Azolia – “Not about Heroes”
(Porgy & Bess, Vienna, 22 March 2024. Evaluate by Oliver Weindling)

Right here’s a shock: a band primarily based in Berlin performing a programme primarily based primarily on the poetry of Wilfred Owen at a membership in Vienna… However maybe no extra stunning than the truth that the instigator of a latest Netflix movie of the traditional German novel “All Quiet On The Western Entrance” ought to be Scottish. This live performance was a reminder of energy of Owen’s poems.

The title of the programme, and likewise of Azolia’s album launched in 2021 on the Jazzwerkstatt label, is taken from Owen’s preface ready upfront for his collected poems (though he was sadly killed earlier than the precise publication, only a week earlier than the armistice): “This guide shouldn’t be about heroes. English poetry shouldn’t be but match to talk of them.” That idea got here by way of clearly within the efficiency.

Azolia has a really targeted and chamber-like sound: Belgian-born vocalist Sophie Tassignon is joined by German-American Suzanne Folks, doubling each as a second vocalist in addition to on alto saxophone and clarinet, Lothar Ohlmeier on bass clarinet and tenor sax, and Swiss bassist Andreas Waelti. Folks’s saxophone taking part in sounded continuously like wordless vocalise. With such a stripped down, and virtually acoustic lineup, the facility of the poems carried effectively and was definitely not stifled by the comparatively massive measurement of the Porgy & Bess Membership. The drumless band didn’t lack drive and vitality, as a result of hard-working Waelti, who was capable of give a momentum with out dropping a melodic sense.

The selection of poems was not constrained to Owen’s struggle poems and included the likes of “Shadwell Stair”, a couple of ghost on the banks of the Thames, and likewise the reflectiveness of ‘Futility’. All heard by way of the prism of two vocalists in shut concord, or on the interaction of the 2 reed devices, contrapuntally intertwined. Composition credit had been shared between the 2 vocalists.

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In the meantime, along with the primary concentrate on Owen, the group included acceptable new songs by Tassignon and Folks themselves, in addition to a robust model of Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Dream Inside A Dream”, a foretaste of a brand new challenge maybe?

Set record:

1. The Roads Additionally
2. ⁠Shadwell Stair
3. ⁠Happiness
4. ⁠Futility
5. ⁠The Wave Has Handed (Sophie Tassignon)
6. ⁠Storm
7. ⁠Higher Love

2nd Set:

1. She Will (Susanne Folks)
2. ⁠On My Songs
3. ⁠Music of Songs
4. ⁠Not About Heroes
5. ⁠A Dream inside a Dream (Poe/Susanne Folks)
6. ⁠The Voices at Shore (Sophie Tassignon)
7. ⁠Asleep

All lyrics by Wilfred Owen, besides the place in any other case acknowledged.