home / discography / Christoph Adams Trio - "Pastime Paradise"

Christoph Adams Trio - "Pastime Paradise"
BEV-JazzTown JAZZ TOWN / BEV MUSIC 2303009-2
Phonector No. 100085

Moments I've won
I came near to being drowned hearing this music a second time: I dived in and went under water in the wild stream of the audible. I had quickly forgotten to breath, to open my eyes and to confront the everyday life - as deeply and willingly as I found myself swimming in the music. [more]

Christoph Adams Trio - "Pastime Paradise"

Christoph Adams   -  piano

Ed Schuller  -  bass

Ernst Bier  -  drums

Recorded and mixed: ON AIR Studio Berlin, 8./ 9. 10. 1997
Engineer: Ahmed Chouraqui
Digital Mastering: Calyx / Berlin - Bo Kondren

  Order this CD.......[order]

Press:

Jazz thing (02/01)
"Die Zeit ist ein flexibles Medium und nicht etwa eine Konstante, wie wir alle glauben", wird der Pianist Christoph Adams in den Liner Notes seiner neuen Trio-CD "Pastime Paradise" zitiert. Und ein so rhythmisch und metrisch flexibel agierendes Piano-Jazz-Trio hat man in der Tat selten gehört, denn Adams lässt gemeinsam mit Ed Schuller am Kontrabass und Ernst Bier an den Drums die häufig zur Bürde werdende Geschichte dieser Jazz-Gattung hinter sich. Im Spiel mit seinen Mitmusikern variiert und fragmentiert er die Konstanten Zeit und (Klang-) Raum zu einem impressionistischen Bilderbogen, wofür vor allem der Stevie-Wonder-Klassiker "Pastime Paradise" als herausragendes Beispiel zu nennen ist.

                                                 © Jazz thing - Martin Laurentius

Pianotrio par Excellence

Die CD mit spitzen Fingern anfassend, fürchtet man, daß sich hinter einer Pianotriobesetzung nur wieder eine weitere Gruppe verbirgt, die Standards angeblich "neuartig" eingespielt hat. Aber: "Pastime Paradise" wartet mit vier Eigenkompositionen von Christoph Adams, zweien vom Bassisten Ed Schuller und einem einzigen "Evergreen" von Stevie Wonder auf.

Rundum ein Werk, daß den Hörer mit dem Gefühl aus seinem Sessel aufstehen läßt, gute Musik in sich aufgenommen zu haben, Musik die berührt, aber doch nicht überfordert.......[more]

                                             © jazzdimensions2000 - Carina Prange

Linernotes:

Moments I've won

I came near to being drowned hearing this music a second time: I dived in and went under water in the wild stream of the audible. I had quickly forgotten to breath, to open my eyes and to confront the everyday life - as deeply and willingly as I found myself swimming in the music. After an hour the CD was finished and I came up to air. May be it was just as well that the plumbers next door began to make noise again. I had to rouse myself from hearing, to drive away the echoing sounds. "Memories of Lost Tomorrows" the opener of the CD already contains several nuances and moods.

Christoph Adams opens my soul at the beginning with the allusions and reflections of his introduction for all that follows. Then Ed Schuller appears in my inner eye, his bass sounds float carefully in the stream of music, his whispering mouth creating multiphoned sounds when soloing. Swelling cymbal-rolls by Ernst Bier flar up, not too long, not too heavy; the mallets are rapidly replaced by robust drum rolls. Some extensions and compressions later an urgent, but unobtrusive pulse is born - it swings - indeed the three musicians insist on insinuating a forceful but simple pulse to the impressionistic strains of sound.

There is no doubt, this recording isn't one-sided. I must confess: the longer I'm with this music, the better I hear it. I find a sequence of touching moods to surrender to. Some tunes I don't Know whether or not a song has ended. It doesn't matter, it happens. The music flows, Thoughts are inspired by the sounds, associations are stimulated, enjoyed to the max and passed on. Perhaps an unorganized organizing chaos. What else could happen, when three persons are communicating via their instruments having known and played with each other for many years.

Impressions of the past are followed by Stevie Wonder's warning song "Shame to anyone lives/Living in a pastime paradise" marks the end of this 1976 song. The sadness is the mother of the beauty. As graceful as they seem to appear, Christoph Adam's compositions can explode accumulated emotions of hurt and melancholy; melancholists should be warned about this music! However I have found the boundaries of the moods within myself, they were never reached, never touched. The idea of "Future Paradise" tempts up, arising from the past. "Let's start living our lives / Living for the future paradise / Praise to our lives / Living for the future paradise / ..."!
                                                                           Peter Stegmaier

Christoph Adams, Ernst Bier and Ed Schuller are people who ask questions, think and rethink, philosophers of their actions in life. They are searching for words and meanings, and they find music. But don't miss the subtleties. Please don't worry about associations, don't worry about thoughts. They don't symbolize an actual program, they don't yield a binding interpretation, but they are part of the work of three deeply involved artists, they are always personal statements. Here is what they think:

Pastime Paradise
- a great song by Stevie Wonder, but also the result if what Eric Dolphy describes as follows happens:
"When you hear music ... After it's over, it's gone in the air, you never capture (it) again!"
                                                                                  Ernst Bier

Pastime Paradise ?
Where The Angel Calls O (who?)
While dancing in an Apeiron dream
Composed of the Memories of Lost Tomorrows
Where even Sadness can be the Mother of Beauty,
because it is all somehow Meant to Be.
The music is the message.
                                                                                  Ed Schuller

Pastime Paradise
Time is a flexible medium and never a constant as we all believe! It can course in a straight line, in a spiral, a curve or a circle. The motion of the universe is similar to that of the ocean, and time is also swimming in that ocean, obeying the law of its motion.
Because we haven't really understood the past, we don't really know where we ever have been. Therefor till now we haven't arrived in the present.
Pastime Paradise tells you of those problems, of the attempt to breath through the vicious circle, and of the intention to use the future as a space of unrestricted possibilities.
                                                                          Christoph Adams

That has been a survey in our own behalf. Now you can speculate: What's the message, what's the medium? Who tells what to whom? And above all: Hear, Hear, Hear!