Fresh and cheeky honor

Tributes often end in stiff respect. Not so the album A Tribute To Adolphe Sax of the group klapparat, as their name suggests. The saxophone quintet, founded in 2011 and expanded to include a drummer in 2012, pays tribute to the inventor of the saxophone, who was born 200 years ago, with humor, stylistic diversity and captivating interplay. The six musicians, who also play in well-known bands such as Picason, Traktorkestar and Hildegard lernt fliegen, demonstrate the many expressive possibilities of this instrument with different variations up to the sub-contrabass saxophone Tubax. In the interest of musical accessibility, however, they are not stubborn and occasionally use flute, clarinet and xylophone in addition to the drums.

The stylistic diversity of the album reflects the musicians' backgrounds from jazz and classical music to folklore, rock and Cuban styles such as rumba. In this way, klapparat also does justice to the modern history of the instrument, which was invented in 1840. The band dares to play a short version of Maurice Ravel's Boléro from 1928, which already contains variations with saxophone in the original, but actually derives much of its tension from the changing instrumentation; all the more impressive is the entertaining and tonally exciting arrangement by Daniel Zumofen. With an interpretation of Sidney Bechet's Petite Fleur also underlines the fact that with the emergence of jazz, the saxophone became an indispensable instrument in this genre and still characterizes it today.

With two compositions by the Cuban composer and pianist Ernesto Burgos, klapparat not only draws attention to the importance of the saxophone in Afro-Caribbean styles, but also points back to the beginnings of the band, when it mainly played pieces by Burgos and Marcos A. Fernandez. The two pieces Arrabiata and Bubble are compositions by members of the band and, with their unusual approaches, indicate some potential for further independent development.