Martin Fabricius Trio
Martin Fabricius Trio
Out of the White, the Martin Fabricius Trio’s spectacular CD, is now being reissued by BERTHOLD records. Martin Fabricius – vibraphone, Christian Hougaard – bass and Jacob Hatholt – drums are joined by guests Mathias Heise – harmonica and Neff Irizzary – guitar. According to ‚All About Jazz‘ the result is, ”very refreshing and joyous, with excitement created without pyrotechnics”.
“The pieces were written over three or four years,” says Martin Fabricius. “They are little stories, like small movies. An earlier recording of the track Now you see it, now you don’t was used by the artist who designed the original CD cover. He would put on the music and draw. That inspired me to write something, a little pop song with a lyric to it, which was like the unborn drawing calling to the artist – ‚please create me, please bring me out of the white‘. It became a hook line which developed into an instrumental piece. A whole scene can play out in a piece. It can be small like the melancholia that accompanies the first cold wind of autumn. It can be moving like the great feeling of homecoming when you catch up with old friends. Or it can be dramatic like when I found myself on our staircase listening through flames, smoke, and screaming sirens for signs of life in my neighbour’s apartment.”
The music on this album is both complex and soothing. Fabricius explains the origins of the style, “It’s a mixture of course of who I am, my appreciation of nature and also of me studying film music.” He studied in the United States at the Berklee College of Music where the American tradition of improvising is strong. Fabricius describes the process, “The melodies are really kind of simple, like songs almost and they have room for improvisation. I’d say that the music I write is just one or two pages, three at a max. Sometimes I write a base line if there is something very specific I want. Other than that everything is improvised, at least 75%.”
This is true of the recordings which Fabricius says helps keep the music fresh. “ A lot of stuff just happens on the spot, when we play. The melodies are very simple and very clear. Everything else around them is different.”
The trio and guests are sensitive to circumstance when playing live concerts. “One time we played in a cathedral in Copenhagen and there was so much reverb, we could only play really, really slow and very sparsely, just a few notes here and there. The night afterwards we played in a brewery, the place was packed. It was Saturday night and we performed the same set but totally different. That says a lot about how we adapt to the room and the people, to the mood of everybody.”
Martin Fabricius is composer, interpreter and artist. The sound he produces, together with his fellow musicians, shimmers with calm, yet is passionately edgy. Where might this potent and highly effective mixture come from? Fabricius explains, “I’m told that I’m calm. It takes a lot to get me really angry – usually if there’s some kind of injustice. Honesty is important to me. When we bring who we are into the music you get our very unique sound. My calm, Christian’s passion, Jacobs playfulness and with our guests, Mathias‘ energy and Neff’s aesthetics.”
Out of the White is a refreshing, joyous CD full of surprises. For ‚JazzNyt‘ it is “Jazz that embraces you and stays with you”.
