It’s not hard to hear why pianist Clara Haberkamp is making waves on the German jazz scene. Plateaux is her new release, and her first that features Norwegian drummer Jarle Vespestad alongside her long-term collaborator Oliver Potratz on bass. The set fizzes with energy, invention and emotion. The material is a mixture of Haberkamp’s own writing and some intriguing choices. The resulting music is, in the spirit of great trios, an absorbing conversation between top-drawer musicians.
“Cycle” sounds like its name. A flurry of overlapping arpeggios from the piano launch the piece, threaded through with fluid broken lines from the bass. The tightly woven patterns become subtly different with repetition and gradually break up, piano and bass seeming to float around each other, jostled by hissing cross-rhythms from Vespestad’s cymbals. It’s an exhilarating start.
Just when you might think you know what’s coming next, “Fantasmes” is an explicitly melodic, hymn-like theme with a foreboding, marching groove. Haberkamp thickens the harmony and reels out edgy, emotionally fraught lines. “Plateaux” is a little jewel, starting with more flurries of crystalline patterns before a more explicit solo exploration from the piano, ranging freely amongst an even-quavered, rocking pulse. “On A Park Bench” is an atmospheric exploration by the trio, the loose assemblage creating a meditative ambience with a shimmering melodic air.
A delight of this session is that it keeps springing surprises. If it’s a tapestry, then another colourful strand appears with “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt”. On first hearing, I was checking to see which American Song-Book standard Haberkamp’s intro was deconstructing; not Tin Pan Alley standard, it turns out, but a song from the 30s associated with Marlene Dietrich, the theme beautifully rendered by Portratz. A flowing waltz unfolds, with Haberkamp really stretching and reshaping the harmony. The song theme, interspersed with more originals, continues as the band tumble through and pull at Gordon Lightfoot’s 70s hit “If You Could Read My Mind”, giving it a tingling emotional charge. Then Haberkamp sings, accompanying herself, the harmony and embellishments moving as freely and spontaneously as her piercing reading of “Danny Boy”.
Potratz’s bass is as often in the foreground as the piano throughout this absorbing set, and Vespestad is continually inventive, bringing colour, shape and momentum. Plateaux is a tour de force.
Mike Collins is a pianist and writer based in Bristol, who runs the jazzyblogman site. / Twitter: @jazzyblogman
