Pata Kandinsky

PATA KANDINSKY

A new, sonorous mosaic piece in Norbert Stein’s constantly growing oeuvre: Pata Kandinsky. Once again, the saxophonist and composer creates “staged spaces” in which he merely sets moods for his instrumentalists to inspire them to solo, free, improvised movements.

This time, the starting point for Norbert Stein’s orchestral work, rich in imagery, are the creative thoughts of the painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), which the co-founder of the “Blauer Reiter” group and later Bauhaus master made the basis of his abstract art. Impulses for Stein’s own sound figures, spaces, melodies, bundled in a flow of rhythms, harmonies and the magnetic lines of patamelodies.

Line up:
Norbert Stein – tenor saxophon, composition
Michael Heupel – flutes
Georg Wissel – alto saxophon, clarinet
Nicolao Valiensi – euphonium
Annette Maye – clarinets
Andreas Wagner – saxophones, clarinets
Pacho Davila – saxophones
Rainer Weber – bass clarinet
Joker Nies – electronic
Uwe Oberg – piano
Florian Herzog – double bass
Jörg Fischer – drums

The new CD PATA KANDINSKY

Press and media

An intense but not intimidating six-part suite, Pata Kandinsky takes as its jumping off point the art and artistic theories of Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). Famous as a pioneering abstractionist, Kandinsky also had a deep appreciation for music and its effects. Composed by German tenor saxophonist Norbert Stein and interpreted by him and 11 other Köln improvisers the Pata Kandinsky suite reflects the preparation and details of creating art and personifies the painter’s search for confluence. Kandinsky often theorized about uniting contradiction among paintings’ color, form and representation. So as improvised solos and group creativity among the brass, reed, string, percussion and electronic sections are expressed, the contractions and blends implicit in music and visual art are explored.

With sequences of undulations, stop-time interludes, careful harmonies and crescendos, the band adds loud, soft, dark, light, dissonant and static sonic brush strokes to this canvas. Unobtrusive, but omnipresent, Joker Nies’ watery oscillations, voltage drones and signal processed patterns serve as the ornamental frame. Mainly because he’s the only brass player, the downward flutters, half-valve smears and hunting-horn-like ripples from Nicolao Valiensi’s euphonium stand out. This is especially true on “Dunkles Holz, helles Holz, Gold wird Silber” when among a kaleidoscope of crisscrossing tonal variations from the harmonized reeds, harmonizes individual animated striations are featured.

Michael Heupel’s flute peeps, sometimes united with similar trills from one or more of the three clarinets project elevated timbres. Whereas curlicue clarinet bites and Stein’s intense spews alongside pianist Uwe Oberg’s keys slides are the pointillist tinctures added to “Strichcodes und Kollektive”. Meanwhile tolling smacks from Jörg Fischer’s drums provide the march tempo on it and other tracks. While German dialogue and cabaret style keyboard emphasis during the conclusion relate to Kandinsky’s Bauhaus-era experience, slight saxophone dissonance relate back to the suite’s initial reed movement. However the suite’s real climax is reached on the penultimate track. Aggressive tonal shading is divided among elevated piano tinkles, drum rattles and bangs plus compounded horn variations. Decidedly or inadvertently reflecting facets of Kandinsky’s career, the disc can stand on its own as notable music.

Ken Waxman / Jazzword / Canada

from:
Jazz Album Reviews: Jazz Composers’ Omnibus 2024

… Now we enter thicker jungles of sound.

German composer Norbert Stein, who has generously provided me with copies of his recent CDs, offers a new set (Pata Kandinsky, Pata 2024) that documents a performance by his Pata Orchestra at the Multiphonics Festival at Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden, in Wuppertal, Germany, on September 29, 2023. The 12-piece ensemble here, like Råberg’s, is reed-heavy, with the addition of euphonium, live electronics, and a rhythm section of piano, bass, and drums. Stein himself is an accomplished tenor saxophonist, though he limits his role to that of leader and ensemble player here.

