Max.bab
Music is Love
This formation from the south of Munich is a small miracle: Since its formation more than 10 years ago, the former school band has developed into one of the most outstanding young German jazz bands. A great success story: over four hundred concerts, including performances with Charlie Mariano, Wolfgang Muthspiel and David Friedman, guest appearances at festivals such as JazzBaltica and the Montreal Jazz Festival - and seven CDs under their own name.
With his current album "Wild Pitch" Max.bab defines his own tonality: Here four musicians interact who have been moving musically together since childhood. Beyond any hippness posturing and soloistic showing off, they always play their pieces with a focus on the overall sound, on balancing the forces.
A unique musical encounter between four young musicians from the south of Munich celebrated its tenth anniversary last year. It's a small miracle: a band that was born out of school friendships and whose members spread out over several continents during their studies has managed to stay together, grow together musically over the years and inspire an ever-widening audience. "The total flash... Jazz at world level" writes the SZ enthusiastically and indeed max.bab can look back on a great success story: five albums under their own name, more than four hundred concerts, numerous radio recordings, performances with renowned musicians such as Charlie Mariano, Wolfgang Muthspiel and David Friedman, concerts at the Montreal Jazz Festival and the JazzBaltica Festival...
But it is not the professionalism of the band alone that captivates its listeners. It is the obvious impression that four friends are at work here, who have found a unique way of musical understanding in many years of making music together.
About their music Klenkes magazine writes: "max.bab: They are young and you can hear that, they let their virtuosity flow, they don't just limit themselves to their perfect craft, but use it as a vocabulary to tell beautiful stories. Musical stories in whose melodies you can lose yourself and fall in love, where at the beginning of each of the compositions you don't know where they will take you at the end. Is this still jazz? Yes it is! But also classical and pop and soul and ... basically just a great piece of music"
"Entrancing to the last breath", SZ January 2006
Order at mail@benejahnel.de
Listen to a sampler at Music
Watch a video at Video
Max.bab: 'Wild Pitch' CD + Songbook
Order CD and songbook at mail@benejahnel.de
Listen to a sampler at Music
Find the songbook at Scores
Max.bab: 'Laws ofd Motion' CD + Songbook
COrder CD and songbook at mail@benejahnel.de
Listen to a sampler at Music
Find the songbook at Scores
Complete discography and scores:
Check all other recordings of Max.bab at Discography
Find all other songbooks and more scores of Max.bab at Scores
Listen to more music of Max.bab at Music
Seclected press clips:
" Max.bab has never been at a loss for surprises, but their placement proves to be ever more precise and, above all, optimally staged from the gut. (Max.bab) draws less from adding than from taking away what is not necessary in persuasiveness. The enthusiasm of the audience once again confirmed the good path that Max.bab continues to follow.."
Reinhard Palmer, SZ, 25.02.19
" Almost every musical maturation process leads to a certain calming down, to more clarity and transparency. This is undoubtedly also true for Max.bab. And the simpler the themes, the more expressively the band stages them."
Reinhard Palmer, bosco-gauting.de, 25.02.19
" ... For minutes you drift along on the created sound carpet, immersed in a unique jazz world from which you don't want to emerge again. Their technical brilliance is inspiring, as is their own style and their perfect interplay. This is really great and fascinating to listen to."
N. Daebel, Merkur, 04.05.14
" ... multi-layered harmonies over rhythmically filigree scaffolding, shimmering sounds like on wet asphalt, on which the night lights are reflected .... (that) the four exceptional talents have an unheard-of fun in playing together and experimenting, could be heard (...) clearly."
K. Koestler, Merkur, 13.02.12
" The music (...) leads into spheres from which one views things somewhat more fundamentally (...), not a word too much, not a gesture put on, there is everything in its place even in the freest outburst."
M. Reitinger, Weilheimer Tagblatt, 13.02.12
" With max.bab it was and is not about the usual alternating frame for boastful solos, here a musical organism was always in the foreground (..), max.bab has reached the phase of sovereignty."
O. Hochkeppel, SZ, 28.12.11
" ... max.bab ..., the quartet from Geretsried and Gauting, which was proclaimed the great German jazz hope a decade ago - and has lived up to this claim."
SZ, 13.01.11
" ... Music that lovers of young German jazz have long been unable to ignore.... what has been composed and is being played is chamber music in the best sense of the word.."
Landsberger Tagblatt, 15.01.10
" Jahnel's limb glides insistently over the keys of the keyboard. Von Mosch's lips delicately touch the mouthpiece of his saxophone, reflecting the Gautinger's palpable excitement in each of his notes. Gently, Schäfer plucks at the strings of his big brown. Sexy also the drummer, in high heels he turns the stage into a real bonfire."
P. Schneider, Neueste Nachrichten, 09.05.13
" A sound and performance experience, not musically detached and extravagant jazz, but an independent, likeable and equally fresh and self-confident jazz that resonated with the audience."
hallertau.info, 04.05.2013
" You can't get enough of hearing it."
D. Fleege, Müncher Merkur, 07.05.13
