feature photo: Mariana Meraz
Hailing from the Bavaria region of Germany, Tobias Meinhart is an accomplished saxophonist, composer and bandleader but his fresh sounding jazz makes him seem like the up-and-comer he still is. Being successfully established in his native Germany, Meinhart sought take on the larger challenge of making it in NYC. Maybe that’s why his fifth long-player Sonic River is teeming with the hunger of a guy who’s capable of a lot but is somehow without the requisite recognition.
Using water as a metaphor throughout to underscore the contemporary, heady flow of the musical ideas pouring out like a stream, Sonic River isn’t the kind of jazz being made by the genre’s old hands. Rather, it’s what you’d expect by young performers like Meinhart who learned the right lessons from those prior generations and synthesized that with other currents to come up with his own vernacular. He’s incorporated the innovative rhythmic devices of composer Guillermo Klein and looked beyond music altogether to find inspiration from the writings of David Foster Waller, Rainer Maria Rilke and others to enhance the flow in the music he creates.
On this effort, Meinhart put together a backing band of very capable, local New York musicians with Eden Ladin on piano, Matt Penman on bass and Odeb Calvaire behind the drum kit. Charles Altura adds electric guitar for most of these selections.
Meinhart isn’t nominally a saxophonist-composer-bandleader, he invests hard into every part of that hyphenated title. “This Is Water” showcases Meinhart the composer, who puts together a sophisticated piece that’s vibrant, modern and accessible while making no concessions. As a performer, Meinhart’s tenor sax calls to mind the spiritually soulfulness and urgency of Kenny Garrett.
“After The Rain” — not the Coltrane ballad — is delicate, flowing like a stream, keyed by some back-and-forth between Meinhart and Ladin. On soprano sax, Meinhart plays poetically for the pensive “Sonic River,” and “Korean Chant” is spiritual modalism accented by Meinhart’s flute.
Meinhart the bandleader demonstrates a flair for deploying the talent at hand that maximizes the impact of his songs. “Pinball” has all the vigor of bebop with the accomplished lissomness of modern jazz and Altura’s soaring guitar brings the two worlds together. Calvaire’s drums is the driving force behind “Dark Horse,” which has inventively ebullient lead parts for both sax and piano.
For “The Panther” Meinhart utilizes the voice of Sara Serpa like another wind instrument alongside his saxophone, backed by a folk-jazz melody, reminiscent of Brian Blade’s Fellowship. A similar method is used with Serpa for “Silencio” but only here, her voice is tightly intertwined with Meinhart’s sax.
“Where did you sleep last night?” is an archaic American folk tune popularized in the 1940s by Lead Belly and later covered by Nirvana. That would make it an unlikely cover choice for a modern jazz ensemble but Meinhart makes it work and some crisps solos from Altura and Ladin didn’t hurt, either. Meinhart is also able to smoothly incorporate classical polyphonic structure into his jazz stylings, as proven by “Fugue Y.”
Tobias Meinhart makes a fully-formed statement about making music that goes further than just putting together harmony and rhythm and carrying it out with capable hands. It’s got to flow and Sonic River does just that.
Sonic River is out now and can be acquired through Bandcamp.
*** Tobias Meinhart CD’s and vinyl on Amazon ***
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