New listeners to Stein’s music will find a great resource in three YouTube video postings of movements from Pata Kandinsky (see “More” below for the links) as they were performed in Wuppertal. They show how Stein cues themes visually with his hands and musically with his tenor saxophone, and how effectively the ensemble follows his direction.

The band includes the remarkable double-bell euphonium virtuoso Nicolao Valiensi and flutist Michael Heupel, both of whom were featured on the last Stein release, Heartland. Both solo brilliantly in the first movement of the suite. Joker Nies, who adds electronics color throughout, has real solos in the first two movements; his work here represents the first time I have heard the abstract breeps and blips of live electronics make real musical sense. The section is superb — pianist Uwe Oberg has a big feature in the fifth movement, drummer Jörg Fischer gets a leadoff solo in the last one, and bassist Florian Herzog is all over his axe in each one.

The music is a six-part suite inspired by the work and the words of Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). Just as Kandinsky’s dynamic abstractions were constructed with remarkable gravity and balance, so Stein’s suite is an exuberant but meticulous juggle. He provides unison themes that at times recall Abdullah Ibrahim, Thelonious Monk, or a marching band; disciplined free-improv spots for solo instruments, combinations of them, or the entire orchestra; and supporting figures distributed throughout the ensemble that never cloud the forward motion. There is also a bit of wry humor hiding behind the abstractions. Pata Kandinsky is fascinating, and it is the second of the jazz composer’s releases this year (with Råberg’s) that I expect to revisit.

Steve Elman / the arts fuse / USA

Norbert Stein, a luminary of the European jazz scene, is celebrated for his ingenious compositions and distinctive approach to the genre. Central to Stein’s musical philosophy is his “Pata” ideology, which draws from the surreal and abstract, blending whimsical, unorthodox elements with the essence of traditional jazz. As a saxophonist and composer based in Germany, Stein consistently pushes the boundaries of jazz through this unique fusion, establishing himself as a revered and influential artist in the global jazz community.

Pata Kandisky, Stein’s latest offering, is a testament to his boundless creativity and eagerness to explore new musical landscapes. Titled as a tribute to the Russian abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky, the album mirrors the painter’s innovative spirit with Stein’s cunning, vibrant and dynamic compositions, encapsulated in the “Suite in Six Movements.”

From the opening track, “Seven Brushstrokes, Dark and Light Steps,” the ensemble starts with a lively free-form dialogue, followed by Stein’s spirited tenor sax soloing. The piece ebbs and flows with fluttering and pumping horns, accompanied by Michael Heupel’s intricate flute parts and Joker Nies’ quirky EFX, all amidst gravitating horns. Stein seamlessly blends intricate melodies with complex rhythms, his compositions conveying a broad spectrum of emotions.

“Dark Wood, Light Wood, Gold Becomes Silver” features growling saxophones and interwoven dialogues, painting an abstract portrait reminiscent of Kandinsky’s brush strokes and colorful canvases. “Measuring The Canvas, Textures and Unfolding” highlights Uwe Oberg’s playful piano solo, which unfolds and provides the horn players with a re-entry point, juxtaposed with undulating grooves and stately unison choruses during the closeout. “The Simple Song and The Infernal Sound,” is an off-kilter ballad with blaring horns and drummer Jörg Fischer’s driving patterns, infused by the horn section’s hard-edged melody, leading to intense improv sequences.

A hallmark of this album is its rich exploration of texture and form. Stein’s compositions are sophisticated and multifaceted, inviting listeners to discover new layers and details with each spin. Each track is a sonic adventure, packed with unexpected twists and delightful surprises, making the album a true auditory delight. With Pata Kandisky, Stein once again proves that the canvas becomes limitless in the world of jazz.

