Flowers And Trees

Description

THOMAS CLAUSEN TRIO
Flowers And Trees
Featuring GARY BURTON

Mads Vinding: Bass
Gary Burton: Vibes
Thomas Clausen: Piano
Alex Riel: Drums

1. MOONLIGHT (Clausen) 6’49
2. DREAM (Clausen) 6’58
3. PLAYTIME (Clausen) 4’25
4. FLOWERS AND TREES (Clausen) 8’08
5. HOLIDAYS (Clausen) 6’58
6. SPANISH BLUE (Clausen) 4’04
7. BLUE IN GREEN (Evans/Davis) 5’48
8. THE LION AND THE VIRGIN (Clausen) 10’30
9. CHORAL (Clausen) 6’57
10. AUTUMN LEAVES (Kosma/Prévert) 5’37
11. FOUR ON THE FLOOR (Clausen) 3’51

Total Playing Time 70’05

Produced by MARION KAEMPFERT and ALLAN BOTSCHINSKY
Digital Recording and Digital Master Mix by OLE CHRISTIAN HANSEN at Sound Track Studios, Copenhagen
Photography by GORM VALENTIN
© 1992 by M.A Music International, Mittelweg 169, D 2000 Hamburg 13
Made in Germany

Where do you still find this! Feeling and intellect flowing together, virtuosic instrumental mastery pairing up with a delicate flair for the creation of a state of suspense. The American Gary Burton and the Dane Thomas Clausen create a magical weaving of the metallic-silver-tone of the vibraphone with the warmth of the piano strings coupled with the pulse of the bass and drums. And through it all, the jazz pianist Thomas Clausen, born in 1949, remains just as unmistakably true to his own cultivated, European style of piano playing as the six-year older Gary Burton does to his brilliant, rational but, nevertheless, sensitive style of vibraphone playing: Two kindred spirits. The dream-like changing harmonies of vibraphone and piano blend with the full-bodied sound of the bass, whose strings are made to sing and leap, hum and growl by 44-year-old Mads Vinding. The combined effort is crowned with the sensitive, steady beat of Alex Riel’s (born 1940) drums. A filigree texture is created out of Mads Vinding’s special feeling for melodic and rhythmic accents while Alex Riel spices up his precise rhythmic work through an abundance of percussive flashes.

The three Danes and the American thoroughly enjoy making music and they make music for those who thoroughly enjoy it. It does not matter, whether they play dream-like ballads, whether they fall into a shuffle-beat, whether they rock it up or whether they create an almost sacred atmosphere: The beauty of the themes is never overshadowed by hollow, hectic flourishes. Since the beginning of the 1970’s Thomas Clausen, Mads Vinding and Alex Riel have been playing together in various groups, but it was only in 1987 that the much-indemand musicians formed their trio. Gary Burton began playing with the group in March 1990, when Thomas Clausen was honored for his distinctive, melodic, straight forward piano playing and for his many- faceted compositions by being asked to participate in the Danish “Jazzpar Project”.

Gary Burton, one of the greatest vibraphonists of the present, has, since the middle of the 1960’s, developed a thoroughgoing rhythmic, but still, smooth, lyrical and, above all, wide-ranging melodic playing-style brought to perfection by his polyphonic four-mallet technique. This quartet, made up of four absolute masters, allows us, through this audiophile recording and in concerts something that becomes more and more rare in our fast-paced life: Time to dream. They open up mutual free-space and preserve, with all intensity, the Muse. They snatch up each others ideas, turn them, transform them, enrich them with their own ideas and give them back again. In this gentle, affectionate understanding lies the allurement of their music.

Werner Stiefele