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German Jazz Musician and Composer
Barbara Dennerlein |
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Barbara Dennerlein one of the world’s most highly regarded organists and
Jazz composers just released a brand new CD and DVD,
My Moments, recorded live at
Studio Acusticum in the northern Swedish town of Piteá. The original
Jazz compositions are played on both the Hammond organ, for which she is
more widely known and the pipe organ. The very congenial Dennerlein who
has become a good friend of Riveting Riffs Magazine over the years spoke
to us from her home in Germany and referred to this CD / DVD as her most
personal recording so far.
She explains why,
“It is so pure. It is a solo situation. I am alone with both
instruments. It is so personal. I think my personal style has developed
over many, many years and it is very special. When you have a solo
situation you can hear it more clearly. Also you can hear the little
things. Very often when you have a drummer with you no matter how good
he is it is always covering details from the organ sound. I do so many
little things, because I love the sound and I love the colors that you
can make and little changes. I like to experiment with sound and I can
do this alone with my instruments. That is why I think it is my most
personal one.
(Also), there is nobody else that you can hide behind. You have your own
inspiration. I play the pedals very intensely, I have a whole band in a
way, as I play with my feet the bass player’s work and I have both of my
hands for comping and soloing. It gives me a lot of freedom and my
style, which is very different from other organists, can be heard very
clearly on the solo performance. It is wonderful and I just can let it
go and it flows. I have a lot of inspiration and the two instruments are
fascinating.
It is also only my music and my own compositions. It is only things that
I wrote and I played. It is very wide ranging. There is a wonderful
Blues (song) played on the Hammond organ and it is called “Bluesy,” and
there are some Latin ballads and some experimental stuff. I also
experiment with the sound of the Hammond and the pipe organ. There are
Classical influences as well when I play on the pipe organ. For instance
I wrote a piece called “Symphony In Minor,” which is longer and it has
several parts. It mainly consists of minor chords, because it is
melancholic. I think it sounds very nice on the pipe organ. I wrote it
especially for the pipe organ.
Then there is “Fantasia Acusticum,” which I spontaneously improvised in
concert. It is very modern and very experimental. I was inspired by the
instrument and I let it go. This is something that I like very much. It
is only that way in that moment, because it is created in that moment
when you are on stage and you play the instrument.
I also played on the pipe organ something that is funky and I played
Blues on the pipe organ. There is another piece that I recorded many
years ago on the Take Off
Album and it is called “Green Paradise.” I reworked it and played it on
the pipe organ. It sounds totally different.
I also have new sections in it. For some pieces I work on both
instruments, but when I adapt them to the other instrument they become
like new compositions. I think it (the CD / DVD) represents a very wide
range of music and I hope that a lot of people will have fun with it.
Dennerlein did not stop with playing and composing the music, “I remixed
the whole recording. The sound was already fantastic when I received it
from Sweden, but I am a perfectionist. There are things that another
person cannot know, musical things that I want to get right. Right in
this case means sound wise, if something is too soft or too loud. I also
tried to get the signal of the big organ more direct, because it is very
good for the groove. You can take a bath in the organ sound (She laughs
lightly). It feels like you are in the organ. You are inside the sound.
It is all around you. It is
so light on the one hand, but it also has power. It is very hard to
describe in words. It shows all of its beauty and varieties and little
details, which very often you can’t hear.”
My Moments
may very well represent a musical milestone, not just for Barbara
Dennerlein, but also for the music world.
She says, “It is the first one when I really play both instruments on
one album. I don’t know (if it has ever been done before by anyone
else). Maybe I’m the first. I don’t know any other artist who has
recorded both instruments.
I have always done the unusual stuff, as well as developing the midi
stuff and pedal work and all of that (she laughs softly).”
As for why she selected Studio Acusticum in Piteá rather than a setting
in her homeland of Germany or some other part of Europe, Barbara
Dennerlein explains that it is, “a wonderful Classical concert hall with
a fantastic acoustic. Studio Acusticum is in northern Sweden and it is
out in the middle of nowhere I would say.
It is a place where people can study music and sound engineering, so
they are equipped very, very well. They have this wonderful equipment
and they have this big hall where the organ is, but they also have a
smaller concert hall where they sometimes have Jazz concerts.
There is a German
organ builder Gerald Woehl
who builds fantastic pipe organs and he built an organ there. It is a
really huge one, one of the biggest that I have ever played. There are
more than 200 registers and that means sounds and when you see it on the
DVD it is very modern. The architecture is great. I think that he told
me first about this wonderful hall. Funny enough shortly before he had
told me they had contacted me and asked if I would like to play a
concert there. I just had
the idea that it would be nice to record there. They rented a Hammond
organ for me and I took my midi foot pedal case with my midi pedals. I
did a concert in solo on both instruments.
Meanwhile people in the pipe organ world know my name quite well and
every time they want something unusual and to show how a pipe organ
sounds (outside) the normal Classical program they contact me. That is
great for me. I go everywhere in the world and I discover new pipe
organs in new places. I love to do that. It is always a challenge and I
meet really nice people. It is a lot of fun.”
Barbara Dennerlein talks about the recording of the concert, “I think
the DVD is especially interesting, because they use a lot of different
camera angles and many cameras are filming me, while I am playing. You
can see in detail my fingers, my feet and what I do with the
registration, as I work with both instruments. I had beautiful lighting
and they put candles around me. It is really nice to watch and it is
interesting to see how music is made on a Hammond organ and on a pipe
organ.
