Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Juergen Friedrich: Pollock

Juergen Friedrich: Pollock

By Dan McClenaghan
June 5, 2009
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Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), the Abstract Expressionist American painter best known for his "drip paintings" produced from 1947 to 1950, loved and was inspired by jazz. The innovative music of that time in the genre was Bird (

Charlie Parker

saxophone, alto
1920 - 1955

" data-original-title="" title="">Charlie Parker),

Dizzy Gillespie

trumpet
1917 - 1993

" data-original-title="" title="">Dizzy Gillespie and the burgeoning bebop sounds that Pollack would listen to while he created. Jazz has loved and drawn inspiration from Pollack, too—in part, perhaps, due to the improvisational aspect of the painter's best known art. The original album cover of

Ornette Coleman

saxophone, alto
1930 - 2015

" data-original-title="" title="">Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz (Atlantic Records, 1961) features the Pollock painting "White Light." Soprano saxophonist

Jane Ira Bloom

saxophone, soprano

" data-original-title="" title="">Jane Ira Bloom devoted an entire CD, Chasing Paint (Arabesque Recordings, 2003), to musical interpretations of Pollock paintings. And now German pianist Jurgen Friedrich tips a hat to the American painter with Pollack.

Friedrich teams with two Americans—bassist John Hebert and drummer Tony Moreno—on this reflective and interactive piano trio outing. The disc's opener, the Friedrich-penned "Drift," drips to life of a series of delicate piano notes of seemingly random placement before it swells into an energetic rhythm of three-way interplay.

Thelonious Monk

piano
1917 - 1982

" data-original-title="" title="">Thelonious Monk's classic "Round Midnight" is up next. The trio engages in a spare reading of the familiar tune, not unlike the

Bobo Stenson

piano
b.1944

" data-original-title="" title="">Bobo Stenson Trio's take of Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns" on Goodbye (ECM Records, 2005), with no notes wasted in its beautiful exploration of the melody.

Hebert wrote two of the set's 11 tunes, with another penned by the leader in collaboration with Moreno. Five are Friedrich's compositions, and two more are trio improvisations, including the title tune. Throughout there is a sense of subtle complexity, immediacy and discovery, with an often searching quality, to go with a sparseness and refined use of space. Friedrich's "Over" has a feeling of poignancy, while Hebert's "Billy No Mates" goes darkly inward in the beginning, before Freidrich applies some bright colors.

Leaning toward the pensive and cerebral, Pollack is a gorgeously spare and spontaneous work.

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Track Listing

Drift; Round Midnight; Ripple; Wayward; I Am Missing Her; Samarkand; Enclosed; Billy No Mates; Pollock; Over; Flauschangriff.

Personnel

J��rgen Friedrich

piano

John H��bert

bass

Tony Moreno

drums

RECORDING INFO recorded and mixed by Jason Seizer at Pirouet Studio Munich, mastered by Christoph Stickel at MSM Studio Munich, designed by Konstantin Kern

Album information

Title: Pollock | Year Released: 2009 | Record Label: Pirouet Records

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