Nils Wogram

Solo

A trombone, nothing else! What has long been normal on piano or guitar, for example, still seems unusual, not to say daring, on the trombone. Yet this unusual line-up has a long tradition in German jazz. Both Albert Mangelsdorff and Conny Bauer have demonstrated this and presented their instrument as a solo instrument on several style-defining albums and in countless solo concerts. With his solo debut Bright Lights, Nils Wogram not only hooks up with this great tradition, but at the same time opens up completely new perspectives. 

Nils Wogram has not had to prove his musical ability for a long time, and it was only a question of time when Wogram would also postulate his relationship to the solo trombone. In contrast to the aforementioned pioneers of this subject, he no longer has to position his instrument in the club of solo instruments, but can simply play it. He doesn’t have to prove anything, doesn’t have to thread together the playful possibilities of the trombone and its improvisational derivations song for song, but rather he can cheerfully and entertainingly blow his very own stories through the tube. Although Wogram relies on a single sound source without technical aids or devices, his artistic maxim is as integrative as playing with a large band. Any form of dogmatism is fundamentally foreign to him. His aim on Bright Lights is to incorporate as many creative means as possible and not to exclude, omit or even prevent certain parameters. “I definitely didn’t want to fall into the trap of complacency. The listener shouldn’t have to constantly bear in mind that all he hears is trombone. It’s all about interesting and varied music.” 

To make the narrative qualities of his horn as broad and varied as possible, he penetrated much deeper into the trombone’s bag of tricks than before. While doing this, he always focused on what the respective creative means for each individual song were.
Wogram already worked occasionally on solo projects in the past. But his previous programs were based more on the improvisational conditions of the instrument. For Bright Lights he found a new approach, one in which he focused more on the narrative qualities of his horn. This narrative aspect lends itself more to the trombone than to any other instrument, for no sound generator comes as close to the human voice as Wogram’s playing apparatus. He knows about these possibilities and uses them as an opportunity. “The character of the trombone is extremely changeable. I like it when the trombone retains its basic character. Of course I too often succumb to the tendency to play the trombone as purely as possible, but its charm lies not least in its certain roughness and linguistic mutability.” 

Wogram also deliberately plays with the instrument’s limitations. As if in free flight he overcomes the trombone’s gravity, but instead of negating it, he skillfully transforms its relative heaviness in the lift of musical thermodynamics into a flying carpet from which his stories fly over to the listener lightly and elegantly like swifts. His playing thus becomes airy, colorful and three-dimensional.
At the same time he is not interested in his personal standing as a player or virtuoso. As in all his other projects, his ego completely recedes behind the music, which in turn makes him all the stronger as a musical individual.

As demanding as this solo album is playful, Wogram does not, however, address himself exclusively to trombone gourmets with this album, but to listeners of all colors who can simply enjoy inventive musical storytelling. In this sense, Bright Lights is neither an acrobatic revue nor a showcase for the trombone, and certainly not a retrospective test of strength with his idols Mangelsdorff or Bauer, to whom Wogram certainly feels that bowing to them is a challenge for the album. In a very simple sentence he sums up his credo: “I am not interested in analyzing my craft, but solely in artistic substance.” 

A trombone, nothing else! Nils Wogram succeeds in a touching way to manifest basic trust in his own musical statements, to confess his artistic origins without mutating into plagiarism, and thus to tell new stories that nevertheless do not seem out of place in familiar settings. Ultimately, with “Bright Lights” he is clearing the way for the creative power of socially sensitive individualism in times of increasing uniformity and conformity.

MUSE

All or nothing! No half measures! Where routine weariness becomes noticeable in the careers of many other artists, one senses that every new project trombonist Nils Wogram takes on is his very first one. This is particularly noticeable on his new CD, Muse, recorded with harpist Kathrin Pechlof, violist and overtone singer Gareth Lubbe and Wogram’s long-term companion Hayden Chisholm on saxophone. But why start from scratch once again with a completely new band when Wogram has achieved everything a jazz musician can ever achieve with working bands such as Root 70, Nostalgia or the Vertigo Trombone Quartet as well as alongside Aki Takase, Simon Nabatov, Bojan Z, Michel Portal and many others? The answer is as simple as it is complex: because Nils Wogram simply can’t help but give in to his instinctive artistic curiosity and look at what is waiting for him over the horizon, regardless of everything he has achieved, 

And so everything on Muse is actually completely different than what one is used to from Nils Wogram and his musical environment. The only constant remains Hayden Chisholm, a musician who has unreservedly shared the trombonist’s obsessions for decades and who always gives him a bit of support, not only musically but also, above all, as a human being – despite Wogram’s willingness to take risks. Wogram has also played together with Kathrin Pechlof from Berlin and Gareth Lubbe from South Africa in various groupings, but a line-up like the one on Muse has never existed before and is probably unparalleled in music history in general. All the greater is the incentive for the visionary trombonist, who never searches just for the sake of searching, but whose goal mark without any compromise is “finding,” to make the impossible possible and the unheard audible. 

