Night and Day Plays Them All

Night and Day
Plays Them All
Edition Artelier

When the Night and Day quartet was formed, it was unlikely without a little outside protest. Some may remember a short-lived release on the FMP label (Night and Day, FMP S13) some 20 years ago. For the uninitiated, Sven-Åke Johansson, Alexander von Schlippenbach, and Rüdiger Carl christened the group in 1984 with Amsterdam-based bassist Jay Oliver and it would last for nearly twelve years, functioning almost exclusively to play traditional jazz music at artists’ functions and various parties throughout Germany, Switzerland, Austria and France. Their first gig was in response to a request to play music for the premiere of an art exhibition. The idea itself suggests some controversy. What were these veterans of European free improvisation doing playing bebop and swing standards to crowds often consisting of higher society? Some likely suspected rebellion or betrayal, but anyone who has kept up with the musicians in the last 20 years knows that they have anything but dismissed the free aesthetic. Instead, Night and Day was both an outlet from already niche conventions, given the area of music Johansson, Schlippenbach and Carl were immersed in, and an opportunity to revere and re-translate the music that obviously had so much impact on their musical livelihoods.

It is difficult to imagine these four musicians performing in a hushed environment, where applause is faithfully delivered following each solo, where sidebar audience conversation is actively frowned upon, and where performance is more often measured than simply appreciated. Johansson recounts that the music was not presented under the restraints that often come with intelligent repertory music. In fact, more times than not, Night and Day’s audiences were rowdy, consisting largely of drinkers and dancers in attendance primarily to have fun and then only as a matter of imbedded affection for the music itself.

Supposedly there was more than one occasion that the band had to install thick barrier rope to keep the dancers (there were always dancers) from bumping into the performers, or knocking over hardware. Good music and traditional fun make good bedmates, and so the ensemble quickly became popular for society functions, and with their popularity came some stretching out: Lol Coxhill, Ernst Ludwig Petrowsky and singer Uschi Bruening were all occasional invitees to shake things up on the bandstand.

While guest performers were common, these six discs present the quartet alone, taken from three consecutive nights in May of 1992, and while the range of music is not in any sense astounding, the energy and flawless execution the band is able to maintain are hallmarks of the set. Twelve sets in all were recorded (two per evening), and by the looks of it, every number is presented in order, as they were played over the course of those three evenings.

The tunes, largely ballads and mid-tempo swing numbers selected from the likes of Ellington, Cole Porter, Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, and Jerome Kern, run from mostly three to six minutes in length. In listening to conservative takes of “Stella By Starlight,” “Speak Low,” “These Foolish Things,” and “I’ll Remember April,” it is clear that the group was more concerned with the music’s sense of brevity than stretching out before their audiences in the name of adventure. The songs themselves are tightly wound, but not without a fine layer of looseness that permeates every head and solo.

Looking at the set lists, you have to wonder, do “Rüdiger Carl” and “Surrey With the Fringe On Top” belong in the same sentence? Occasionally doubling on clarinet over the course of the set, Carl plays his side with remarkable warmth but without any real semblance of overt caution, and so decidedly is detached from the tenor heard on his King Alcohol (FMP 0060), from decades earlier. His familiarity with the standards is not unsurprising, but most of his followers will probably be astounded by the number and sheer range of individual songs played on this set. There are many positives to his straight playing, but a repeat characteristic of his horn that achieves great dramatic effect is a vibrato employed at the end of many lines (see “Stareyes” at the beginning of disc 4), especially in the lower register. At the same time, it would be difficult to identify any default licks employed by Carl; his is a vocabulary that is apparently quite extensive. For all Carl achieves on his own – his is the lyrical voice in the instrumentation here, after all – the chemistry between he and Schlippenbach is critical to the group’s air.

Schlippenbach has a renowned affinity for the music of Thelonious Monk, and is considered by many to be the foremost modern interpreter of Monk’s music. He has recorded a number of records including or devoted to Monk interpretations, and it might be only a matter of rotten chance that Schlippenbach would dismiss the opportunity to break into a Monk tune in live performance. One can only wonder how many times Schlippenbach wanted to incorporate a riff from “Trinkle Tinkle” or “Nutty” into a solo during these performances. Those impulses, if even extant, were never acted upon. Instead, the pianist, like Carl, sticks to the blueprint with delicate fingering, religious adherence to scales, and dead-on recognition of all the changes, incorporating the surprise chord here and there, though nothing near system-shocking. The control and concision exhibited by Schlippenbach and his stagemates is admirable (no, nobody tears into “The Morlocks,” either) as none of the tunes ever transition into shadow territory, but rather remain as the melodies and changes that made them such resilient standards in the first place.

The group profits from Jay Oliver’s and Johansson’s effortless timekeeping. As a whole, the quartet was incredibly tight, perhaps too much so at some points. You can’t perform six cd’s and over 100 songs worth of standards without sounding stiff from time to time, but those occasions are easily looked over for Johansson’s drumming and soothing brushwork.

In terms of production, the recording itself benefits the music to a great degree. Some may call up Shelley Manne’s memorable Blackhawk recordings when listening to this set; the essence is there, what with the passing ambient sounds from Berlin’s Badenschen Hof Jazz Club, where these dates were recorded. In listening, you are very “there” due to the antique-yet-polished presence of each instrument, in unison and independent of one another. And the atmosphere of each disc makes a fine partner for winding down with a nightcap, or a little rowdiness of your own.

It should not go unmentioned that players from Schlippenbach’s and Johansson’s discipline are often challenged by the mainstream, often with the assumption that they couldn’t play conventional (read cultivated) jazz to save a life. They certainly need no defense, and perhaps even the mentioning of such doubts is wasteful and devoid of value. But I find it ironic that Plays Them All not only exemplifies the wide ranging talents of these four musicians, it also sits comfortably alongside the best in the lineage for its modest delivery of these timeless compositions.

Finally, the set’s brief liners notes exist only in German, and the packaging leaves a little to be desired. However, the music and annotation (the track list was evidently compiled long after the performances, and then only through listening to each number, track by track) more than make up for any shortcomings, and so making justification secondary. It’s a rare set of music I assume won’t be around for too long, so collectors, aficionados, completists, music lovers and nostalgia-seekers should take note.

~Alan Jones