Product Description

In 1959 Sound Koller teamed up in the Palatinate town of Pirmasens with an equally passionate Martial Solal, recently arrived from Paris with Roger Guerin and Michel de Villers. What unfolded was a memorable SWF Jazz Session, full of the tension and excitement only a live performance can generate. These young men put their individual skills on display with a confident nod to colleagues overseas, where that same year Miles with Trane, Brubeck with Desmond and Coleman with his quartet had already demonstrated the Shape of Jazz to Come. The 1960s had arrived by the time these discs were spinning in Germany, and Koller had long since branched out with a very different group of musicians, establishing his credentials as both composer and arranger with his 'brass ensemble' in Treffpunkt Jazz Stuttgart.

Review

This is a worthwhile release and it's worth getting this material into circulation. --Robert Iannapollo, Cadence

Hans Koller, "Hans Koller & Friends" (JazzHaus). Play this music from 1959 and 1960 without telling anyone who it is, and you'll get all sorts of guesses naming truly great American jazz stars of the era. The truth is that German tenor saxophonist Hans Koller didn't really sound like any American player at all (think of a combination Zoot Sims and Wardell Gray) and yet he was very much the equal of most of them. (That's why Dizzy Gillespie, for instance, was delighted to have Koller do a long stint with his band) So even more famously was the great and universally revered French pianist Martial Solal. Add the presence on two cuts here of bassist Percy Heath and drummer Connie Kay and you have some vintage European jazz as loose and immensely pleasurable as any previously little-known jazz you're likely to hear from their American contemporaries. As a disc for even the most knowledgeable jazz fans to hear in a "blindfold test" you couldn't beat this. One in every 500 jazz fans, at best, will be able to figure out who's playing, even though they're enjoying the swinging high charge and melodic grace of so much of it. And, on piano, whether solo or in accompaniment, Solal was absolutely unique. --The Buffalo News