Attila Zoller, Hans Koller, Martial Solal - "Zo Ko So"

This record is different. It’s a conversation between three musicians - three musicians who are friends. That is what unites them, that and their musical starting point: the classic jazz of Lester Young at one end of the scale, Zoot Sims at the other, with Lee Konitz and Lennie Tristano serving as a sort of focus point. The great French jazz critic André Hodéir called this type of classic jazz “modern Count Basie”. One could also name it “middle of the road jazz”. It was once common ground for all three, but later each one developed into a distinct direction which suited him best. Each of the three has become known, and when one of their names is mentioned it immediately brings to mind precise musical connotations. Each calls to life a whole musical “world” - each his own. Now the three musicians meet again, after many years, to communicate with each other - in dialogues, triologues, and monologues - in duos, trios, and solos…

The idea was Hans Koller’s. He lives a very secluded life in Bräutlingen, in the south of the Black Forest, near the Swiss border. There he works obsessively in his studio, painting pictures which often look as if music had turned into something of a vegetative nature, something organic, growing and burgeoning - something organic born out of dreams…

Koller heard that Attila Zoller, the long-standing friend with whom he had played during his time in Vienna, Frankfurt, and Baden-Baden, was coming over from the States on a visit to Europe. Hans knew at once that he would have to make recordings with him. But he also knew that the time was long past for one of those recordings with tenor sax, guitar, and rhythm section, which he and Attila had produced in such vast numbers during the long years of their collaboration. Hans recalled another musician who, like he himself, had become sort of a lone wolf on the jazz scene of his native country: French pianist Martial Solal. Hans and Martial had become acquainted during the recordings of the European All-Stars in Berlin and Baden-Baden in 1961. Their mutual respect and admiration had not diminished at all since then.

Unlike critics and fans, who can comprehend the importance of such a happening only after listening closely to the recordings, Hans Koller knew intuitively that something special would happen if he, Attila, and Martial got together.

Nothing about this meeting in Villingen/Black Forest was pre-arranged. Hans Koller put his paint brushes aside and left Bräunlingen. Attila had just been recording an album in Hamburg. Solal, who was picked up at Basle airport by a SABA company car, was the first to be ready to play. If you know him, you also know that he’s always prepared for playing. In fact, he once told me, that for years there had not been a single day he did not practice piano for at least six hours.

So, Solal started to play three or four versions of “The End Of A Love Affair” - each so completely different from another that it seemed to be an entirely different composition, each played in Solal’s characteristic style: with abundant brilliant ideas which seem to chase one another. Never - or most seldom - is there anything superfluous. Each idea has its own tempo, its own rhythm, which is indispensable to it, yet nevertheless it all adds up to a unified, tightly woven fabric. What a luck that neither a drummer nor a bass player was present!

Solal, who was born in Algiers in 1927, is well-known for being the foremost modern jazz talent in France, the only European musician whom today’s critics mention in the same breath as Django Reinhardt and Åke “Stan” Hasselgård. He has never played as intimately and personal as on this record.

After Solal, it was Attila Zoller’s turn to play. The Hungarian, who was born in Visegrad in 1927, lived for many years in Germany before he went to America to become, in fact, the only important guitarist in modern free jazz. Today, Attila’s playing is uncompromising, hard, and crystal clear, way out beyond orthodox tonality. But this time Hans Koller (born in Vienna in 1921) was also in the studio, and Attila remembered the things which had previously united them. So he played rich, full chords, replete with Balkan feeling and exhibiting the sensibility he, Hans, and Martial had learned from Lee Konitz and Lennie Tristano, which they will never abandon, however far they may develop into other directions. Out of this feeling, “After Glow” was born. And straight afterwards, Attila and Hans led up to duo version of “All The Things You Are” – a dialogue between friends: Do you remember playing with Oscar Pettiford and Kenny Clarke in Vienna, when Oscar had the accident which cost him his life a year later? Yes, “All The Things You Are” was one our favorite songs then. (For comparison, listen to Hans Koller’s quartet with Zoller, Pettiford and Jimmy Pratt on “Hans Koller Exclusiv”, MPS 15 024).

Attila gradually became the linchpin of this session. After recording a duo with Hans Koller, he entered into a dialogue with Solal, in which one may get a slight idea of the free jazz that today threatens to blow up the American jazz scene. But at the same time you can feel the charm and tenderness of “Stella By Starlight”.

And then the trios - the conversations à trois… Attila Zoller introduced himself as a composer. He hummed and played parts of the tunes which he wrote to Heinrich Heine’s famous lyrics for his own “Lyric Poetry And Jazz” album - “Away From The Crowd” and “Mr. Heine’s Blues”: “How often I longed for the sweetness / Of my patriotic pillows / When I laid upon the hard mattresses / In the sleepless nights of my exile…” Attila Zoller, the Hungarian refugee, who spent his whole life in exile, knows more about this feeling than all the jazz fans who discuss music and girls with him could imagine.

Zoller, Koller, and Solal easily agreed on the Heinrich Heine themes - but it was an agreement which did not only leave room for improvisation but also for imagination.

Here are three great European jazz personalities who pursue their own thoughts, who possess the beat and swing that are essential to jazz improvisation, who therefore don’t need a rhythm section, and who because of the intensitiy of their thoughts and the amicable harmony of their ensemble playing achieve cohesion. With “H.G. Meets M.A.H.” - which is dedicated to the producer Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer and his rendezvous with Martial Solal, Attila Zoller, and Hans Koller - Hans Koller contributes to the compositions for this the trio sessions, too.”

The improvisations Zoller, Koller, and Solal play in their solos, duos, and trios are very European in spirit - and one hardly needs to add that, in a year when American jazz magazines have praised European jazz records more highly than ever before, the word “European” can imply a special seal of quality, even in jazz. Attila Zoller, the Hungarian, who, via Germany, has made America his chosen land… - Martial Solal, the Frenchman from Algeria… - and Hans Koller, the Austrian tenor saxophonist who paints abstract art on the German-Swiss border: they build a trio that is completely different from a group of musicians who have all grown up together in Hastings Street in Detroit. Zoller-Koller-Solal: a guitarist, a saxophonist, and a pianist who all have the courage to be in jazz what they were born to in life - Europeans with the whole, rich variety of this continent. And this is especially evident in their ensemble playing.

Joachim-Ernst Berendt
Translated by N. Whittaker


Personnel:
Attila Zoller - guitar
Hans Koller - tenor saxophone
Martial Solal - piano

Tracklist:
[1.] Mr. Heine's Blues 4:09
[2.] The End Of A Love Affair 3:32
[3.] Stella By Starlight 4:35
[4.] After Glow 3:21
[5.] My Old Flame 3:37
[6.] Away From The Crowd 4:12
[7.] All The Things You Are 6:34
[8.] Stompin' At The Savoy 3:40
[9.] H.G. Meets M.A.H. 5:22