sturm und drang
The 38-year-old trombonist, composer and producer Nils Wogram is one of the most proactive jazz musicians of the German lingua, without exaggerating. Although the musician, living in both Cologne and Zurich, also teaches on the side at the jazz school in Lucerne, Switzerland, his real home, his musical home turf where he likes to live out his life, is and remains the stage. Circa four months a year, Nils Wogram is on tour, which has not stopped him from releasing a truly imposing number of albums. Since his debut “New York Conversations” from 1994, more than two dozen long players have more than impressed jazz circles – this creative output is simply exceptional. All the while his trio Nostalgia is only one of four ensembles Nils Wogram currently leads, among which are the renowned Root 70 and a septet made out of Berlin musicians.
Sturm und Drang is the third album with Nostalgia, to which the Hammond organist Florian Ross and the drummer/percussionist Dejan Terzic belong, the former based in Cologne. The three musicians overcome space and time with the playfulness of a well-rehearsed team. Every movement brings forth a creative flight of sparks. For the new album the trio resolved to make its way into the wide ring of club music as an acoustic jazz band. Dance tracks rooted in jazz with an intellectual touch. “For this I have used known grooves and partially changed them rhythmically without taking away their own character,” says Nils Wogram, who composed eight of the ten pieces. The album title Sturm und Drang has been chosen carefully; the German edition of Wikipedia defines this historical concept as the “foundation for overcoming the constraints of reason and for unchaining exuberance, the imagination and the power of the mind as a new poetic attitude.” Nostalgia could hardly better describe their intentions.
