www.salt-peanuts.eu

G(ood)luck marks the new chamber trio of Viennese composer and flugelhorn and trumpet player Franz Koglmann, featuring English horn and oboe player Mario Arcari (who collaborated with him before on «About Yesterdays Ezzthetics», (hat art, 1988) and classical cellist Attila Pasztor. Typical to Koglmann art, this trio also succeeds to blend playfully eclectic European musical and non-musical influences into the American form of jazz. This time mirroring the coolness of 1950s West Coast jazz with the elegance of eighteenth-century opera and the atmospheric density of the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, in a highly personal, compelling voice and sound.

The title of the album is a wordplay on the name of German opera composer from the eighteenth-century Christoph Willibald Gluck (who penned significant portion of his work in Vienna, where he also died). Koglmann was commissioned to adapt his odes of German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock for the 2014 Nuremberg International Gluck Opera Festival, and then founded this impressive trio.

The arrangement of Italian pianists-composers Giorgio Gaslini’s «Blues All’alba» and Giovani Fusco’s «L’Eclisse Twist», written for Antonioni’s «La Notte» (1961) and «L’Eclisse» (1962), are very emotional. The arrangement of the romantic Friulian folksong «Done Mari» and Gluck’s «Sweet Ardor» offer a distant yet playful look on these innocent themes. But Koglmann original compositions are the most appealing ones. These ones emphasize his wise, multi-layered and rich aesthetics, never surrender to any genre or a style, with a sound of his own, and always delivered with a commanding elegance, tastefulness and shrewd sense of humor. The melancholic «Early Graves», with its fleeting dance moves, suggests that some may want to dance in such graveyard. The sober tone of «A Metropolitan Affair» and «What Thou Lovest Well» spice this kind solemn atmosphere with the exact measure of sentimentality.

Warmly recommended.

Eyal Hareuveni – 28.12.15