history.

After all. It is not about retrospection, yet there is something of drawing the balance. As if the instant of playing contains all the mutual experience, the sum of all moments. As a group they have played a wide spectrum of compositions, original as well as traditional (Monk, Lacy et al. ), always searching for the varying degrees of freedom and given form. All of this – including Oberg‘s latest quartet work with Matthias Schubert (Dedicated, Jazz'n'Arts/2003), or his cooperation with Xu Fengxia and Paul Lovens – all of this experience is implicit in their latest music, even if you cannot really put your finger on it. After all – a very personal, very original statement, a sediment of sorts. And the beauty of it: there will be another After all tomorrow. A new one.

Tim Gorbauch (translated by Gerhard Westerath)

Tracklist

1.	starting all	5:53

2.	loose all	9:36

3.	al dente	8:22

4.	all swing	5:28

5.	all afters	10:31

6.	a LO! again	14:20

7.	falling	4:12

8.	before after all	9:55

Credits

released January 1, 2006

Uwe Oberg, Piano
Georg Wolf, Bass
Jörg Fischer, Drums
Frank Gratkowski, Clarinets (3, 5, 7)

2006, Konnex Records, thanks to Manfred Schiek
Recorded at the Loft, Cologne, December 2005
by Christian Heck, mixed by C. Heck / Tonart Studio Kerpen
1, 2, 4, 6, 8 composed by Oberg/Wolf/Fischer
3, 5, 7 Composed by Oberg/Wolf/Fischer/Gratkowski
Produced by Manfred Schieck
Cover-Photography: Uwe Oberg
Design: Stefan Blum

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