Name: NICOLE JOHäNNTGEN at the Sound Room Oakland
Start: 2024-09-21T19:30:00-07:00
Location: The Sound Room

$NICOLE JOH\u00e4NNTGEN at the Sound Room Oakland$

NICOLE JOHäNNTGEN at the Sound Room Oakland
Nicole Johänntgen – saxophone
Jon Hansen - tuba
Lo Buttercup - percussion
Nicole Johänntgen presents her album “Labyrinth” in a westcoast tour in USA 2024 with Jon Hansen on tuba and Lo Buttercup on percussion.
Nicole Johänntgen‘s new pieces are powerful. Labyrinth is groovy, experimental, sometimes melancholic and here and there you can hear the flair of the Motown era of the 70s.
The title track “Labyrinth” symbolises the inner mobility when the band lets a third motif wander through many harmonic levels. „Canyon wind“ transports a subtle 6/8 groove. Everyone moves in a trance. “Goodnight my Dear” comes up with a sophisticated polyphonic structure and in “Get up and Dance” tuba and percussion create a kind of driving disco beat. Even more: the tuba itself becomes a percussion instrument and on two compositions you can even hear a second bass instrument. The album contains many nice surprises. Johänntgen alternates between saxophone and vocals without a band.
“Labyrinth” is jazz as Nicole Johänntgen understands it. It is the art of resolving contradictions. Everything sounds as if it had been created somewhere outside, spontaneously at a session. But there is much more behind it. The unconventional instrumentation of saxophone, tuba and percussion offers unexpected new possibilities.
Nicole Johänntgen is an experienced musician who plays her saxophone sensitively and expressively with all kinds of virtuoso and, above all, natural technical tricks up to a kind of slap technique.
Nicole Johänntgen has recorded 26 albums to date, has received several awards and was awarded the Saarland Art Prize 2022 in January and the Lichtenburg Prize 2023 in May.
“Nicole has something very special in her playing – a big and generous heart. An exceptional energy!” David Liebman