Tania Giannouli, Ghost-Note and Bill Laurance match solo pianos with ultra-funk at Enjoy Jazz in Germany

Spanning October 2nd to November 2nd, the Enjoy Jazz festival operates around the three cities of Heidelberg, Mannheim and Ludwigshafen, not far south of Frankfurt. There’s always one gig each night, but sometimes two, in different cities, and very rarely, a trio of performances, one in each location. Your scribe found himself spending more than the usual amount of time in the university town of the Neckar-set Heidelberg, clearly the most scenic, historic and touristic of the three destinations. The Greek pianist Tania Giannouli gave a solo 5.30pm recital in the modern-interior Friedenskirche An Der Tiefburg, a tranquil village-like suburb. This church is relatively small, and ideal for amassing atmosphere, silences and resonant afterglowing.

Giannouli begins by wielding small mallets under the piano lid, shaping interior groaning tones, slow drags with much reverb, well-suited to these environs. She has a firm drama to her narrative development, making an emphatic progress via building phrases, often of a portentous nature. Giannouli runs bass notes, crossing up to the higher end, making a prepared piano jangle, then into a lighter escapade, like a faster Erik Satie. There’s a magnetic authority to her architectural structures, as she takes a decisive route through a theme, whether composed or improvised. Giannouli operates with an abstract spontaneity, but can also glide towards lyrical logic. There’s a slightly percussive edge to her phrasing, with a loaded power. Has Giannouli been influenced by her recent duo sets with Nik Bärtsch, that master of repetitive drum-piano formations? She plays lines with her right hand, then uses her left inside the piano, placing metal bowls on the strings, carefully arranged for spatula activation. Giannouli’s selections here are much longer than the often fleeting pieces found on her recent Solo album, 

Following their tour earlier this year, Snarky Puppy invaded the autumn Eurofest season with their various satellites. Co-founder Bill Laurance sat a massive distance away from Giannouli’s territory, visualising his piano as an orchestral, compositional tool, playing many, many notes in linear fashion, with a grandiose, symphonic density. Londoner Laurance was touring alone, prior to his duo dates with Puppy bassman Michael League. Here, he visibly relished the freedom allowed by lone performance, his acoustic piano fitting remarkably well into the blank-space club-like setting of the desolate Metropolink Commissary, a converted US airbase in Heidelberg that now has rows of chairs set out for Sunday-style concentration. Laurance starts out in a contemplative state, rising up to resounding, building up density with skipping Latinised phrases. He’s jumping rhythmically, with a hopping emphasis, prancing bass figures beside a slippery right hand. His splayed-finger configurations possess a traditional flow, full of logical journeying. He’s like a hotel lounge pianist on a grandiose scale, right hand hitting hard on the low notes, as he crosses over the central bassline spine of his left hand. Laurance is bouncing and driving, a bull-nosed buggy changing rhythmic tack with an angularity attack. He plays a couple of numbers from his most recent solo release, then previews a tune from 2025’s planned ACT record. Laurance also has a microphone directed down at the floor of the stage, to catch his percussive footwork, as stomping is sometimes central to his tunes. Although not when he turns to Bill Evans.

When your scribe first experienced Snarky Puppy, at the Gent Jazz Festival, 2015, his response was lukewarm, albeit enjoying that set’s lengthy drums-percussion battle highlight. He didn’t witness them again until April of this year, at Jazzkaar in Tallinn, digging them way more than that first time. Now, those percussionists are in Heidelberg, making our Monday nite a Saturday nite, the recently-transplanted Karlstorbahnhof venue’s standing space fully crammed. It’s fitting that Ghost-Note is an offshoot led by The Puppy’s sticksmen, Nate Worth and Robert ‘Sput’ Searight (pictured above – Photo by Annemone Taake). who devote themselves to git-down springsome ultrafunk, with old-time 1970s moves, updated for the faster generations. They don’t make watery funk-fusion. They pump out hard, bassline-plumped riffs and grooves, designed to dance without compromise.

Ghost-Note also benefit from a team of excellent virtuoso soloists who look like they’re completely possessed by the music. We’re talking Jonathan Mones (vaulting fx-crazy alto saxophone), Daniel Wytanis (pliable trombone garrulousness) and Peter Knudsen (classic soul-rock guitar riffs’n’solos). Several members contribute vocals, but lead singer Mackenzie Green successfully sounds like a generational hybrid of Prince and Sly Stone. Ghost-Note played for one hour and 45 mins approx, energy holding up all the way, the crowd decidedly won over. Bill Laurance sat introvertedly at one end, while his Ghost-Note compatriots inhabited the completely opposite partying-up-all-nite zone.

At the same venue, three nights later, London keyboardist Alfa Mist might have been expected to work within a similar fusion sphere, but in reality his band sound was much more inclined towards introversion and mood-shaping, and also way more jazzed than predicted. There was a strange calmness to the playing, the aura of a deeply extended session of restful exploration. Mist (Alfa Sekitoleko) and his trumpeter Johnny Woodham took most of the main solos, coasting over a soft funkiness, with some of the trappings of non-jazz syncopated musics, but still sounding like Mist’s own kind of jazz manifestation.

It was very noticeable this year that each gig during your scribe’s one-week stay was either completely sold out or very crowded, something not experienced since before 2020. It’s taken audiences four years to regroup, and several of these performances benefitted from an attendance age-range from teens up to twilighters. All’s looking well for Enjoyment in Germany!