Moritz Stahl: Traumsequenz
(Unit Records UTR5150. Album review by Frank Graham)

There’s something about the career path of Munich-based saxophonist Moritz Stahl which speaks both to his great musical curiosity and patience. Gaining valuable experience as a member of the techno-influenced Jazzrausch Bigband, Stahl is also a regular collaborator with close friend Philipp Schiepek (guitar), pianist Luca Zambito and singer Fiona Grond. He enjoys a parallel as a producer of electronic music under the name odizouu, and now in his early thirties he is finally releasing Traumsequenz (“dream sequence”), his leadership debut.

The project was hatched in 2022, Stahl and Schiepek handpicking a group of musicians to perform his compositions at a series of Summer concerts. Julius Windisch (piano, keyboards) is one of the most exciting prospects from the Berlin scene, Leipzig based Lorenz Heigenhuber (bass) brings a huge woody tone, and Leif Berger (drums) is garnering a growing reputation as a powerful presence within the Cologne scene.

Following the success of these concerts, the group reconvened in May 2023 at the Kyberg Studio in Munich to record an album brimming with confidence and pleasingly free of cliché. At the centre of group’s dynamics is the constant push-pull between musicians and material, Stahl’s very open structures affording each musician generous space to breathe. The seventeen tracks are thoughtfully sequenced, never settling in one place for too long but moving in a very natural flow. Five freely improvised “episodes” and the five part “Traumsequenz” are scattered amongst Stahl’s longer-form compositions, and in a nicely self-referential touch the improvised episodes are drawn from rejected takes of “Procrastination Episode”.

From the opening bars of “Introducing” we are drawn into an inviting space, Stahl’s multi-sectioned pieces at once suggesting the angularity of Paul Motian and the dark, sinuous movements of Wayne Shorter. His forceful tenor solo on “Procrastination Episode” momentarily recalls Gary Thomas, but in the main it’s difficult to discern any overt influences in his playing beyond Shorter. Schiepek introduces his supple nylon-stringed guitar to the more open-textured “Salzweisen”, our first chance to hear the fabulously inventive Windisch at length, and the first of the dream sequences, “Lenticular Labyrinth”, is as disorienting as its title suggests, Stahl’s commanding tenor eventually finding the centre.

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Elsewhere the atmospheric abstractions of “The Ominous” display a kinship to Motian’s mid-‘80s collaborations with Lovano and Frisell, and the choppy rhythms and evocative electro-acoustic textures of fifth dream sequence “Luxe Cache” make it one of the set’s most arresting pieces. Stahl switches to soprano for the pretty Shorter-esque ballad “Olivers Pensive”, both Schiepek and Stahl negotiate knotty post-bop terrain on the nearly swinging “Lonk”, and the closing “Aiglatson” even carries a faint whiff of nostalgia. For the most part Stahl’s gaze is fixed firmly on the future, but fleeting moments like these remind us he is part of a longer tradition.

LINK: Traumsequenz at the Unit Records website