Dierk Peters - Ambrosia (2019)

Already the view of the band's cast suggests that Dierk Peters takes ambrosia's own, unconventional paths. With his sextet, the award-winning vibraphonist and composer creates a multifaceted musical language that unites song-like and interesting melodies, diverse harmonies and changing atmospheric shades.

Developing a volume that appears as a large organism in which six instruments and interpreters of different instrument families merge into a single entity was Peters' central idea for Ambrosia. He intensively worked on the harmonic concept and explored how individual roles can be distributed or even redefined. Just as carefully Peters put on his compositions afterwards. Their sophistication is often based on elaborate symmetries and clever variations of comparatively simple material. Despite their sometimes mathematical structures, the music always sounds near and alive. Through his long study of his own ideas, he has always been able to discover and expose new nuances, notes Peters.

"I love contemporary music that appeals to the intellect. Beyond genre boundaries, I also look for music that is emotionally close to me, that takes me on a journey. In the process of Ambrosia that were u.a. the Beatles and the Dirty Projectors, Rachmaninov and Dutilleux, Barry Harris and Tim Berne, "says Dierk Peters. "It is important to use the resources as sparingly as possible so as not to overload anything." As an example of his working principle, he mentions biology: "The great can be rediscovered in the micro-level, in every small cell." Take out this bio-sentence to cut it short, if necessary.) Peters' compositions tell stories, with contemplative passages, surprising twists and irresistible tensions. From a formal point of view, there are harmonies and chords that are hard to name according to common tone theory. "I find it appealing to combine sounds from the avant-garde tonal in such a way that it suddenly sounds harmonious," explains Peters, "the goal always remains to create beautiful music."

Of course, Peters already had the musicians in mind when composing, which now contribute to the special sound of Ambrosia through their subtle playing. "Bastian Stein has recently written very fragile pieces for trumpet, vibraphone and a gamba ensemble from Brussels. In the process of this very intimate project, I was impressed by his warm yet present timbre and his sense of spaces in music. "For very similar reasons, he hired Stefan Karl Schmid. Like Stein, the saxophonist and clarinettist Schmid has a personal, softer tone and a fine feel for the appropriate expression. The bandleader did not have to think about the well-rehearsed rhythm team David Helm and Fabian Arends. Their range between quiet operations and pointed energy bursts forms a perfect basis. On the other hand, the search for an accordionist became more difficult, especially since Peters was not able to rely on personal encounters in this case. Some research later, Laurent Derache crystallized from Paris, and after the first interplay, it was clear he was a perfect fit with Peters' aesthetic vision.

It was some time before the recordings in the chamber music hall of the co-producing Deutschlandfunk. And although Dierk Peters has put his complex compositions quite fragmented on paper, there was plenty of room for individual contributions by the musicians.

The fact that Ambrosia ultimately became the title track of the album was partly due to the chronology of events. It was then the first composition that Peters wrote for his new ensemble and through which he realized for himself how the band should be composed. In addition, Peters Ambrosia, inspired by the meaning of the homonymous jelly in Greek mythology, as a metaphor for a music that is inspiration and food for the human soul. Certainly a high standard, which Dierk Peters can redeem with his unusually occupied sextet and his once elegant-catchy, sometimes unpretentious-complex music.

Tracklist:

01. The Fly´s Eye
02. Lumen
03. Mizmor
04. Skär
05. Desmond
06. Miroirs
07. Miniature
08. Bloom
09. Ambrosia
10. Encore