Nils Wogram’s music has always been characterized by a great sensuality. While he has celebrated the sensuality of the moment in almost all his projects so far, the sensuality of the lasting comes to the fore on Muse. Lingering in this form plays a major role in the chamber-musical feel of this constellation. The warm sounds sometimes recall the portraits of an Amadeo Modigliani, images that have frozen into still lifes. To stay in the picture, the album’s compositions can be visualized not so much as a leaf moving jauntily in a spontaneous gust of wind, but rather as a vase that graces a room in its once-created form and plays with light. 

In ancient mythology, the muse is a figure who unites the divine principle of creation and passes it on to mankind. The fables of great artistic personalities and their muses fill entire compendia. Nils Wogram, Kathrin Pechlof, Hayden Chisholm and Gareth Lubbe, however, do not need a personified source of inspiration to enter together into the service of the musical muse. Their tone poems without lyrics are full of poetry and show one thing above all: The first step is always the easiest!

Nostalgia Trio

Nils Wogram`s reputation as the pioneer of contemporary jazz “made in Germany” has been boosted a lot by the fact that he, of all people, masters Albert Mangelsdorff`s instrument, the trombone with a virtuosity and recklessness few others possess. His trio Nostalgia takes the opposite approach going back to the swinging and grooving jazz of the 50s and 60s of the past century, a time when jazz was still at home at Blue Note or on 52nd Street, and managing masterfully the tightrope walk between nostalgic sound and curiosity about finding their own form of sound.Wogram manages to convey an authentic attitude to life in the shortest possible way- no instruction leaflet or highlighted map is necessary.  He simply starts walking and takes the audience with him. Nostalgia conveys a thundering force of life to the listener.

Much of this is helped by the selection of his fellow musicians. Organist Arno Krijger plays the bass lines with his feet. Thus, the left hand can concentrate on the chords and the right hand provides melodies and improvisations. This unusual set up enables Wogram to build the pieces in an unconventional way. „ Also Arno is not a pianist who also plays the organ, but he exclusively plays the organ. His self-conception lends the organ tonal nuances that are a real asset for me”. Regarding drummer Dejan Terzic, Wogram not only appreciates his instinct for beat, groove and fieriness, but above all his sensitivity for dynamics and form.

To touch or to impress – that is the question the fifth album of the trio, “Things We Like To Hear” (release October 2019) poses. Wogram, Terzić and Krijger make it easy for the listener. They start their album in a light, relaxed manner with a defining dub-melody and carry this lightness through the following eight songs, where they leave out everything superfluous and focus on the essentials. Wogram has often shown that he knows how to implement complex ideas, but now he is breaking new ground. Instead of abstraction, the three musicians rely on simpler structures (without becoming trivial) as well as on undisguised emotions that need no explanation. Despite all the new features, the album still bears the unmistakable signature of Nostalgia. On his previous albums Wogram wondered where we come from, now with “Things We Like To Hear” he explores what we need to preserve from the past. “The timeless components of jazz for me are spontaneity and improvisation. And the simpler the structures are, the more spontaneous it is to improvise. “He himself is neither as a musician nor as a private person a nostalgic, and that applies also to his fellow musicians. All three live in the here and now and want to participate in further developing jazz music. Wogram does not need a headline for that. He refrains from all reflexes and defies expectations. He neither wants to provoke nor does he want to preserve, but he wants to share with listeners, what he and his fellow players crave for in music. Some of the tunes on “Things We Like To Hear” simply capture moods, others call for moving or humming, others may remind you of a good old film noir. His goal is to bring mind and body together. “Things We Like To Hear” is the next step in this direction.

Nils Wogram is a musician who keeps his ears open and who manages to capture the world like it is in his music. With Nostalgia he went back to a starting point, not because he wanted to start from scratch, but because everything that needed to be said has been said and therefore no repetition is necessary.

Root 70

A strong tree has many roots. The jazz band Root 70 is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2020 and it puts down this longevity to a whole series of facts. Trombonist Nils Wogram, saxophonist Hayden Chisholm, bassist Matt Penman and drummer Jochen Rückert form one of the most stable formations in jazz history. Making music for two decades in an unchanged line-up is not only remarkable in itself, but in the case of Root 70 it is particularly impressive because the band did not choose the easiest path. But let’s start at the beginning, when four young musicians decided to travel a while together.