Glenn Astarita / All About Jazz / USA

The 26th album in the discography of the German composer, saxophonist and band leader Norbert Stein, as usual, contains in its title the term “Pata”, which is constantly used by the musician to define his work. I won’t tell the history of this term in this text, because it’s not the first time we introduce Stein’s work to our readers, and I refer readers to the reviews of his previous works, which can be easily found on the website. But the second part of the title, “Kandinsky”, appears on the cover of Norbert Stein’s new album for the first time, and I think it is surprisingly accurate to the spirit of Stein’s music and his creative aspirations, and not only in this work.

Pata Kandinsky is radically different from the very chamber-like Norbert Stein’s previous album Norbert Stein Pata Polaris – Heartland, recorded in trio format in 2022. Now we are dealing with a large conceptual work – a suite in six movements, recorded during a concert in Wuppertal in 2023 at the Multiphonics festival. Here the composer entrusted it to a large ensemble of twelve musicians, mostly wind players, with a standard rhythm group and an electronic musician. Among the members of the line-up there are new faces as well as long-time colleagues, including his partners from a previous project, the flautist Michael Höypel and the euphonium player Nicolao Valienci.

The hero of Norbert Stein’s suite is one of the most prominent artists and art theorists of the twentieth century, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), a native of Russia, whose most important works are connected with Germany, where he lived and worked fruitfully until Hitler came to power (he died in France). The founder of the expressionist group of artists “Blue Rider”, Kandinsky is a recognised master of non-figurative painting, rightly considered the father of such a powerful trend in art as abstractionism, theorist of the famous school of “Bauhaus”. His ideas had the strongest impact not only on the visual arts, but also on other art forms, first of all, on music. Here lie the roots that link Kandinsky’s work with the music of Norbert Stein.

Kandinsky made a real revolution, proving and putting into practice the independent content of colour combinations and new principles of compositional constructions. In music of the first half of the twentieth century, similar revolutionary experiments were reflected in Schoenberg’s atonal dodecaphony. Characteristically, the ideas of both Kandinsky and Schoenberg were rejected by the totalitarian systems of the century – both Nazism and Communism. Stein, of course, went far away from Schoenberg’s ideas in his work, incorporating many elements of subsequent movements into his music. He has always been infinitely far from the aesthetics of classical American jazz, but the boundaries of free improvisational music have long since become narrow to him. Norbert Stein’s music is a vivid example of contemporary academic music with an indelible imprint of the composer’s individual ideas, and Pata Kandinsky is a fine example of this, which will undoubtedly occupy a special place in the master’s oeuvre.

The titles of the suite’s movements often refer directly to Kandinsky’s painting, and the title of the second movement directly quotes Kandinsky’s main theoretical work, the book Point and Line on the Plane (1926), published in Munich under the editorship of Bauhaus leaders Walter Gropius and László Mohol-Nadja. Stein’s tenor saxophone solos, the unison playing of his wind players, the whimsical rhythmic patterns, and the electronics are all strokes on the large and challenging canvas called Pata Kandinsky. And in the last part of the suite The Simple Song And The Infernal Sound, the listener is treated to an unexpected and seemingly illogical (and what logic can there be in Pata music?) finale with the inclusion of a human voice. It is a very difficult task to reflect the scale and peculiarities of Kandinsky’s ideas through musical means. In my opinion, Norbert Stein managed to solve it, as always, in an original and unique way.

Leonid Auskern / Jazzquad.ru / Belarus

Norbert Stein, 71, has it good. He has a style (new German: trademark).
And he has a name for it (new German: brand): Pata.
For decades, you can follow how different instrumentations and line-ups (i.e. projects) have unfolded behind this prefix.
According to the website, there are currently three: two trios and the large formation that gives this project/CD its name: “Pata Kandinsky”.
The cover motif (“Small Worlds VII”), the reference to the star painter of Expressionism and early Abstract Painting, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), suggest that the composer Stein has also made use of graphic notation here.
It would not be the first time. He has already used such practices with the NDR Big Band on “Graffiti Suite” (2006).
Stein was not only inspired by Kandinsky’s paintings (who, for his part, had a great affinity with music; although “improvisation” in his picture designations hardly corresponds conceptually to the same phenomenon in jazz), but also by reading his writings, for example “Punkt und Linie zu Fläche” (1926) or “Das Geistige in der Kunst” (1911).

