OBERHAUSEN. Gummihühner included: As guests of the jazz carousel, Mark Alban Lotz and Alan Purves recorded countless crazy sound producers in the Gdanska. 

Jazz as a royal pleasure for two childish experts |

waz.de | Oberhausen 21/10/2018

Trumpets, drums and thousands of sounding toys: this is how the duo celebrated Mark Alban Lotz and Alan Purve’s “Kuros” first anniversary.

Photo: Jörg Schimmel

OBERHAUSEN. Gummihühner included: As guests of the jazz carousel, Mark Alban Lotz and Alan Purves performed on countless crazy sound objects in the Gdanska.

At the recent Jazz carousel – the first anniversary of the death of its inventor Walter “Kuro” Kurowski – you felt being transported into the wonderful world of the Danzig toy retailer Sigismund Markus by whom the little Oskar Matzerath regularly got a new tin drum. That instrument was the only not fetarured instrument in the overflowing smorgasbord of the Scottish Percussion wizard Alan Gunga. But there where pedal-driven, Indian Shruti boxes, homemade tongue drums in addition to an African ballphone and countless other crazy sound producers instead.

The fact that the chickens did not laugh in the face of this splendor was due to the fact that Purvis gagged his rubber duckies with great wit. Which is why they screamed loudly “Mammy, Mammy”, which was at least as funny as the grunting pig at the beginning of this entertaining evening. Most of the flutes had stayed at home, although Mark Alban Lotz had brought almost a dozen flutes. In order not to lull his listeners, supported by sophisticated electronics, to draw fascinatingly smoothly into the wake of attentive immersion..

  • Shimmering flute sounds and sophisticated rhythms

For what presented the Holland based ‘Schwabe’ in delicate dialogues with his Scottish friend playing the toys, that was a very organic flow of delicate inventions. Despite her many amusing effects, their highly musical performance never got into a fuss.

Incidentally, also without visual enrichment the CD “Food Foragers” (Unit / Harmonia Mundi) sounds all convincing, . Not self-evident in such a witty art of improvisation, which flickering flute sounds and refined rhythms led to harmonious harmony in the Gdanska. That no one recognized the delicate melody of “The Single Petal Of A Rose” from Duke Ellington’s “The Queen’s Suite” for Queen Elizabeth II, was understandable in view of this rare delicacy – and an equally royal pleasure as anything else by Mark Alban Lotz and Alan Gunga Purves, who made the jazz carousel spin.