Mischa Schumann Trio
album (cd) "The logical turn" (NRW 7004)
Mischa Schumann (p), Pepe Berns (b), Heinz Lichius (d)

Info 2009 / Whoever wants to advance must occasionally turn aside. It’s in this sense that ‘The Logical Turn’, the exceptional new album from the Mischa Schumann Trio, equally balances on the one hand a determined desire to develop further, with an aesthetic and stylistic curve on the other. Using his extensive musical knowledge and prowess as a starting point, the Hamburg-based pianist and composer (who came to prominence through his close collaboration with the singer Ulita Knaus and work with saxophonist Jonas Schoen) has on these nine original pieces once again created a very distinctive, wide-ranging and beautiful musical world all of his own. Crucially, he has tapped the wells of two very different musical traditions for inspiration – those of Europe and Africa. Not to mention of course that the whole thing would have been inconceivable without jazz. The results thus to a certain degree reflect a personal, non-conformist style: melodically suspenseful, harmonically fastidious and rhythmically as clear as it is complex. The album sees the pianist and his comrades-in-arms Pepe Berns (contrabass and loops) and Heinz Lichius (drums and percussion) manoeuvre themselves from the ‘classic piano trio’ into contemporary styles and soundscapes. They play deep grooves and tender ballads, employing in both understated loops and clear cross-references to other musical styles. It’s out on its own and yet always good for two or three repeated listens. They arrive again and again at extended passages of calm, in which sound and inspiration indeed set the tone, searching for their approach together, conscious of contrast, equally as composed as it is improvised. In doing so they take turn to one side or another, and in doing so take another step further forward on their path.
“When everything isn’t played so exactly, then it remains livelier.” Mischa Schumann has taken this quote from Joe Zawinul to heart, in particular as he increasingly began to feed his jazz experience into computers. “The temptation is there to straighten out everything”, he explains, “because you can. And that is exactly what it’s all not about!“ The 4n2 year-old had the great fortune to grow up in a household where Stan Getz and Ella and Cannonball and Art Blakey were regularly heard. He began early, learning to play the drums, all the while receiving piano lessons, because as he explains himself, “my mother was a ballet dancer, and she would say ‘a good drummer has to be able to play piano too’.“ It is then as a pianist that he has in the meantime earned a firm place in the Hamburg jazz scene, not only with the aforementioned artists, but also with the Jazzhaus Orchestra and the NDR Big Band. But for this reason the time has now also come for his musical journey to take ‘The Logical Turn’. With his own trio, a battery of effect pedals and loop generators and a set of newly composed and arranged pieces tailor-made for this line-up, Mischa Schumann went in August 2006 into the studio, subsequently doing some post-production on the recordings that is adept as it is discreet. ‘We Might Turn It Into Jazz’ opens the album, a statement of intent of sorts that makes no secret of borrowing from one of the prog-turned-pop rockers Queen’s more famous moments. However the real twist lay in the approach taken by Schumann in his ‘We Will Rock You’-based composition - or for that matter also in the interpretation of Sting’s ‘Spirits In The Material World’. “One can ask oneself again and again, ‘what is jazz?’“, declares Mischa Schumann. “Most of the time you simply run into certain factions intent on telling you what real jazz isn’t. But you could also ask yourself ‘does it have to be jazz?’” The question becomes largely irrelevant when one listens to the Mischa Schumann Trio. Take an example: how in ‘Winterwetterland’ (‘Winter Weather Land’) the little tricks and outstanding interaction of the players combine to dramatic effect. Or how the breakbeat at the end of ‘Pain In Advance’ creates tension and the talking drum loop loosens up ‘Simple City’. Or again, how the sadness of ‘All That Came To Your Mind’ contrasts with ‘Dancing Tschörrmens’ (which by the way can be danced to, as Mischa Schumann can well attest to from a late night gig in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg, seeing the ensemble from the musical ‘Cats’ doing just that). Who’s playing what or has looped whatever, or how the underlying drones or out-of-this-world effects in the songs were created is really of secondary importance. What’s decisive is how good the music sounds and how catchy and persuasive it works. Out of collective rehearsals a new improvisational energy has been created, one that can only be beneficial to these bold and lucid compositions. This balance between artistic aspiration and tangible listening pleasure is certainly the right musical direction, and as such may not only for Mischa Schumann and his trio, but the listener too be ‘The Logical Turn’. (NRW Records)