Julian and Roman Wasserfuhr
Relaxin’ in Ireland
(ACT)

WHAT are three young German jazz musicians doing recording an album in west Cork, Ireland, including tunes like What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor?

The answer is, creating beautifully singular music in a setting foreign to their life experiences, yet full of love and empathy for the soundscapes and traditions of Ireland.

Julian Wasserfuhr is a trumpeter and flugelhornist and his brother Roman Wasserfuhr a pianist and on Relaxin’ in Ireland they’re joined by cellist Jorg Brinkmann.

On opener Cello Bello, Roman strikes his keys like drums, Brinkmann plucks out a bass-like pulse while alternating with his bow and Julian blows a full-on, burnished horn sound with a glorious range of crystalline notes and clarity of tone, his timbre dancing, pausing, reflecting and speaking.

Then it’s the familiar narrative of the drunken sailor, with the centuries-old nautical ditty becoming almost a lamentation after Roman’s sober opening. Brinkmann plays a brilliant bowed solo, complex and enigmatic, as if that sailor has discovered some deep problems on his voyages.

Van Morrison’s Moondance is played by Julian with a fluent brilliance akin to the Sardinian trumpeter Paolo Fresu, while Brinkmann plucks his cello as if it were a guitar through Knot in the Belly. Julian’s solo is a sublimely note-perfect message of hope, inspiring Roman to play a chorus like a stream running into the sea.

Brinkmann’s tune Moon Over Ireland is a love tune to the country, an emerald of a track, while on Spater Bess, Roman plays an improvised chorus so wrapped in creative lyricism it seems to have risen directly from the Irish earth on which it was conceived.

Gilbert O’Sullivan melody Clair inspires Brinkmann to play a plucked cello solo that could be by one of the great acoustic bass players like Dave Holland or Charlie Haden and on Schnaff his bow caresses and saws his strings as if it were another instrument in another reality.

Tears enters the heartlands of jazz, with echoes of the spiritual Deep River, acknowledging the economic slavery and poverty in the history of the land where they are now playing, making an acute irony of the album’s title. Julian’s horn, with its ascents and cadences, is the narrative voice telling sad and struggling stories with the brotherly notes of Roman and Brinkmann's soft, soothing bow.

Lost in Time has a cavorting, leaping solo from Julian and a sharply plucked chorus by Brinkmann. It is as if the words of the Irish poets — of Yeats, Synge and Heaney — were being transposed into jazz notes by these three young German virtuosi, completing an evocative journey and a profoundly beautiful record.