indigo cd 921462upc 705304452226file under: Jazz

Release March 20, 2009

Frederik Köster QuartettZeichen der Zeit

Frederik Köster: trumpet, flugelhorn

Tobias Hoffmann: electric guitar, effects

Robert Landfermann: double bass, effects

Ralf Gessler: drums, percussion

TRAUMTON RecordsGrunewaldstr. 9 D-13597 Berlin Germany

030 331 93 50 info@traumton.dewww.traumton.de

The first notes of the title track opening the CD already make it unmistakeably clear: it’s not about cozy red-wine intellectu-ality here, nor is it about the dutiful parroting of the canons of jazz. A hard rock guitar slams into a jazz trumpet at a hard angle and sets entire bunches of electronic effects free. A little later a guitar solo spirals up above dense grooves into the clear heights of an alternative rock firmament, only to be promptly swallowed up by the trumpet. The music is full of bre-athtaking breaks, mood changes, and tricky shifts of stylistic paradigms. One thing only unites all the phases of these diffe-rent movements in musical landscapes – the untamed lust for playfully unfurling the moment. Köster is however, not only setting a sign of the times, he’s also a child of the present. "Most of the jazz musicians of my generation didn’t grow up with jazz at all, but with other music", he comments on his rich menu. "With me, jazz mixes with alternative rock and pop – stuff that’s kind of out on a limb. As a teenager I listened to rock, when I was 20 I turned to jazz exclusively for two years, but at

TRAUMTON Records Grunewaldstr. 9 D 13597 Berlin Germany Tel. 030 331 93 50 info@traumton.de www.traumton.de

Frederik Köster Quartett - „Zeichen der Zeit“ (Sign of the Times)

What other jazz musician would have dared to title a record like this right after the turn of the millenium? Once a platfom for the very epitome of musical innovation, jazz has been lagging farther and farther behind reality in re-cent years, sometimes even seeming to be moving in the opposite direction. Especially the German scene has, for the most part, been content with simply copying their American heroes, or settling into the typical pan-European introspection. Only a few musicians like Michael Wollny, Nils Wogram, Eric Schaefer, Carsten Daerr or Arne Jansen have had the courage to beat their own paths through jazzland, and this league of the young and briilliant now wel-comes trumpeter Frederik Köster from Cologne.

Live:

26.03.2010 DE-Düsseldorf, Jazzschmiede02.09.2010 DE-Duisburg, Café Steinbruch15.11.2010 DE-Illingen, Illipse18.11.2010 DE-Osnabrück, Blue Note

one point I realized that the music of my teenage years had really formed me somehow. I wanted to combine this experience with what I had learned in my jazz studies."

It’s not only musical moments that are culminating here however. Köster knows how to make the stress and hectic of today just as palpable as the longing for peace and relaxation. He doesn’t even have to deny the jazz tradition in order to enrich it with the interplay between everyday observations and needs, and he doesn’t require anything more from his listeners than a readiness to listen, and to let themselves go in the music. His collisions and atmospheres are of course the result of musical syntheses, but the conventional fusion philosophy that still rules interdisciplinary jazz, he has left far behind. "Our music, in spite of melting so many style elements together, shouldn’t sound electronic, but organic", he emphasizes. "We do use a lot of effects, but avoid a synthetic sound that puts a blanket over everything that is natural. Of course we play a fusion of diffe-rent styles, but the term "fusion" doesn‘t really mean anything to us. It sounds too much like the 80’s. I feel a stronger con-nection to the music of the 60’s and the 90’s."

With this, Köster takes his place in the front line of innovative jazz stylists of the past and future, because the greats of jazz – no namedropping here – have always cheated a little on the respective jazz traditions of their day, finding a juncture between the immense achievements of the genre and their own spirit of the time. Of course the sound you hear on "Sign of the Times" didn’t come about overnight. Köster, guitarist Tobias Hoffmann, bassist Robert Landfermann and drummer Ralf Gessler have been working together intensively for five years. "On our first CD "Constantly Moving" we used songs from a time span of five years. You can hear exactly which song is the oldest and which one is the newest, and you can follow the development in between. The new album represents our current state of development. We started as a groove band, but at some point that was just too dull. I wanted to bring more depth to the music, so we incorporated effects, and our roots in alternative rock mu-sic. The result is the music you hear today.

The Frederik Köster Quartett improvises, but deals with improvisation quite differently than what we know from the vast majo-rity of jazz groups. Improvisation doesn’t mean the spontaneous paraphrasing of notes and scales here, but much more the expression of creativity with tone colors and sounds. "We work a lot with spaces and atmospheres", says Köster. "Sure, sca-les and chords are important, but compared to the last album, we have become much simpler in our structures to make room for these spaces and atmospheres. The impressionistic side of the music has always been very important to me. Just closing your eyes and letting the music work on you."

