CD: In Concert

More than a continuation, more like a step up: their celebrated duo program "Closer" brought Nils Wülker and Arne Jansen to the top of the charts and to some of the most beautiful concert halls in the country at the beginning of 2023 after almost five years of working together as a duo. With this album, they consistently ignite the next stage of their development. "In Concert" is much more than just another live album in terms of the precision of the moment and the vastness of the sound spaces: in thirteen exciting and at the same time relaxed concert moments, this, Nils Wülker's fourteenth album, turns the instrumental, skillfully electronically supported reduction to the interplay of trumpet and guitar into a new, organically grown work of art.

"Compared to our studio album, we've added a lot more interaction," says Nils Wülker, who also mixed the music for "In Concert" in his own studio. "We are increasingly enjoying exploiting the technical possibilities, but now we are really completely free - with each other and with the technology, which, like the instruments, has become second nature to us." Even the opener "YaYaYa", an instrumental version of this ballad by Australian singer/songwriter RY X, creates this special, intimate mood that runs through the entire sixty-nine minutes of the album. It speaks for the two musicians, for the music itself, but also for their audience, that you can feel rather than hear the crackling live atmosphere at the beginning. The listeners are euphoric but calm, almost reverent and concentrated, whether standing in the Hamburg Fabrik or seated in Munich's Prinzregententheater. The applause often lasts until well after the last notes have been played - then it erupts all the more enthusiastically.

During the live performances of "Closer", which reached #6 in the annual charts, #15 in the album charts and #1 in the jazz charts, it was often mentioned how surprisingly varied the duo's program is in concert. "In Concert" follows the live dramaturgy and soon follows the indulgent melodies at the start with the energetic "Deep Dive", a lesson in the organic interweaving of looped rhythms and the joint and mutual enhancement of the two musicians. The arcs of tension that are built up and expanded in the process are constantly new - and become more and more effective each time. Such as in an interlude from Trent Reznor's "Hurt" to "Let's Go Out Tonight" by The Blue Nile, which is freely improvised in the most soulful and melodic way. The strengths of the "great melodist" (Die Zeit) Wülker are also evident here: the development of the motif and the melodic structure create a lot of space in the solos and more room for interaction.

The special quality in the interplay between Nils Wülker and Arne Jansen, which has grown over eight albums and many more years, is also evident in "Closer" versions of three pieces that have previously only been released with larger instrumentation. For example, "Wanderlust", which was originally released in 2017 on the studio album "On". The live version opens up completely new possibilities for the duo, culminating in a soulful question-and-answer interplay between trumpet and guitar. "Highline" comes from the band's 2020 album "Go". Originally a trumpet duet with Wülker's American colleague Theo Croker, the song here becomes a funky showcase for the two musicians, in which they not only show what they can do, but above all how elegantly and closely they interweave their musical ideas. To round things off, they play the floating, glittering ballad "Rays Of Winter Sun", which was previously only released digitally as part of an EP released last winter. It's a powerful, calming finale to this live album and an impressive statement of the combined development of this high-caliber duo.