Anke Helfrich Quartett

Every song tells a story. And every song on the pianist’s latest album is dedicated to influential personalities, friends or topics. She teaches at the Mannheim University of Music and the Dr. Hoch’s Conservatory in Frankfurt. Her album is called “Dedication” and was created in New York, and this hotspot for jazz where Helfrich once studied with Kenny Barron and Larry Goldings seems to have written itself into the pieces: the compositions and arrangements have something timelessly classical about them, and also breathe something urban. Helfrich, born in Horb am Neckar, bred in Weinheim and Windhoek (Namibia) has acquired a sovereignty that makes it seem inappropriate to reference her to her paragons Thelonious Monk and Herbie Hancock. She has long had her own handwriting, her own tone and her own approach. For Helfrich “Dedication” also means responsibility. This album therefore has a great, unpretentious gospel-like recording of Martin Luther King Jr.’s most important speech next to a loving homage to her family. Helfrich’s new songs, which often have a political dimension, have a maturity and sound diversity that is rare in German jazz. Perhaps one should erase the word “German”: here we have somebody who has deeply immersed into jazz tradition and penetrated to the core of this music.