What is an ensemble? A group of individuals in which every voice is being carved out as clearly as possible to make the individual performance as audible as possible? Or is it the opposite: a firm body of musicians, like a symphony orchestra, creating a collective sound in which that sum of individual performances merges into one? The truth doesn’t lie in the middle – as it does so often – but fully embraces both aspects in their entireness. The Keno Harriehausen Quartet is a highly vivid example for an ensemble in which multifacetedness of the sum of the individual voices and the unity of the inseparable whole works at its best.

Pianist Keno Harriehausen, saxophonist Karlis Auzins, cellist Maya Fridman and bassist Andris Meinig don’t beat around the bush. From the first note, they make it clear what it’s all about. Subtle vehemence pairs with insistent clarity. This music grabs you with each tone, each breath, each movement. It doesn’t stay out, doesn’t remain neutral, won’t accept the background. Keno Harriehausen and his fellow musicians from Germany, Latvia and the Netherlands take the freedom to absorb the listener to the fullest.

The lineup in itself marks already the unusualness of the band. The combination of tenor saxophone, cello, double bass and piano would rather make you think of a modern chamber ensemble than a Jazz band. But pianist and composer Keno Harriehausen isn’t interested in typical jazz formats anyways. More than 60 years ago, American composer, conductor and music theorist Gunter Schuller demanded for the so called third stream in his thesis. The combination of classical music and jazz should be neither Jazz with classical music nor classical music with jazz but an independent music that frees itself from common reflexes. What Schuller failed on a high level can be found fulfilled in Harriehausens music in a nearly magical way. The music is in some moments reminiscent of Shostakovich, Reger and Ravel, but also of American Free Jazz and Scandinavian searching of tonal colors. Yet, all these references loose themselves in the decisiveness of the performance and in the compelling responsibility to every single tone.

Harriehausen does not stop with the creation of the music. He intensively reflects its effect, the parley of introspect and outward levels of perception and the role of his music in society. Composition and improvisation, structure and freedom, individual and group stand in very distinctive relationships to one another. A cosmos of limitless possibilities arises from the coordinates. The palette of constellation of sound that unfolds from the instrumentation of Piano, Saxophone, Cello and Bass is sheerly overwhelming. By his own account, the biggest challenge for the bandleader, composer and pianist is to fill this space without getting lost in it. He is not searching for the best compromise, but goes into the extreme of unifying the opposites. „We have found a sort of storytelling that follows its own rules in the freer parts. You need the right flow to get it out and to the people. It about letting the energy out, not directing the form towards it.“