Chico Freeman / Heiri Känzig - The Arrival

2015 CD release.

A magic duo: Chico Freeman, 65, saxophonist, clarinettist, flute player, composer from Chicago, an eminent improvisor and Heiri Känzig, 58, born in New York, the Swiss double bass virtuoso. A transatlantic dialogue between one of America’s most versatile saxophonists and one of Europe’s most ‘all-round’ bass players.

Freeman and Känzig share that passion for the centre of gravity of the Jazz tradition, albeit with one precondition: that of transformation. And, with all their abilities for strong, heavy grooves, there is that preference for me-lody. „If you groove like hell and there’s no melody, it makes no sense.” (Känzig).

Peter Rüedi writes in the liner notes to The Arrival: „We could also read ‘The Arrival’ as something of an arrival at the centre of Jazz: Jazz, in the present tense. Or as it were: tradition in transition.