LAUER LARGE – KONSTANZ SUITE

The Konstanz Suite is the furious departure of the 26-year-old trombonist, composer and bandleader Johannes Lauer into a cosmos whose wealth of shapes and colours, traditions and views is almost limitless. Lauer does not settle, but records possibilities. Jazz is a means, not the end goal. His music oscillates between the extremes of abstraction and everyday life. How composition and improvisation penetrate each other sensitively, the incidentally snapped and the abstract exposure are so organic that it could hardly be separated without leaving any residue. Lauer leaves no doubt that he has embarked on a search. But he also unmistakably manifests his determination to find. In his personality, the three extremes of the dreamy romantic, the rational planner and the impetuous innovator collide at a sharp angle. And so the Konstanz Suite - as well as life itself - is full of collisions and contrasts.

Recorded November 11, 2007 at Zehntscheuer, Ravensburg, Germany