Now, like the reviewer recently, you can stand in front of Kandinsky in the “Der blaue Reiter” section of the Lenbachhaus in Munich and not think of Pata Music. But one would have liked to know how Kandinsky and Stein are connected, or rather how the composer Stein thought of them together – the CD cover is silent on the subject.
But you can also listen to Pata Kandinsky as a piece of absolute music, recorded at one of the most attractive locations of contemporary visual art, in the upper exhibition hall of sculptor Tony Cragg’s Waldfrieden sculpture park in Wuppertal, on the occasion of the 2023 edition of the multiphonics festival.
The project begins in typical Pata style, with dabbed and staggered instrumental speech melodies from the wind instruments.
The tremolo-like individual voices can be imagined as “brushstrokes” and the bass clarinets as “dark and light steps”. Before the ensemble joins together to form a “big” theme – and then moves apart again.

The programme consists of a variety of running towards and away from each other, an oscillation between collective (composed, but also improvised as in track 2, for example) and solo.
Michael Heupel’s flute is there, as always; the bandleader’s Ayleresque, surging tenor saxophone, early on also Joker Nies’ electronic textures (recognisable in the first track – if you want to translate them visually – as dots and chains).
The stylistic panorama is once again expanded, on the one hand the typical Stein cantilenas, sing-along themes, then again structures as if from free jazz (the choice of pianist, Uwe Oberg from Wiesbaden, is typical of this).
Norbert Stein has arranged this variety of colours and structures really cleverly, culminating in the last piece, the climax, which brings together all the structural elements once again: a singable theme, a tenor sax solo over uptempo swing, which pours out into a free-metric collective. The high winds remain.
Then – an Italian band like in a Fellini film.
And above it a woman’s voice (“from the tape): “On this summer evening…next to the family homes…you can see grass”, in a fragmented text.
One would like to know who that is. What she is reading. Because the idea is absolutely striking.

Michael Rüsenberg / jazzcity / Germany

With Wassily Kandinsky’s abstract, expressionist world of figures as a starting point, Norbert Stein composed “Pata Kandinsky” as a suite in six movements for a 12-piece orchestra, landing in the twilight zone between Free and Composed. The setting for the recordings is the Waldfrieden sculpture park in Wuppertal and somehow the holy spirit of Wuppertal’s Peter Brötzmann seems to hover over the ensemble, as well as that of Alfred Jarry, of course. The French writer is the founder of pataphysics, the science of imaginary solutions. Transformed into jazz, this means that the co-founder of absurd theatre (“King Ubu”) also provides Norbert Stein with spiritual liberation. Stein’s concept of pata music is also sustainable on this live recording from the Multiphonics Festival 2023. The compositions are finely structured, sometimes sound quite delicate, even chamber music-like, but a freer flow characterises the spatial sound. When the winds take on cacophonies, even wilder splendour is the order of the day. The ensemble is generally kept in check, but as the final “The Simple Song and The Infernal Sound” shows, this makes perfect sense. The tenor saxophonists are allowed to let off steam over orchestral sound nuances, some of which are lushly notated, before reaching a solemn ensemble finale.

Alfred Pranzl / skug Musikkultur / Austria

With “Pata Kandinsky”, Cologne saxophonist Norbert Stein dares to pay homage to the legendary painter Wassily Kandinsky. This is a testament – this time with a large ensemble – to Stein’s ability to think of musical structures in larger contexts, which in detail leads to undreamt-of states of refinement and contemplation. This is due above all to the musicians involved in this new production. The range between neo-tonal sound impressions, expressive free jazz, but also melodious passages is enormous.

“Pata Kandinsky” is conceived as a suite in honour of the Russian painter and this challenges a thirteen-piece orchestra. This mosaic of moods and textures is full of sound. Each movement has its own character, from the “Seven brushstrokes, dark and light steps” to the “Simple song and the infernal sound“.

