Programme > Artists > Kölner Saxophone Mafia (D)

Kölner Saxophone Mafia (D)

Twenty-eight years of “saxual freedom”, says the band’s motto, and it sure looks like this quartet from Cologne is living it as intensively as ever. Even though it started out as a sextet oscillating with humor, originally somewhere between the borders of free jazz, the heritage of old marching bands and composed music. All that later became the basic ground for a band that’s always traveling to unexplored destinations and crazy trips in all directions.

It has long been reduced to a quartet and even though nowadays it relies on saxophones in its title, the band has also been using different kinds of clarinets and flutes. But the saxophone remains its most exponent instrument and throughout the years, it has appeared in all its possible modifications: as a subcontrabass, soprano saxophone and even as a soprillo, almost a museum piece nowadays. But all that extended the band’s rich expression and also its almost border-less grasp of countless genres.

Their both older and recent records were always sophisticated and original, such as their interpretation of The Rolling Stones’s repertoire, and at times they weren’t distant to happening performances or specific theatre works with numerous curious guests.

But the Kölner Saxophon Mafia quartet - namely represented by Willie Kaiser, Steffen Schorn, Roger Hanschel and Joachim Ullrich - consists of the most experienced of musicians, who blend an ironic cocktail of jazz, contemporary classical music, cabaret, operetta and folk music in the most professional and delightful way.

And even though it may seem as if the band has no respect for anything, the basics of its work always includes first thorough arrangements and later professional musicianship. Both contribute to the fact that the inspiring “Cologne mafians” represent a unique band within the German musical scene. And possibly even further.