With a song-centred debut album featuring
arrangements and original compositions,
the transparent, reserved music of Szelest,
the trio of Lucia Cadotsch, Ronny Graupe and
Kit Downes, carries on the atmosphere of
Cadotsch’s Speak Low trio, but also bears the
imprint of contemporary jazz. After the highly
successful collaboration between Cadotsch
and Graupe (Yellow Bird) and the joint band of
Cadotsch and Downes (Aki), this is the first time
that all three musicians play together.
With a song-centred debut album featuring
arrangements and original compositions, the
transparent, reserved music of Szelest, the trio of
Lucia Cadotsch, Ronny Graupe and Kit Downes, is
shaped by Cadotsch’s Speak Low trio on one side
and the world of contemporary jazz on the other.
The members of the trio have worked together in
bands with a variety of approaches before, and this
time they have again chosen a different perspective:
Graupe’s arrangements were created without
listening to existing versions of the songs, with
completely new harmonies and instrumentation,
and then Cadotsch provided poetic, often meditative
lyrics for them. Szelest owes its charm to the fact
that it does not present a closed repertoire that has
been repeatedly rehearsed, but was recorded at the
precise moment when, after years of experimental
work, the pieces of the puzzle finally came together.
Their arrangements sound as much original
compositions as their own songs could be standards
– the most compelling evidence that Cadotsch,
Graupe and Downes have shaped the material
to their own musical image to an extremely high
standard.
Szelest is a Polish onomatopoeic word for “rustle”,
whether it is the sound of the sea or the leaves of
trees in the wind. Although the members of the trio
have known each other for a long time from different
bands, and all three have made their home in Berlin,
one of Europe’s largest gathering places for flourishing
music workshops, Szelest is the first band in which
they perform together. Lucia Cadotsch, winner of
the Echo Prize in 2017 and the Deutscher Jazzpreis
in 2021, is best known for her trio Speak Low, with
which she has performed both arrangements and
original compositions, and which has proved to be a
defining staple not only in her singing career but also
regarding the atmosphere of Szelest. Together with
guitarist Ronny Graupe, one of the leading musicians
of the German middle generation, they played in the
band Yellow Bird, mixing indie and country folk with
avant-garde, then formed a duo during the epidemic.
They soon invited the highly sought-after pianist Kit
Downes, who had been a keen follower of Graupe’s
activities since Hyperactive Kid and Cadotsch’s partner
in the band Aki, among others. Graupe has previously
appeared on BMC Records albums by Melanoia, founded
by Dejan Terzić, and qÖÖlp, a band associated with the
Ceccaldi brothers, as well as on two albums in Hans
Lüdemann’s On the Edges series. Downes may be
familiar from the recently released Shadowlands album,
while this is Cadotsch’s first album for the label.