Norbert Stein thinks and plays far-sightedly enough to ensure that this large-scale interaction never runs the risk of getting bogged down in over-enthusiastic arbitrariness. At times, all the instruments unite to form ambitious unison choruses that seem reminiscent of legendary large-scale free jazz ensembles from the past. Experienced free-spirited characters such as Annette Maye on clarinet, Michael Heupel on flutes or Georg Wissel on alto saxophone and clarinet bring lightness and luminosity to the complex endeavour, while Uwe Oberg’s piano playing covers a no less broad palette between contemplative lyricism and cluster-like musical action painting.

Stein and his outstanding fellow musicians manage to translate the essential elements of Kandinsky’s art – point, line, surface – into musical equivalents that are both abstract and profound, but at the same time delight the curious ear with their blossoming sensuality of sound.

Stefan Pieper / nrwjazz.net / Germany

We have written many times on the blog about the records of the German tenor saxophonist Norbert Stein, all of them printed for his own label Pata Music. In particular, in the record store you will find texts for the albums “Heartland” (2022), “We Are” (2017), “Friends & Dragons” (2016), “Play Rainer Maria Rilke / Das Karussell” (2015), “Pata on the Cadillac” (2012) and “Silent Sitting Bulls” (2010). On most of these CDs, which move in the field of creative jazz or improv-jazz, Norbert Stein was accompanied by the Pata Messengers, while on others (CDs) he was accompanied by other formations.

On Norbert Stein’s most recent album, “Pata Kandinsky” [Pata Music, 2024], there is no specific ensemble accompanying the German musician, but a group of instrumentalists, consisting of him on tenor and Michael Heupel on tenor and various flutes, Georg Wissel alto, clarinet, Nicolao Valiensi euphonium, Annette Maye clarinet, Andreas Wagner saxophones, bass clarinet, Pacho Davila tenor, Rainer Weber clarinet, Joker Nies electronics, Uwe Oberg piano, Florian Herzog double bass and Jörg Fischer drums. So we are talking about a twelve-piece ensemble, a small orchestra, consisting of eight wind players, plus electronics and a rhythm section (piano, bass, drums).

At its base what we hear on “Pata Kandinsky” is a six-movement suite, recorded live at the Multiphonics Festival 2023, at the Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden in Wuppertal, which pays homage to the Russian painter and art theorist Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944).

Kandinsky has influenced jazz musicians in various ways. Among them are pianist Anthony Davis, saxophonists Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy and Ivo Perelman, groups such as the Globe Unity Orchestra and the Rova Saxophone Quintet, and there are jazz groups with his surname in their names, such as the Kandinsky Effect, Kandinsky Trio, etc.

In any case, and apart from Kandinsky’s work on the cover of Norbert Stein’s album, it is not easy to see exactly what this influence consists of – and basically because the correspondences that can occur between painting and music are not immediately apparent. Certainly there will be some “underground” connections, but what I can say, in the first instance, is that Norbert Stein’s music is not iconoclastic and abstract, as, even in its greatest extent, it moves close to… realistic models.

The compositions, in any case, are very interesting, with the arrangements of the wind instruments (there will surely be some of them, in some parts) to win you over, through the way their sounds are intertwined, creating sometimes a sense of fanfare, while we shouldn’t underestimate the more improvisational parts, which may be more related to Kandinsky’s advanced painting (using it as inspiration), but at their base will always be jazz (the shapes of, say, Henry Threadgill).

A very good and very strong album, once again, from Norbert Stein and his collaborators.

Phontas Troussas / diskoryxeion / Greece

Musically socialized and trained in the 1970s, the Cologne-based saxophonist and composer has been able to retain a good portion of the joy of experimentation and independent spirit from those wild years. In the 1980s, the long-time member of the Cologne Saxophone Mafia founded “Pata Musik”, a label and playing concept that has enriched contemporary jazz in Germany over the years in a wide variety of forms and stylistic influences.

