Pata Polaris

The trio for new wind music
The beauty of traditional music and the exciting experience of something beyond.
It´s the pata melodies!
Rich in images and expressive, they open up spaces of free worlds.

Norbert Stein – tenor saxophone
Nicolao Valiensi – euphonium
Michael Heupel – flutes

The new CD:
PATA POLARIS “Heartland” (Pata 25)
Available at the Pata Music Shop

Press comments

“… For although all three feel they belong to the mature improvising avant-garde and contemporary jazz, their shared conceptions of music go back in history much further than the good century in which jazz has existed.

All three make the air vibrate with wind instruments, suggesting a close-to-the-body concept of music, and the basis of their music is aligned with baroque models for long stretches. There are polyphonic movement techniques, there is work with melodic phrases throughout, which repeatedly leads into harmonic, sometimes parallel, polyphony. There is a very wide spectrum of dynamics, ranging from brief fortissimo outbursts to long pianissimo phrases, sometimes breathed rather than blown.

The tonal colorations mostly eschew shrill, strident paces in favor of predominantly warm timbres, finely vibrating vibrato, discreet tremolo and, again and again, a passing, pataphysical, ambiguous beauty that is always resolved long before any suspicion of kitsch might arise. The tempos are extremely variable and full of rubato passages based on appointments and live markings.

So if this music is about fixing a common commitment and origin, it is obviously close to European Baroque, contemporary and free-spirited, but not interpreted in a historically accurate way. The heartland is wide open to the sounds of the present day.”

Hans-JUErgen Linke, Frankfurter Rundschau, Germany

Norbert Stein does not allow himself to be impressed. The music of the Cologne saxophonist and composer cares little for the surrounding fields of design habits. It has neo-musical elements as well as improvising structures, is composed with freedom of thought without getting lost in questions of necessity. The trio Pata Polaris with the flutist Michael Heupel and the euphonium player Nicolao Valiensi as counterparts present their “Heartland” as a moodily complex concert of narratives, letting melodies run into each other, motifs wander and meet again. There is room for musical expansion, linking free flow with melodically arranged clarity, conceived more polyphonically and dialogically than harmonically. This remains consistently off the beaten track of contemporary musical forms, very open without having to become destructive. Ultimately, therefore, very refined.

RALF DOMBROWSKI, Jazz Thing 147, Germany

“Highly complex yet transparent, playful yet very thoughtful, new-sounding yet full of “groove” – Pata music indeed (and best regards to Alfred Jarry!)”

Karsten Zimalla, WESTZEIT, Germany

… almost thrilling with „surprises” lurking, at unexpected points, when the three horns switch roles, in an environment of constant transformations. Much flowing and spontaneous music we have here, certainly placed on some foundations, but in the process explosive and unpredictable.”

Phontas Troussas, diskoryxeion.blogspot.com, Greek

“… The last album of the German saxophonist and composer Norbert Stein, a brilliant representative of the modern jazz avant-garde, who coined the special term of pata music for his music … appeared five years ago.
So, five years later, lovers of avant-garde jazz can hear his creator at his best and with fresh, creative ideas…. the interplay of these instruments becomes a jewel …”

Norbert Stein PATA MUSIC