Hugo Siegmeth Quartet
"But you know, no music is my music. It's everybody's who can feel it. You got to be in the sun to feel the sun. It's that way with music too."
Sidney Bechet, "Treat it gentle. An Autobiography"
Hugo Siegmeth Quartet
DOWNLOAD : Press release Hugo Siegmeth - Red Onions
"Siegmeth creates a colour scheme that hardly any other saxophonist in Germany currently succeeds in - a sculptural, warm, powerful, independent profile. His idiosyncratic blues eventually lead the listener to the Danube Delta, the Banat, the Carpathians instead of the Mississippi." Jazzthing
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"For all its freedom and openness however, the sound of the Hugo Siegmeth Ensemble never loses structure and clarity, a picture-rich rhyme, sometimes colorful, lively, sunny, sometimes meditative, reassuring, introverted, always inspiring." Jazzpodium
With his quartet line-up Siegmeth, firmly rooted in his own style, creates a space and the atmosphere to take the listener on a musical and personal journey.
Born in 1970 in Romania and raised in Germany, he has gained an ever-stronger profile over the years as confident and precise improviser, bandleader and composer of tangible, yet subtle tunes. You can hear this on the release "Oracle" wich consitst of originals by the bandleader and featuring pianist Michael Wollny.
The following album "Red Onions" was released by ACT as a homage to Sydney Bechet. This musical tribute is, in Siegmeth’s case, paid by someone who is firmly rooted in his own style. His aim was never to imitate Bechet in style or content. “I wanted to address the material using my own vocabulary”, says Siegmeth. And this vocabulary is strongly influenced by the modern school of tenor playing; by the laconic vigour of a Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter’s strong sense of form, or Joe Henderson’s iridescent colour palette. Siegmeth places pieces that were once power horses of Bechet’s repertoire in a contemporary context. This opens a number of different and exciting avenues of expression - and the Siegmeth has realised his declared aim to “paint a picture of Bechet’s work in as many different colours as possible” in style and in a very entertaining manner. Take Gershwin’s “Summertime” for example, one of Bechet’s hugely important early Blue-Note recordings; or the subtly brilliant pieces “Maple Leaf Rag” that derives a sophisticated drive from alternating 7/4 and 4/4 metres and sounds like contemporary jazz, even though Siegmeth stays very close to Bechet’s take on the original melody.
Let the Hugo Siegmeth Quartet transport you to their world of music, wich a jounalist once described as "onomatopaeic, complex and impressive with a fire whose flames sometimes abruptly blaze out of the roof."