When Coltrane grooves with Metallica

“What would it be like,” Oli Bott asked himself, “if Maurice Ravel and Duke Ellington improvised together?” On “Chronicles of Jazz,” the first album by the Oli Bott Trio, the answer sounds surprisingly harmonious. The musicians do not play the orchestral piece “Boléro” and the jazz standard “Caravan” against each other, but rather allow both compositions to naturally resonate with each other.

This is particularly successful thanks to the subtle transition between the pieces, which Bott initiates on the vibraphone with just a change of key – and which bridges the initially slow drum groove with the final swing of 200 beats per minute.

“Of course we don’t play the original scores,” says Oli Bott, born in 1974, during a conversation in his rehearsal room. “We’re concerned with the harmonies and melodies.” Bott, who studied at Berklee College of Music under lyrical jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton, is not a traditional jazz musician. He consistently plays his own style and can empathize with very different musical languages, eras and cultures. All of his projects bear witness to this.

In the Vibratanghissimo quartet, where tango, jazz and classical music meet, Bott stood alongside a classical pianist, where he struck an audibly fine line with the hammers of the grand piano with his four mallets and all sorts of chord effects. Mihai Iliescu, frontman of the Romanian-German band Zmei3, once described Bott as “our Jimmy Page on lead guitar”.

Sometimes his vibraphone sounds like a distorted electric guitar, sometimes like an oriental cymbal. And in a duo with the British cellist Anna Carewe, Bott embarks on a journey through time by drawing bridges between old and new music, combining Erik Satie with Astor Piazzolla in an improvisational manner. Bott is all about crossing the boundaries of musical genres. “I can hear a tenor part performed by Fritz Wunderlich like a jazz song.”

It’s no wonder that while practicing Johann Sebastian Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 4 (Allemande), Bott at some point thought of Metallica’s rock ballad “Nothing Else Matters” – “a song that I had often heard in the past and in a slower style The tempo is similar to the chord breaks in Bach.”

With his current trio, which has existed for four years, Bott has further approached these disparate pieces of music. How all three musicians explore this interface between classical and pop together, how Bach thinks ahead with Metallica, how the double bass and vibraphone melodically throw balls to each other, how the drums gradually push forward without ever pushing forward – all of this is one of the highlights on the CD.

Kay Lübke drummed in a punk band as a student

For his trio, Oli Bott was able to recruit colleagues who have been active in the Berlin jazz scene and far beyond for decades. Arnulf Ballhorn has already played with Bott in Vibratanghissimo and Zmei3, and as a double bass player he is also a member of the Komische Oper orchestra. “In a jazz trio,” says Ballhorn, who also came to the rehearsal room in Weißensee, “I have many more opportunities to contribute my ideas than in a classical orchestra, where the primary aim is to reproduce music.”

Drummer Kay Lübke, on the other hand, is more of a newcomer when it comes to classical music. As a student, he drummed in a punk rock band and completed his training as a drummer at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin. “It was only through working in the Oli Bott Trio,” says Lübke, “that classical music became part of my listening habits.” In any case, Ballhorn attests to him: “Kay is one of the few drummers who think melodically.”

“There has to be an emotional spark,” says Bott

In the rehearsal room, Lübke stays relaxed, he stirs his drums with precision and enthusiasm, with brushes, careful fingers or nimble sticks. And rolls out a red carpet over which the double bass and vibraphone can move effortlessly. This light-footed groove then drives Erik Satie’s otherwise meditative “Première Gnossienne” into the uptempo of a seething rhythm section and lets it lead – without changing tempo – into Milt Jackson’s “Bag’s Groove”, which is filled with bar smoke.

Whether the three musicians combine Georges Bizet’s “Habanera” with “You’re Beautiful with Me” by Sholom Secunda or interweave Ray Henderson’s “Bye Bye Blackbird” with Vivaldi’s “Spring” under stroking metal brushes and swinging bass – something musical always shines in these sets Kaleidoscope on. “Emotionally it has to spark,” says Oli Bott, “and it can also thunder sometimes.”