INSIDE COLOURS DUO – RECORDED LIVE FROM REGENSBURG

I’ll never forget that afternoon in July 2016: an open-air concert in a historic courtyard in Regensburg at the annual Jazz Weekend, where the setting was more akin to a big civic festival than a music festival: the audience was free to come and go at will, creating a constant hubbub. However in just a few minutes, the atmosphere changed completely. A duo entered the stage whose incredibly gentle tones immediately moved the audience to silence. Suddenly, you could hear a pin drop. The crowd was spellbound. The musicians’ delicate sounds possessed an enormous power.

And so they still do today. When you listen to recordings of pianist Julie Sassoon and saxophonist Lothar Ohlmeier, you instantly recognise something special, an enveloping aura in their music. For instance, on the first track, CLOUD, the delicately meditative piano intro increases in tone and density, expanding the sound spectrum with angular bass notes, until the tenor saxophone comes into play with shimmering tones, like a gentle, resonant reflection, before gradually adopting a sharper, more plaintive undertone, leading into a dramatically intensifying dialogue.

Julie Sassoon’s compositions for the INSIDE COLOURS DUO are full of subtle urgency. Their melodic lines are easily accessible, captivating and, as the pieces develop, lead the listener down unexpected paths. This unique musical partnership provides jazz chamber music with a fascinating repertoire for wind and piano.

And you soon sense that there’s a deeper undercurrent in this music. Rooted in a very somber past. Julie Sassoon’s ancestors fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s; not all of them escaped: Her grandmother’s family was murdered in a concentration camp. Eventually, in 1994, Julie came to Berlin. She attended a concert at the Kulturbrauerei where Lothar Ohlmeier was playing. She later sat down at the piano and played some of her own music – whereupon Ohlmeier approached her and expressed his interest in making music with her. That was the initial spark for their duo and for the life that they’ve shared together ever since.

Since moving to Germany, Julie has consciously reflected on her Jewish identity in her work. One piece, notably, is entitled LAND OF SHADOWS – the land of shadows where she now resides and where her many forefathers had lived until the 1930s.

Since 2016, several recordings have been made of Julie Sassoon and Lothar Ohlmeier for Bayerischer Rundfunk’s BR-Klassik radio programme. Here, you can hear items from that earlier open-air Bavarian Jazz Weekend concert as well as others from pandemic year 2022 in a smaller Regensburg venue. As ever, the couple’s intimate intensity prevails. The compositions reveal a poignant beauty combined with finely pulsating emotion. It is wonderful that these special moments are now available to an even wider audience, at a time when new, unsettling clouds are gathering over Germany’s LAND OF SHADOWS. After all, this is music whose delicate, refined beauty extends a hand of friendship to all its listeners. Roland Spiegel / Translation: Fay Wertheimer