Bassist Petros Klampanis, based both in his native Athens, Greece and also New York, has earned acclaim as \u201ca formidable player and composer\u201d (JazzTimes) and \u201ca musician who has always spoken from the heart\u201d (Downbeat). Irrationalities, his fourth outing as a leader, his second crowdfunded album (after Minor Dispute), his first ever with a trio and his first release for the storied German label Enja, speaks to his persistent reality of living across two cultures, of \u201cbeing up in the air all the time,\u201d as he describes it.<\/p>\n
Citing Italo Calvino\u2019s 1972 novel Invisible Cities, specifically a passage about cities being \u201cmade of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret,\u201d Klampanis sets out with Irrationalities to capture the feeling of \u201cliving in an imaginary city that combines Greek and European culture and New York culture.\u201d With this comes a struggle \u201cbetween certainty and uncertainty,\u201d Klampanis adds, \u201cbetween having a structure and at the same time breaking free of structure, being open, discovering life. Traveling has been a big part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a life that can feel unmoored at times, Klampanis\u2019 trio with pianist Kristjan Randalu and drummer\/percussionist Bodek Janke provides all the anchoring solidity he could ever need. \u201cI feel that I discovered my musical family with these two musicians,\u201d the bassist says. Of Estonian and Polish descent respectively, Randalu and Janke met as 10-year-olds growing up in small-town Germany and have been musical brothers ever since, recording in duet as Grupa Janke Randalu (Live, 2008). Randalu has distinguished himself on ECM recordings as a leader (with Ben Monder and Markku Ounaskari) and with Trygve Seim. \u201cKristjan is so solid,\u201d Klampanis marvels. \u201cIf I just painted on a staff he would play that. He can read everything. Bodek is influenced by Indian and Brazilian music but with strong jazz foundations, and also classically trained. He plays a mixed drum set and also plays tabla, combining all these different elements.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shifting from the larger, string-based ensemble sound of his previous albums Chroma and Minor Dispute (a chamber-group focus that also played a big role in his 2011 Inner Circle debut Contextual), Klampanis devotes Irrationalities to his strong and highly evolved trio concept. Still, all the nuance and complexity of his string writing enters into the trio\u2019s language as well: \u201cArranging is a huge part of what I do, and I think that\u2019s the special thing about the trio: there\u2019s a lot of thought about choice of registers, orchestration, rhythm \u2014 a lot of decisions and details, not only for the main melodies but also the improvised sections. I try to explore everything I developed working with strings and incorporate it into this musical vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Petros Klampanis \u2013 bass; Kristjan Randalu \u2013 piano; Bodek Janke – drums<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":895,"template":"","meta":[],"class_list":["post-877","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","product_cat-new-releases","product_cat-jazz","product_cat-world","product_tag-petros-klampanis","first","instock","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enjarecords.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enjarecords.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enjarecords.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enjarecords.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enjarecords.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}