MHL BIGBAND - Changing Times (2019)

How does big band jazz from Europe sound? From Germany? From Lübeck?
What happens in the "real" north of the republic? Actually a white spot on the jazz map and yet surprises the Musikhochschule Lübeck and the local jazz scene again and again by creative shocks received already the debut album "Timeless Changes - LübeckSounds" of the MHL Big Band of The enthusiastic resonances of his own compositions from Lübeck's Big Band Composers' Workshop have been enthusiastically received by both the trade press and the audience in 2014. The new album "Changing Times - LübeckSounds Vol. II" celebrates the diversity of their own language to extremes his different stylistics on the constant change: A change of the generations, the compositional techniques, the sound aesthetics, in the consciousness of its roots of expressionistic fanfare sounds to vintage swing, from fusion jazz to electronic club music.

The MHL composition professor Dieter Mack (64), known as an unusual newcomer in the New Music scene, indulges in Changing Times as he did on the first album of his passion for fusion jazz. His four compositions Outrageous, Push, Ngotek and The Second Dark Side tie in with his early musical socialization through 70s fusion jazz, Franz Zappa, psychedelic Progressive Rock and Balinese music.
Ilja Ruf, a student at the age of 17, a student at the MHL and the youngest composer on the album, presents his big band debut with Magic Moments, inspired by the rich colors of a large ensemble, stylistically different impulses from radio and Latin and an 80- he synth-sound.
Hans-Christian Stephan, who is now an established and award-winning composer and arranger after completing his studies in Lübeck and jazz composition studies in Bern, writes a highly explosive vintage swing character study of the hectic pace of our time at 24/7, thus bridging the current compositional script in musical-stylistic terms ,
Together with the performance artist Christopher Hotti Böhm, he lets sound an electro number with swarm defects - without electro. Totally unplugged.
The massive step further venture the MHL students, all mid to late twenties, Michael Knarr, Kristoph Krabbenhöft and Jon Ander Klein, with their electronic sound monument Till Your Well and the addition of all sorts of electronic equipment formally through the 22 -minute length to earlier vinyl But could be played today in the club nights of major international cities through the fusion of big band sound, chorus and electronic dance music.

Tracklist:

01. Outrageous
02. Push
03. Magic Moments
04. Ngotek
05. The Second Dark Side
06. 24/7
07. Schwarmdefekte
08. Till Your Wall