Until now, the spectrum of German jazz trumpet outside the world of free jazz was considered to be pegged out between Till Brönner and Nils Wülker. Köster brings a completely new dimension to the field; his commitment to musical complexity is what is really striking thereby. It’s usually more guitarists, keyboarders, or dj’s who are known for playing around with sounds and spheres, not virtuosos on the good old trumpet with its naturally limited scope of composition. Köster, however, has a special relationship to his own species. "I hardly ever listen to trumpet players. Of course I started out with Miles, Chet Baker, Freddie Hubbard, Clifford Brown or Booker Little. I don‘t want to say anything against that. But lately I’ve hardly heard any trumpeters at all, instead more Nils Wogram‘s Root 70, John Hollenbeck‘s Claudia Quartet or John Coltrane. Actually it do-esn’t matter to me at all whether I play trumpet, piano, or guitar. My music is created in my head. I don’t see myself as a tra-ditional jazz trumpeter, I’m just a musician. I’ve always loved playing piano and guitar, and you can hear that I‘ve written se-veral pieces on these instruments. I am interested in music as a whole. That’s why the music distances itself a little from the instrument."

Which doesn’t mean that Köster doesn’t have a thrilling sound. It’s not seldom that his listeners have a hard time deciding whether he sounds sharp as a knife or soft as butter at one and the same moment. So many perceptions reverberate in his sound that you can hardly name them all. He doesn‘t have to resort to electronic manipulations to call up an incredible fun-dus of timbres either. By instinctively adapting his sound to the respective atmosphere, he remains completely unpredictable in every moment of his playing. Especially with guitarist Tobias Hoffmann, he melts into a musical symbiosis that reminds you of Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays, or Nils Petter Molvaer and Eivind Aarset. In spite of its name, the Frederik Köster Quartet is a firmly established unit that lives not only from the musical achievements of the four involved, but above all from the almost conspiratorial single-mindedness of these four human beings in the group. Four musicians who have a lot to say to each other, and who like relating these stories to their listeners.

Whether "Sign of the Times" sounds like jazz or not is something listeners can determine according to their own preferences. The Frederik Köster Quartett is all about pure, universal communication in the world of today. Music for the moment, with an aspiration to eternity. The short word for it is – jazz.

Links:http://www.frederikkoester.dehttp://www.myspace.com/frederikkoesterhttp://www.traumton.de/label/artists/?id=koester&lang=de

TRAUMTON Records Grunewaldstr. 9 D 13597 Berlin Germany Tel. 030 331 93 50 info@traumton.de www.traumton.de

Selected diskographiy:

Frederik Köster Quartett - Zeichen der Zeit (Traumton Records) 2009 Frederik Köster Jazz Orchester - Soundtrack - Live im Stadtgarten (CMO Music) 2008 Frederik Köster Quartett - Constantly Moving (Jazzthing/Next Generation Vol. 14 / Double Moon Records) 2006

Tom Gaebel - Don't Wanna Dance (Telemedia Music) 2008 Curse - Freiheit (ARR) 2008 Ein fliehendes Pferd - Original Soundtrack (Normal Records) 2007 Johannes Müller Jazz Mile - Subway To Downtown New York (CMO Music) 2006 Biréli Lagrene & WDR Big Band - Djangology (Dreyfus/WDR) 2006 Martin Schrack & Band - Number Four (Jazzfabrik) 2006 BuJazzO - Calling South Africa (Mons Records) 2006

Press

""Has social unrest, the kind which we have been warned about again and again, now taken possession of German jazz? When a CD is called "Sign of the Times", and starts off like a punk song - with an angry man’s voice counting in – we could very well be led to think so. Cologne-based trumpeter Frederik Köster’s amazing quartet can, thanks to its convertible guita-rist Tobias Hoffmann, indeed make noise – but that’s not what matters first and foremost to this group. The "Sign of the Times", which the band is bearing witness to here must be interpretted thus: that contemporary jazz can do anything and everything (or at least a lot): sound like alternative rock, or like chamber music, get lost in electronic wormholes and resur-rect in storms of sound, be a familiar ballad, or a nervous folksong. Frederik Köster‘s specialtiy is not to spread all this out over different compositions, but to be able to put it all into one piece in a pleasantly inartificial way. His music for trumpet, e-guitar, contrabass, and drums brings the past ten, fifteen years in improvised music together, all by itself: from grunge to ambient, all the way to songwriter-jazz. No small feat, which recently brought Köster and co. the "New German Jazz Award", the most highly acclaimed distinction for professional jazz bands in these parts."Rondo, Josef Engels, 11.05.2009

