Producing The Jazz Facts in the Deutschlandfunk was pure fun. A lot of nice coincidencies: two days ago, I realized that not only Ralph Towner’s TRAVEL GUIDE, but Carla Bley’s TRIOS, too, were recorded in that „radio theatre“ in Lugano. And after talking with Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel about his first recording with producer Manfred Eicher, I decided to need another voice sheding some light on the special room and the producer’s input. So, I got Bley’s long-time sax player Andy Sheppard on the phone, and what he told me, was the icing on the cake, a great finish for the show.
Now this was only part of the fun. Some guys do great work, working as musician and tone engineers behind the controls to make radio sound magic. In this case bass player Markus Brown (his trio is just featured in a big Scandinavian jazz magazine) was the great man working the details: listen to the show, and you will see that it was done, let me say it this way, with love and care. In between jazz matador Karsten Mützelfeld entered the studio and offered me 20 Euros, because he couldn’t help but strictly ignore the deadline of 7 minutes and 30 seconds. This guy has great humour
The good vibes continued when we arrived at the headquarter of jazz affairs and small-taked with Harald Rehmann. It was a perfect radio day, and you really shouldn’t miss the show! There will be features on the Punkt Festival and a showcase in Trondheim. Last, not least, there are great new records by Carla Bley, Ralph Towner, Jan Bang, Nils Petter Molvaer and Arve Henriksen. Arve will perform in Dortmund’s Domicil on October 12th! I’ll be there. And Harald will record Arve at the Unterfahrt in München.