Michael Schiefel (voc)
Sven Klammer (trp, flgh)
Jan von Klewitz (as, ss, cl)
Andreas Spannagel (ts, fl)
Sören Fischer (trb)
Nikolaus Leistle (bari, bcl)
Kai Brückner (git)
Johannes Gunkel (b)
Kai Schönburg (dr)
Nicolai Thärichen (p, comp, lead)
This year, Thärichens Tentett is celebrating its tenth anniversary! In the past ten years, Thärichens Tentett has been lauded as the band that delivers “the most felicitous compositions, the most polished arrangements, and the most humorous presentation of all larger German jazz groups” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). And the major newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said about vocalist Michael Schiefel: "Germany has perhaps never had such a jazz singer." Audiences, too, have become more and more enthusiastic during the years that spanned from the publication of the tentet’s first album Lady Moon to their third record Grateful, from their first performance at the A-Trane (Berlin) in 1999 to their 2009 concerts in China. Now, ten years after its inception, Thärichens Tentett is publishing the fourth album: Farewell Songs. Is Thärichens Tentett saying goodbye?
There is no need to worry, Nicolai Thärichen und his tentet are doing just fine. The music might have become more mature, but it is no less freaky. Thärichens Tentett faces the serious side of life with a good deal of irony. While Sven Klammer’s flugelhorn mourningly bids a last farewell to the lightheartedness of adolescence in “The last day of my youth,” Kai Brückner’s guitar quickly brings back the olden days with full force in Thärichen’s virtuoso cover-arrangement of AC/DC’s “Up to my neck in you.”
In “On being a woman,” composed on a poem by Dorothy Parker, the tentet mockingly muses about the eternal difficulty of having to decide between two choices. When I am in Rome, I want to go home; when I am at home, I want to go to Rome. Michael Schiefel rises to the occasion with flying colors; he cuts loose with a scat improvisation, not a conventional jazzy one, but with the voice of an overblown opera singer. Saying goodbye with Thärichens Tentett can actually be lots of fun. Especially when Ronald D. Laing’s acerbity gets its turn („Unadored“). If your partner treats you like dirt, why not leave him or her with words such as: “It’s none to soon / for a new spittoon / and something else to shit in”? Add a funky 7/4 groove, and off you go, slamming the door in a dancing step.
Yet, Thärichen’s music is also influenced by the critical moments in life he has recently experienced. The threepart „Farewell Suite” is dedicated to his father, who passed a short time ago - composer, author and solo timpanist of many years with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Werner Thärichen (1921-2008). But how do you put a farewell to your father into music? Nicolai Thärichen’s musical mourning covers an entire spectrum of feelings: The suite strides from grief and pain (“Waltz for my Father”) to a questioning halt and introspection (“Strange Bells”), and finds in the song “If” a conciliatory end with Robert Creeley’s succinct lines: “...you’ve had the world, such as you got. / There’s nothing more, there never was.”
The peacefully flowing ballad “This Time” is about love, eventually. For once, even about a happy one, and quite unexpectedly so. This is also a theme of this very personal record: Some feelings can only be understood with time.
The Farewell Songs by Thärichens Tentett sound as worldly-wise as they do profound, are both deadly serious and completely far-out. They are about losing and finding – and about the fact that you seldom get one without the other.
Influences
Gil Evans, Maria Schneider, Bill Evans, Tom Waits, James Taylor, Keith Jarret, Max Frisch, Philip Roth, Johann Sebastian Bach, Bartok, Ravel, Grieg, Frank Zappa, AC/DC, travelling, my family, the lovers I had, the lovers I didn´t have... (incomplete list)
Nicolai Thärichen, born on December 30, 1969 in Berlin/Germany, studied piano at the Jazz-department of the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin with Walter Norris, Aki Takase, Kirk Nurock, David Friedman, Denney Goddhew and others.
2000-02 he extended his studies at the University of the Arts with Hubert Nuß and Jim McNeely (piano), and with Jim Knapp and Maria Schneider (composition and arrangement).
He composed und arranged for the Bigband of the Hessische Rundfunk (state radio station in Frankfurt), the German Youth Jazzorchestra (BuJazzo), for the Jazzorchestra of the UdK Berlin with Maria Schneider and Bobby McFerrin, for the Berlin Youth Jazzorchestra and first and foremost for his own band „Thärichens Tentett“.
Since 1993 Nicolai has been working with the singer Michael Schiefel, with whom he founded the band "Thärichens Tentett" in 1999. This ten-piece-band performs his original compositions, mostly songs set on poems by artists like Dorothy Parker, Lord Byron, Thomas Hardy and Ronald D. Laing.
Since its formation, 'the creme of Berlin's young Jazz scene’ (Berliner Tagesspiegel)
around Nicolai Thärichen has published four CD..s, its debut “Lady Moon” (2001 Minor Music) was soon labelled 'excellent' (Jazzthing), 'this year's most stunning German record’ (Die Welt) or 'the embodiment of 21st century jazz' (jazzlabel.de) by the critics.
The tentet’s third CD “Grateful” (Minor Music) is dedicated to its main lyricist, the Scottish psychiatrist Ronald D. Laing. It was released in November 2005 and
received rave reviews:
'Thärichen's Tentett delivers the most felicitous compositions, the most polished
arrangements, as well as the most humorous presentation of all larger German jazz groups.
Last but not least because of Michael Schiefel’s performance, Germany’s most talented
contemporary Jazz singer.’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Their DVD “Live at A-Trane” appeared in 2006, the fourth CD "Farewell Songs" was released in September 2009.
Since 1998 Nicolai has been teaching piano at „ Hanns Eisler Conservatory Of Music" in Berlin, piano and theory at the „Berliner Landesmusikakademie“ and since 2003 Jazz-arrangement at the University of the Arts (Universität der Künste) in Berlin.
2004-2005 he conducted the Berlin Youth Jazzorchestra (BJJO), and toured to Los Angeles with his own bigband-program in 2005. In the same year he taught composition and performed his music with the bigband of the Conservatory Of Music and Theatre in Hannover. Since 2006 he has been teaching piano and arrangement at the „Jazz Institute Berlin“ (JIB) and composition, arrangement and theory at the "Franz Liszt Conservatory Of Music" in Weimar.
hey nik...glad to have seen you perform...it's a life changing experience...wat more can I say....it takes ten to blow me off my feet....thanks a lot to you all for being there...just the rocking way you are
das neue Album ist einfach wundervoll - und ich würde "Up To My Neck" so gerne zu meinem Profil-Song machen... das scheint aber nicht zu gehen. schade!
"Melancholischer, sinnierender, Verstand benutzender Pop aus Berlin... ein klangbetonter, kunstvoller, stimmungsreicher, farbenfroher Klangteppich. Ein Freiflug durch die Nacht." - monsters and critics
"In Lea W. Freys Stimme verliert man sich." - schwäbische post
..
"Ein Klang- und Seelenerlebnis allererster Güte" - musik an sich
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