With “Pata Kandinsky”, Stein has now written a six-part suite in homage to the visual artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and extended his expressionist sensuality and abstract world of forms into music with a 13-piece orchestra. This works excellently and remains surprisingly accessible despite all the electronic infusions and stylistic shifts. In his own words, Stein creates “staged spaces” in which he sets the moods for the instrumentalists in order to encourage them to express themselves freely as soloists.

The music, recorded in the Waldfrieden sculpture park in Wuppertal, is a disciplined, free flow between chamber music, wind music, free jazz and noise-like textures, in which the intersections are constantly shifting and soloistic contributions repeatedly emerge and delight the ear. With his Pata music, Stein also takes the liberty of adding beautiful melodies or harmonic progressions to the free flurry of sounds without the tension disintegrating. “Everything is transformable, but nothing is arbitrary” is the essence of pataphysics (Alfred Jarry), which Stein also demonstrates musically with his new work.

Pirmin Bossart / Jazz’n’More / Switzerland

The painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944) is said to have been a synaesthete. He associated sounds with colors and shapes, called his works “compositions” or “improvisations” and saw his abstract paintings as parallels to Schönberg’s atonal music. Kandinsky’s paintings are still considered “musical” today and are reproduced on a number of record and CD covers. Norbert Stein, the Cologne pata master and saxophone hero, was inspired by Kandinsky’s “musicality” to create a special, very ambitious album. Pata Kandinsky is a six-movement suite for a twelve-piece woodwind ensemble. Between the tonally generous wind motifs (in a sensitive rubato), “staged” spaces open up for the hand-picked improvisers and for interesting sound combinations (such as flute plus electronics). The result is reminiscent of many a Globe Unity concert from earlier years – rhythms play practically no role. Kandinsky’s painting “Small Worlds VII” from 1922 adorns the album cover (slightly altered). Not everyone would expect such a powerful development of sound from these small, delicate, abstract figures.

Hans-Jürgen Schaal / Jazzthetik / Germany

Norbert Stein studied saxophone at the Academy of Music in Cologne between 1973 and 1979. He first became known as a member of the groups Boury, NoNett and Headband, with whom he also toured internationally. He then founded his own fairly stable bands with Christopher Dell, Frank Gratkowski, Thomas Heberer, Michael Heupel, Frank Köllges and Albrecht Maurer, among others. For these projects, he developed the so-called Pata music, based on the pataphysics of author Alfred Jarry. “The music should provide flow, that is, it should be in motion, but not in a hectic way, but with steadiness, even in changing tempos; it doesn’t have to be in idyllic landscapes, but it should create an emotional will in the listener to be taken along”.

Stein creates so-called “staged spaces” in his compositions, where he sets moods for the individual instrumentalists that they can then move freely within as soloists. The songs are a balance between sophisticated arrangements and plenty of room for spontaneity and interactivity.

Stein has been to numerous festivals and international tours with his various, mostly co-existing bands – Pata on the Cadillac, Pata Masters, Pata Generators, Pata Orchestra, Pata Horns and Pata Trio. He has collaborated intensively on several projects with the musicians of the Association à la Recherche d’un Folklore Imaginaire. Since 1987, well over 20 releases of his works in the field of contemporary music have been released on his own label PATA Music. Stein was a longtime member of Cologne’s saxophone mafia and co-founder of the James Choice Orchestra, which he co-directed until 2008. But he was also involved in recordings with Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Now we hear him with a larger ensemble in the suite Pata Kandinsky, in honor of the artist Vasily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944). The recording was made during a concert at the Multiphonics Festival 2023 in Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden in Wuppertal, Germany, and it is a recording of music at the intersection of modern jazz and contemporary music.

“Stein has, in my opinion, written an excellent work for a group of musicians, most of whom I feel have more than one foot in contemporary music, and then you have some who are improvisers with a close relationship to the freer and newer jazz.