"Cologne-based trumpet and flugalhorn player Frederik Köster has already been playing with this quartet in a fixed lineup since 2003. An intimacy has developed out of this, ever-present and quite tangible, and it leads to an organic bonding of diverse musical elements on the new CD ,,Sign of the Times". Tobias Hoffmann with his rocking electric guitar has his place here, as well as jazzier bassist Robert Landfermann, and highly flexible drummer Ralf Gessler. Köster composed and arran-ged all the songs, proving himself to be the master of fusion. With his steely trumpet sound, for example in the title song, he molds the music just as much as with his soft sound on the flugalhorn, like in "Ballade vom guten Menschen"("Ballad of the Good Human").The band is totally convincing live as well; winning the New German Jazz Award 2009 both for the quartet and for Köster as a soloist certainly attests to this. The CD is an excellent example of the new wind blowing in the German jazz scene whip-ped up by the extremely talented newcomers in the last few years."Jazzpodium, Hans-Bernd Kittlaus

"Use electronics and still sound organic - trumpeter Köster from Cologne manages to do exactly that with his quartet of five years, consisting of hard-rock inspired guitarist Tobias Hoffmann, bassist Robert Landfermann and drummer Ralf Gessler. The combo is an enrichment for the German jazz scene."Kulturspiegel, April 2009

"New German trumpet-blooming: chapter four: Frederik Köster. Strong tone, untouched by mufflers, in a brew that becomes electric drama."DIE ZEIT #12, 12.3.2009

"Completely furnished but not clutteredThe trumpeters sound the departure to new horizons – With his "Sign of the Times", Frederik Köster has now given the mo-vement its banner. Of course this CD belongs in context - what music doesn’t? Joo Kraus, Matthias Schriefl, Thomas Siff-ling, Sebastian Studnitzky, Nils Wülker in Germany, Lorenz Raab in Austria, Werner Hasler or Martin Dahanukar in Switzer-land. Not to mention the rest of Europe. New trumpet players everywhere, who don’t do the orthodox theme-solo-theme-thing, who flirt with pop and rock, with grooves and beats, and jump out of and away from the traditional pigeonhole so far that a new one has to be coined for them. As if Frederik Köster wanted to find a label, he called his CD "Sign of the Times", and it once again stands under the sign of the trumpeters. When jazz went electric with Miles Davis it was like the afterqua-ke and realignment of electronic beats caused by Nils Petter Molvaer almost three decades later. Now the trumpets sound the departure. You can see it all on a banner, with the new sound unfurling right with it.

TRAUMTON Records Grunewaldstr. 9 D 13597 Berlin Germany Tel. 030 331 93 50 info@traumton.de www.traumton.de

In the case of this remarkable, furiously masterful coup however, you don’t have to, because this music is unique from the very start. A revolutionary attitude is not where it’s coming from, it is much more a distinct fanfare on top of the new main-stream, one that fills the clubs, bundles the zeitgeist, and makes you want to get down on the dancefloor. Finding the music simply chic however, is completely missing the point. 31-year-old Köster not only studied his instrument, but also composi-tions and arrangement. As was fitting, he played in the Bundes-Jugend-Jazz-Orchester (National Youth Jazz Orchestra), and in the mean time he’s already a music professor in Osnabrück. Well educated, like all of the above-mentioned, he has seconded international jazz greats, and lent his voice to the world of pop - Nina Hagen and Sportfreunde Stiller. Why he won the New German Jazz Award in February in Mannheim, and best soloist to boot, becomes clear when you hear "Sign of the Times".This is popular, plausible, intensive music that juggles with trust in wide waves of consciousness without getting caught up in clichés. It can snuggle up into dreamy ballads and break out forcefully into the rocky open, it brings hardbop patterns unnostalgically into the present and breaks the familiar with unexpected originality between contemplation and ecstasy. It maintains a coherent transparency and doesn’try to hide the influence of alternative rock music on a generation. It opens doors to rooms that are fully furnished, but not cluttered. Above all, Tobias Hoffmann gets the opportunity to play long, in-tensive, free-floating e-guitar solos that the trumpeter takes up attentively, and carries away. The drum and bass fundament underneath is both elastic and stable. The CD is full to the very brim, and a lot of perserverence is demonstrated on the seven tracks, perserverence which makes Köster’s compositional finesse evident. Breaks speak whole stories here, dramaturgies unfold, suspense is built up and sustained, all without forgetting the listener." Leipziger Volkszeitung,Ulrich Steinmetzger, 9.10.2009

TRAUMTON Records Grunewaldstr. 9 D 13597 Berlin Germany Tel. 030 331 93 50 info@traumton.de www.traumton.de