Review of concert Konrad Bauer and Uwe Kropinski "Bogart's Jazz Club" 2002-07-02

The local press had been full of advance praise, so one could actually sense the level of audience anticipation, which is nothing new for these seasoned masters of improvised music. Interestingly, the duo had appeared in Rostock for the last time on 2 July 1982 – exactly twenty years before to the day! Organiser Burkhard Struck was able to prove this with the help of autographs and programmes from the Ostseejazz festival 1982. This uncanny coincidence added a note of poignancy to an evening of memorable music.

Uwe Kropinski started the evening on an upbeat note. Conny Bauer joined him for the second number, and what started then one could call an intimate conversation between musicians, a spontaneous dialogue with far more means of expression available to it than spoken language. And thought is seemed entirely improvised, it was no small talk that came forth. Kropinski’s and Bauer’s virtuosity on their respective instruments and their art of improvisation were fed by a seemingly endless fount of innovation and creativity.

Even when one of the two musicians had become dominant over a longer passage of music, they then seamlessly changed roles again afterwards. There was no sense that either wished to sacrifice the mutual partnership to be in the limelight. An finely-tuned musical thread was being constantly woven in their hands, which at the end of each piece formed into a “carpet of sound”, i.e. to a complete unit. That is presumably what made such a deep impression: freely improvised music that succeeded in entertaining, moving and astonishing its listeners.

Several in the audience who had also been at the concert in July 1982 were in agreement afterwards: Bauer and Kropinski have lost nothing of their remarkable ability to whisk people off on a musical excursion far away from familiar paths.