CD 9176-2	Billy Hart Trio "Route F" Johannes Enders – saxophone Martin Zenker – bass Billy Hart - drums

Billy Hart was born in Washington D.C. on November 29, 1940.
His first steady gigs of note were with Shirley Horn and Buck Hill. In the 1960’s he toured with Jimmy Smith, Wes Montgomery, Eddie Harris, and Pharoah Sanders. In 1970 he joined Herbie Hancock’s Sextet, and after that band broke up in 1973 he joined first McCoy Tyner (two years) and then Stan Getz (four). In the 1980’s Hart was a regular with many bands and leaders: Gerry Mulligan, Billy Harper, Clark Terry, The New York Jazz Quartet, the Jazztet, Mingus Dynasty and most extensively with Quest (with David Liebman, Ritchie Beirach, and Ron McClure). In the 1990’s Hart was a member of the Charles Lloyd, Joe Lovano, and Tom Harrell groups, and in 1999 he began performing with the Three Tenors (Liebman, Lovano, and Michael Brecker).

Billy Hart’s cymbal crash at the beginning of “Route F” is a wake-up call as much as an invitation to be mesmerized, hypnotized, spell-bound in a perfectly balanced triangle of musical gravity and motion.
Billy Hart is the master sorcerer, sometimes playful, sometimes fierce, but always pulling, driving—one feels that his every hit is entirely his own, radiating body and soul of a living legend, of the history of jazz itself.
Martin Zenker’s bass is lyrical, somewhat understated but at the same time amazingly present, skillfully building the harmonic foundation laid out in Johannes Enders’ compositions, often taking flight himself in beautifully crafted solos.
Johannes Enders’ playing is marvelously assured, emotionally raw yet mature and infused with some kind of wisdom beyond his years. His tone and speed and the immediacy of his feeling are such that it sometimes seems there is nothing he can’t do when playing a saxophone.
Listening to this trio’s music brings up images of being led into an enchanted forest—all three musicians are woodsmen, bound together by purpose and hard-earned mastery; calloused hands holding on to a thick rope—song— as not to lose one another even after dark. There is a deeply-felt honesty and absence of any artifice—there is just expression of a life force greater than anything else.
There are spirits in this forest, among them Coltrane and Monk; they’re good spirits, as reassuring and warm as tall trees. And no voice would I rather listen to now than Johannes Enders’ saxophone, Martin Zenker’s Bass and Billy Hart’s drums.

Alessandro Ricciarelli

Don’t miss the legend on drums.
On tour:
17.11. Hamburg Birdland
18.11. Landsberg Disky
19.11. Aspach
20.11. Freiburg Jazzkongress
21.11. Reutlingen
22.11. Pfaffenhofen
23.11. tbc
24.11. Weilheim Ammertöne Festival
25.11. Fürth
26.11. Brüssel/B L` Archiduc
27.11. Edinburgh/UK Jazzbar
28.11. Edinburgh/UK Jazzbar
29.11. Edinburgh/UK Jazzbar
30.11. Gent/B Cafe Danberd