Marcus Bartelt & Martin Sasse - Still Here (2022) Hi Res

Yes, they are still »Still Here« After their masterful duo album »Monk« (2016), baritone saxophonist Marcus Bartelt and pianist Martin Sasse come together again and celebrate the continuation of their intimate, harmonious »Art of the Duo« in a unique way.

And again, nothing is missing at all in view of this instrumentation, which only seems sparse at first glance: sometimes the seemingly symbiotically connected musicians breathe the size of an entire orchestra, sometimes they prefer the fragile dialogue as equal masters of aesthetics and improvisation. No, nothing is missing, everything is in the right place here. Marcus Bartelt revels in the pool of pleasantly deep tones, lets them rise like sky lanterns, melodiously drunk, sometimes rough, sometimes undisguisedly clear, paying homage to the beauty of a composition.

Martin Sasse reacts to Bartelt's warm, full sound, often with similarly deep tones in the left hand, while he opens windows into the light with his improvisations and at some point feels wondrous sounds in the distance, bright as a glockenspiel made of Meissen porcelain. Six wonderful originals linked by five »Fragments« plus Duke Ellington's »All Too Soon«.