And there are six exciting sequences we get to witness. Stein steers it all with exciting tenor saxophone playing, and much of it is based on Joker Nies’ electronic playing. The most “composed” sequences are controlled by the winds, and the themes and composed sequences are relatively demanding (at least to play, I think). But here he has allied himself with good “reed players” who handle his compositions in an excellent way.

The music varies and gives us a number of exciting stories, for which we don’t really need a movie or other “effects” to create our inner images – much like the pictures of Kandinsky. His images are often like graphic figures, which are almost compositions in themselves. And I think Stein and his fellow musicians capture these exciting works of art beautifully in their music.

Over the years, Norbert Stein has made many exciting records in different formats. And regardless of whether it’s a trio or a larger ensemble, I think he makes exciting, interesting and excellent music that you shouldn’t use as background music at all, but music that you should set aside time for and enjoy from start to finish.

Exciting and extremely rewarding!

Jan Granlie / salt peanuts* / Norway

Saxophonist composer and bandleader Norbert Stein is a key figure in the creative avant-garde jazz scene in Cologne and Germany. Of course, I’ve had a glimpse of his name and the existence of his many achievements for many years, without ever having listened to them, concentrating much more on radical free improvisation, while being a lover of jazz and other music. But this remarkable orchestra from Cologne also features a number of improvisers whom I like very much and whose albums I review whenever I can, such as saxophonist Georg Wissel, electronic artist Joker Nies, pianist Uwe Oberg and drummer Jörg Fischer. An album evoking the Russian painter Wassili Kandinsky, a creator who initiated abstract painting on its geometric and colorful side. It makes me think that Kandinsky was influenced by the painter Sonia Delaunay (of Ukrainian origin), whose son Charles was a visionary figure in the jazz world as a critic, producer (Swing and Vogue records) and artist agent among the giants of jazz.

Kandinsky’s paintings also served as reference points for Anthony Braxton’s compositions, and are even featured on his record sleeves. The PATA Kandinsky orchestra is remarkable in every way, blending cubist compositions, vehement solos and sonic skids – controlled noisiness with a sudden, furious Ascension-like surge. A fine, close-knit team: In addition to the aforementioned Wissel on alto sax and clarinet, Nies, Oberg on piano and Fischer on drums, there’s leader Norbert Stein on tenor sax, Michael Heupel on flutes and Nicolao Valiensi on euphonium, Annette Maye and Rainer Weber on clarinet and bass clarinet, Andreas Wagner on alto and soprano sax and clarinets, Pacho Davilla on tenor sax, Florian Herzog on double bass.

A total of 50:17, beginning with scattered sounds and moving on to a composition that interweaves dodecaphonic intro, sound masses and a remarkably structured, evolving modal theme, all deftly navigating between expressive power, interesting voicings and lightness, a touch of pointillism and beautiful nuances. To incorporate such a variety of elements in the space of 10 minutes in one go, with two or three free spaces for individuality (Joker Nies!) so that everything seems to flow, is super (Seven Brushstrokes Dark and Light Steps! I tell you: class! From a Kandinskian point of view, I’d have expected something else, but the music is worth the detour.

It’s enough to hear the clarinet of Point And Line To Plane (9:38) evolve subtly over Jörg Fischer’s open, airy drumming and the distinction of Herzog’s double bass, with the deft, diaphanous assistance of the blowers divided into undulating sections, clarinet followed by a flautist inspired by contemporary music, to savor Norbert Stein’s music, which also solicits brief passages of improvised sound research here and there. This second composition closes with the modal brass theme of the first. It’s easy to get through this album without a moment’s boredom, tasting a beautiful musicality enhanced by superb ideas and colorful instrumental work of the highest quality. This is a magnificent piece of work that establishes Norbert Stein as a contemporary jazz composer of the highest calibre. Congratulations, Norbert!

Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg / orynx-improvandsounds.blogspot.com / Belgium

live concerts

PATA KANDINSKY 1st movement
“Seven brushstrokes, dark and light steps”

PATA KANDINSKY 6th movement
“The simple song and the infernal sound”