To make it quite simple: Hayden Chisholm and Matt Penman are from New Zealand and have known each other since their early youth. Already as a teenager, Chisholm came to Cologne via Switzerland. At about the same time, Nils Wogram returned from New York to the conservatory in Cologne where he met Chisholm and Jochen Rückert. The latter had already played in New York with Matt Penman, but not with the saxophonist. Rückert was drumming in Wogram’s quartet, and when the trombonist asked the drummer who he would like to play bass with, he chose the New Zealander from New York. Meanwhile Chisholm played in a trio with Rückert and Penman and invited Wogram as a guest one evening in 1999. “It was the first time there were the four of us in this combination, and I said that this concentration of persons is something special, we have to do it for a little longer than just this one gig,” Wogram recalls.
Expressing such a fundamental insight is one thing, but putting it into practice, not only into action, but into continuous work, is quite another. Nils Wogram decided to take the reins and forged a band out of four musicians who were musically very close to each other, a band that would function according to Alexandre Dumas’ principle “One for all, all for one.” “It always takes one person to catalyze things and get to the heart of the matter,” said Wogram. “We knew each other from various musical contexts and learned to appreciate each other. But it’s like being in a family. You respect each other, but it’s not all just about agreeing with each other. Everyone thinks for himself. We don’t have to be the best of friends and don’t always want the same thing. One of the prerequisites for the band to function for 20 years is that each band member can fully develop and shape the band sound through his own way of playing.” 

In May 2000 Root 70 gave its first concert under this name at the Moers Festival. It is unusual that four personalities who are such strong individualists, not only on their instruments but also as musical characters, should nevertheless achieve a highly symbiotic band sound. These four protagonists feel connected by a similar system of musical values and are committed to a similar basic aesthetic.
So they had common intersections; looking for them was unnecessary. But Root 70 managed to do something that few bands have been able to do over so many years: The group has built their work using contrasting ideas – the tension between the musicians – from which new overlaps, breaks, changes of perspective and approaches constantly emerge. Each of the four has found their own place in the band, a place that is flexible and takes personal differences into account. If things were different, the salt would be missing in the soup. You can have differences with your fellow musicians and still make music together, because you basically understand your companions.
A master plan or formulated dream has never existed in Root 70. Purely musically, the band wanted to achieve a kind of sophistication. They wanted to translate their skills as musicians into music with character, not something that is simply well played. “We were serious in realizing our aspirations, but we didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously. The content was always in the foreground. It was important to us to surprise the audience.”

Last but not least, Root 70 also managed to surprise itself with ever new ideas. Which brings us to another point in the band’s internal survival strategy. After the first three albums the band moved on to concept albums for which Wogram gives two reasons: “By avoiding playing randomly, we came up with a conceptual framework that didn’t let us digress into incoherence. This focus was helpful when we composed and formulated our programs. The other reason was the precise occupation with a theme. We didn’t just want to scratch the surface, but to go into depth. We were excited by the question of how one can explore and find freedom within certain boundaries.” 

While Cologne was initially a kind of epicenter for Root 70, there is now a great spatial distance between the musicians. Wogram lives in Switzerland, Chisholm in Ireland, Rückert and Penman in New York. Logistically, this creates challenges that are not always easy to overcome, but instead of the former spontaneity of meeting, today there is an unconditional will to harmonize with each other even over long distances. 

What brought the four musicians together in the beginning still connects them today. Root 70 is more than a musical institution, more than a success story documented on eight albums. Root 70 is an utopia of reconciling opposites without corrupting the individual claim of each part of the whole.

Duo with Bojan Z.

Vertigo Trombone Quartet

Nils Wogram, Andreas Tschopp, Bernhard Bamert, Jan Schreiner

Who would like to write the same book twice? And why should you record the same CD twice? With the album The Good Life, the Vertigo Trombone Quartet winds up for the second blow, but it does not just pick up where the band started in 2014 with Developing Good Habits – rather it goes all the way back to the start again. The four trombonists – Nils Wogram, Andreas Tschopp, Bernhard Bamert and Jan Schreiner – not only act as performing musicians, but also take joint responsibility for the compositions. While the individual signatures of the four protagonists remain recognizable, the compositions play a much more prominent role than on the debut album. Or to say it with the words of Nils Wogram in a double sense for a trombone quartet: Everyone can voice his move. 

The hallmark of the quartet’s second album is the unity, strength and rigor of their inner relationship to each other. Indeed, this cohesive force is based on a high density that has not been imposed externally by a preconceived plan, but has emerged from within. The band has decided against deliberately orienting itself to some plan – in order to keep their options open on all sides.  This decision involved taking risks. Trusting in one’s own power and not giving it a common thread could eventually result in arbitrariness and eclecticism, or a lowest common denominator. But here, four musicians act on an equal footing. Instead of neutralizing themselves in the individual, they confidently work out their common strengths. All of the songs on the album came along with their awareness they were writing them for this squad. From the beginning, they focused on the common, on the connecting elements. And the calculation pays off, completely. Although they are four individual composers, the tracks as a whole seem like a suite planned in advance in this form. On their second album, the four members of the Vertigo Trombone Quartet turn out to be masters of intuitive collective stringency. The pieces of every composer are so harmoniously integrated into the creations of the other three members that the narrative thread is elegantly passed on from one composer to the other. Unlike popular jazz, where tension must first build up until the climax is achieved, the momentum on The Good Life reveals itself from the first note, and the tension does not break at any moment.

By simultaneously accepting the limitations of their instrument and broadening the spectrum of its possibilities, the four great trombonists combine their voices to make the best of what music can be.