https:\/\/gratkowski.bandcamp.com\/album\/tender-mercies<\/a><\/p>\nGerman reed-player Frank Gratkowski and Russian-born pianist Simon Nabatov have been making music together in a wide variety of constellations and contexts for over 30 years. The fruitful collaboration began in Klaus K\u00f6nig\u2019s large ensemble projects, found the two interpreting Nabatov\u2019s musical readings of Russian literature, or as members of numerous ad hoc settings. Playing in duo, however, always allowed them to get to the core of what is essential in improvised music \u2013 open dialogue, the joy of surprising oneself and each other, cohesive story-telling next to abstract entanglements. The duo documented their elegant yet powerful approach on two CD releases thus far.
\nTender Mercies is their third and most mature and expressive musical outing to date.
\nThere is a little \u201etradition\u201c of sorts \u2013 Simon Nabatov often celebrates his birthday by playing a concert with a friend or two in Cologne\u2019s venerable venue LOFT. The following party with Russian food and drink is a part of it. But it wasn\u2019t the anticipation of the festivities that propelled Frank and Simon to the musical heights captured here, it was rather the joy of playing together again, after a longer pause, caused by the nasty Covid times\u2026
\nThe scope of the subjects, technics and emotions is truly impressive \u2013 from exquisite flute playing of the title piece to the glorious re-instatement of true Jazz spirit on \u201eSafe Home\u201c, from delicate impressionistic smudges of \u201eSurfaces\u201c to brutal outbursts of \u201eDisgruntled Settlement\u201c \u2013 and everything in-between \u2013 the listener is treated to an absorbing and exciting experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Frank Gratkowski \u2013 alto saxophone, flute, alto flute clarinet, bass clarinet Simon Nabatov \u2013 piano<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gratkowski.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2019"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gratkowski.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gratkowski.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gratkowski.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gratkowski.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2019"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/gratkowski.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2039,"href":"http:\/\/gratkowski.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2019\/revisions\/2039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gratkowski.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gratkowski.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gratkowski.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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