CD: Still Here

Yes, they are still "Still Here" After their masterful duo album "Monk" (2016) baritone saxophonist Marcus Bartelt and pianist Martin Sasse find together again and celebrate once more in a unique way the continuation of their intimate, harmony-rich "Art of the Duo"

And again, one misses nothing at all in view of this only at first glance meager instrumentation: sometimes the seemingly symbiotically connected musicians breathe the grandeur of a whole orchestra, sometimes they prefer the fragile dialogue as equal masters of aesthetics and improvisation. No, nothing is missing, everything is in its right place here. Marcus Bartelt revels in the fund of pleasantly deep tones, lets them rise like sky lanterns, melodiously drunk, sometimes rough, sometimes undisguised clearly paying homage to the beauty of a composition

Martin Sasse responds to Bartelt's warm, full sound, often with similarly low left-hand tones, while his improvisations push open windows into the brightness, and at some point he even senses wondrous sounds in the distance, bright as a glockenspiel made of Meissen porcelain. Six wonderful original compositions, connected by five "Fragments" plus Duke Ellington's "All Too Soon".