It was one very long concert. On the DVD that’s the original order. I
started on pipe organ and then I continued on the Hammond. It was hard
work in a way, but it was so much fun. There is nothing fake. It is just
the concert that I did.”
As for the difference in the two instruments she says, “It is very rare
that you hear (the pipe organ and the Hammond being played in the same
concert and to Jazz music). Both instruments are very different and you
have to play them differently. The sounds are different and the actions
of the instruments are different. When you play a note on the Hammond
organ keyboard, immediately you hear it, but on the pipe organ it takes
time for the mechanics to bring the air through the pipes from the place
where you play. The console for the pipe organ in that hall was in the
middle of the stage, so it was in front of the pipes, which was nice for
me to hear. The lower notes took a little more time until the sound
could be heard after I pressed the note. For my music the groove is very
important even if it is not swinging or funky or anything else, still
the groove is always there, so you have to adapt your playing. I play
the lower bass notes earlier than the upper notes. It is a challenge,
but I have done this for many years now and I think I am (well)
practiced on that. For me it’s no problem anymore, I just do it and I
just feel it.
Every time that I play on the pipe organ it is a totally different
situation, because there are huge differences in the (two) instruments,
in terms of sound, size and when the tone comes. There are a lot of
different ways you can build such a pipe organ, as well as the registers
and the stops that you have at the organ. You have to move them or pull
them or push them or press them in order to change the sounds. It is
also different depending on what sounds you have to play. This organ was
very special, because in addition to the wonderful sounds it has some
effects and some percussion stuff going on and there are a lot of sounds
that produce overtones, which you can mix with other sounds. It gives
you a lot of possibilities and it is related in that way to the Hammond
organ, because you can create overtones.
The challenge is
there every time, because each time you have a different sound, a
different acoustic and a different instrument with a different number of
sounds and possibilities. A Classical pipe organ has sounds that are
related to natural instruments, like strings or trumpets or horns or
clarinets. There are also some organ typical sounds.
The organ gives you lots of possibilities and I have in mind the kind of sound that I would like to achieve when I play the instrument. I always sit down at the instrument and I listen to it played and then I decide which composition I want to play in concert, because then I see how the organ reacts and what sounds the organ delivers. I can’t change the organ. I have to take it as it is with all the bad and good things. Sometimes there is an organ when I sit down and go Oh God what shall I do with this instrument (she laughs).
If I want to play a melody on the second keyboard and I want to comp on
the first one for example or the other way around, then I need a special
relationship between the volumes of both keyboards. I have to make this
with registration, because I cannot make it with the volume pedal like I
can with the Hammond organ. On the pipe organ you have the sound and it
sounds as it sounds. If there is a trumpet you play the trumpet as it is
and you don’t have a volume pedal to make it softer or louder.
Very often organs do not have any possibility to change the volume. To
come back to my example, in the first keyboard I have sounds that are
very soft and on the second keyboard I have sounds and groups of pipes,
which are very strong. It is hard for me to get the right relationship
and I can only choose the register and the sounds that I want to use.
You have to make a lot of tricks on the sounds to get what you want, but
no matter how difficult the organ is there is always the point where you
say, okay now it is like I want and now I feel comfortable. I have been
able to get this so far from every organ that I have played. Sometimes
in the beginning I think oh it is difficult and sometimes I sit down at
an organ and I immediately have a feeling of how wonderful it is and
there are lots of possibilities and it is good for my music.”
For the My Moments recording
and as relates to the pipe organ she says, “We used microphones that
were placed closer to the pipes and we had microphones that were also
placed far away in the room. You get a different kind of a signal. When
you do the mixing you can decide if you want to have more reverb or if
you want to have more of a direct sound when you record closer to the
pipes of the organ. For example there is one song called “Get It On,”
which is an invitation to dance and it is a funky song and there it is
nice to have a little more direct signal, a little drier I would say.
That was possible through remixing the recording. Also, it was already
very well mixed by the sound engineer. Since I also have my own studio
here in Germany, I was also tempted, because it gives me a lot of
possibilities.”
After already touring the world and establishing herself as not only one
of the best Jazz organists, but one of the best composers and musicians
on the planet, what was it that prompted Barbara Dennerlein to start
playing Jazz music on the pipe organ?
“The idea came up, when Christian Kabitz from Bachfestival in Würzburg
the promoter of the music festival, Musikhochschule asked if I would
like to play the pipe organ,” and then Dennerlein provides a bit of a
back story, “When I did my degree I had to do a test playing music and
(it was) Bach. I should have played it on a pipe organ. I was eighteen
at that moment. The people at school knew that I played Jazz music on
the Hammond organ and they did not allow me to go and play Jazz in the
church or to play in a church. I got a special allowance from the
cultural minister to do the test at my parents’ home where the Hammond
organ was situated (she is laughing).
I played Bach on the Hammond organ. From that time I never had a
chance to play a pipe organ until Christian Kabitz asked me. That was
the beginning. I said yes I would like to do it, but it is such a
different instrument in comparison to the Hammond organ. I said that I
would need to practice and he gave me a contact with a church in Munich.
They gave me the key to where the organ console was situated. I went
there and I practiced. That is how I started. I really loved it very
much. If you ask people now everybody says oh we knew you would be a
great star and nobody remembers that now. (she laughs).
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