In Dominique Girod und Norbert Pfammatter hat Lester Menezes zwei Seelenverwandte gefunden.
Mit vereinter Sensibilität und perfektioniertem Können hauchen die drei den anspruchsvollen, pulsierenden, inspirierten Kompositionen des Bandleaders (und ab und an auch Stücken von Dritten) glanzvolles Leben ein, kreieren in schönster Interaktion ein faszinierendes kontemporäres Klangbild, das von Lester Menezes’ präzisem, ausdrucksmächtigem und ideensprudelndem Spiel geprägt ist.

                                      Bird`s Eye Jazzclub, Basel, Mai 2013

24.09.09
Thirty-three year-old Switzerland native and saxophonist Reto Suhner has spent time as a student of New York-based jazz artists like Dick Oatts, Billy Drewes and Rich Perry. Suhner has performed with the Zurich Jazz Orchestra, Herbie Kopfs U.F.O., the Adrian Frey Septet, forward-thinking jazz trumpeter Markus Stockhausen and the Swiss Jazz Orchestra, among others. Suhner’s quartet includes Bombay-born and originally classically-trained pianist Lester Menezes. A graduate of the Trinity College of Music in London and the Berklee College of Music in Boston, he currently teaches jazz at the Music Academy in Basel. Bassist Fabian Gisler studied at the Jazz Swiss in Bern and has performed with jazz luminaries including with Kurt Rosenwinkel, Garry Smulyan and Philip Catherine. Zurich-born drummer Dominik Burkhalter studied at the Jazz School in Lucerne and has performed with Billy Cobham, Christy Doran’s New Bag and Dana Briant, among others.

While young jazz musicians in the United States spend an inordinate amount of time involved in learning jazz patterns and prescribed methods of soloing, many of the truly creative and communicative musicians, the essence of what jazz should be, are today coming from Europe. Their love of the spirit of ensemble interplay, as perhaps best defined in the work of saxophonist Evan Parker, can be found thriving in Suhner’s ensemble. The best way to describe this group is to think of them as four musicians who are all highly involved and intrinsically motivated to create music that moves of its own and by its own standards. The result is music that is truly both free and linked to the chordal harmonic tradition of artists like Bird, Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter. Their shared single minded “group think” concept plays out brilliantly throughout the concert.

This live recording, from a 2008 concert in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, opens with one of Suhner’s compositions, “Room/Schwäne In Weltall.” Throughout the almost 17 minute presentation tempos fluctuate, rhythmic motives wave and rebound around the group, each member takes their own turn in lead, and accompaniment roles shift colors and dance with subtle joy. After a hauntingly beautiful piano introduction by Menezes the ensemble enters with a minimalistic repeated note foray that slowly morphs into a style reminiscent of Eric Dolphy’s early ballad work. Suhner’s sax not only imparts a stark and open landscape, but also touches on a few extended saxophone techniques that brilliantly balance the starkness of the ensemble’s opening passage. From there on each member adds to the fire their own reflexive motivic touches picked up through group interplay. Dynamic extremes are both gradually arrived at and dispersed, with lightness of being the central focus.

“The Fourth Uneasy Piece,” a Lester Menezes composition, opens similarly but this time with an unaccompanied bass solo. So delicate is Menezes’ touch you almost don’t notice he’s entered the piece’s space until well into Suhner’s freely slow cadenza that is so captivatingly accompanied by both Menezes and Gisler one cannot truly index where one musician begins and another ends. Freely and eventually, upon the entrance of Burkhalter, the ensemble turns their sound around and Menezes becomes the dominant voice with the other musicians following his lead. The intricateness and swift beauty of this ensemble’s timbral palette, along with their ablility to change the direction of their compositions and free-jazz mind speak on a dime, is almost beyond belief.

The rest of the recording is similarly brilliant, stunning and yet understated and unobtrusive all at once; the band even takes a turn melding Monk’s and Steve Lacy’s world in Menezes’ composition “CS.” Would that more American musicians focused on line, texture and shades of musical dialogue like these four, jazz might have a vaulted position in American culture.

Jazzreview, Thomas R.Erdmann

20.07.09
Jeune saxophoniste originaire de Suisse alémanique et promis à l’excellence, Reto Suhner s’est déjà taillé une belle réputation de l’autre côté des Alpes. Il est encore peu visible chez nous, mais on espère que son quartet sera bientôt reconnu à sa juste valeur. Cet album public enregistré par la radio suisse DRS2 au festival de Schaffhausen en 2006 — le quatrième enregistrement de Reto Suhner pour le label Altrisuoni — est une belle démontration des qualités du quartet, tant vantées par la presse.

Les compositions sont toutes signées de Reto Suhner et de son pianiste, Lester Menezes. On pourrait presque dire que le groupe a deux leaders tant ils développent ensemble les thèmes et leurs ramifications harmoniques complexes. C’est le pianiste qui ouvre en solo le premier titre, « Schwäne im Weltall », par des accords amples et des arpèges impressionnistes. Le style ici fait la part belle aux glissements, aux lentes progressions harmoniques, à la patiente transformation de la musique : c’est à peine si on peut parler d’exposition du thème par le saxophone - quatre notes rauques répétées qui constituent le pic d’intensité du morceau. Ainsi fonctionne le quartet de Reto Suhner : en décrivant des cercles concentriques mi-écrits, mi-improvisés afin d’approcher le point nodal en intensifiant peu à peu le jeu collectif, en transformant un calme impressionniste en tempête expressive.

Ce goût du glissement progressif, le quartet l’affirme encore via des transitions naturelles entre les titres. Les quatre premiers s’enchaînent, tantôt à la faveur d’un solo de contrebasse, tantôt pendant quelques passes de batterie. Le dernier morceau — exceptionnel « Urs Has Plans », isolé des autres —, n’en ressort que plus nettement avec ses longues phrases de saxophone tissées dans les arpèges du piano qui, pour être discret, il n’est pas moins le pilier secret de la formation. Anecdote révélatrice mentionnée par le dossier de presse : à la fin de la pièce les spectateurs se retiennent d’applaudir pendant un bref moment. Puis, sortant de leur hébétude, ils acclament bruyamment les musiciens, dont le visage exprime une joie intense. Sur le disque, on n’entend que ces vivats enthousiastes, mais l’auditeur sourit de joie lui aussi en songeant que ces salves sont décidément méritées. Elles expriment tout le bien qu’il faut penser de ce disque. Un grand bravo, donc !

Mathias Kusnierz, Citizen Jazz