Ever since jazz first emerged – and gospel music and spirituals played an important part in its birth – jazz musicians have again and again written religiously inspired compositions. Well-known examples are Duke Ellington’s “Sacred Concerts” and John Coltrane’s masterpiece “A Love Supreme”.
In their programme, Matthias Petzold and the Cologne church musician, organist and improviser Matthias Haarmann present a selection of these compositions, not only by Ellington and Coltrane but also by Charles Mingus, John McLaughlin and others. The spiritual energy of these pieces, and the free, improvisatory encounter with God that is built into them, lend themselves particularly well to an interpretation for saxophone and organ – the European instrument of religious music par excellence. The two musicians explore the character of the compositions, now meditative, now expressive, and shape them into versions of their own.
At the heart of the programme is the “Canticle of the Sun” by St Francis of Assisi. In the individual verses of the Canticle, Francis addresses the elements of nature and of life as sisters and brothers. Petzold and Haarmann give shape to these verses through improvisation, and so lend the 800-year-old text a contemporary musical dimension.
Isfahan
A Love Supreme