Heinz Becker (trumpet, flugelhorn), Manfred Hering (alto- & tenor saxophone), Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (soprano- & alto saxophone, clarinet), Iri Antonow (tenor saxophone on 'Unter anderem: 'N Tango für Gitti), Helmut Forsthoff (tenor saxophone on 'Echos vom Karolinenhof'), Conrad Bauer (trombone), Ulrich Gumpert (piano), Klaus Koch (double bass), Günter 'Baby' Sommer (drums)
Unter anderem: 'N Tango für Gitti - recorded on July 14,1978 at Rundfunk der DDR, Berlin (East)
Echos von Karolinenhof - recorded live on March 1, 2 & 4,1979 during Workshop Freie Musik at Akademie der Künste, Berlin (East)
When you listen to the recordings of this band, you'll hear dancing to the sound of free jazz and jazz played to the sound of marches. Some of the pieces start as a vague memory of what you've heard before, or with a clear blue sky in C. The musicians improvise over various sound layers or parade along to the rhythm of the waltz. There's happy endings, fallacies, question marks, parodies and subtle bewilderment. And there's lots of vigorous free jazz. Two aspects are typical of Ulrich Gumpert's work: stubbornness and team spirit. Gumpert is a maverick with a talent to unite like-minded nonconformists in a group or in a great band. Pointing the way, Gumpert once told Bert Noglik: 'I think in these parts you can't simply go about copying the works of American musicians. Sure you can do it, but it doesn't make sense (except of making some money, maybe). It's important that we reflect about our traditions 'cause we're carrying them around like a backpack anyway.' And finally he added that often-quoted remark about the material's eruption in free play: 'After that experience, we'll definitely have to return to more substantial forms. You can't just get rid of one thing, you must also create something new - that's a revolutionary principle.' Their musical manifesto 'Aus teutschen Landen' was recorded in 1972 and published five years later under the title 'Retrospektive' by the East Berlin-based record label Amiga. In 1977, Gumpert reformed the band to include eight hand-picked musicians, each of them a one-of-a-kind soloist. The following year, they recorded their album Unter anderem: 'n Tango für Gitti at the state-owned GDR broadcasting station in East Berlin. The album was published by the West Berlin-based label Free Music Production (FMP), but it wasn't released in the GDR. After lengthy and stubborn negotiations with GDR government institutions, FMP producer Jost Gebers managed to thaw the icy East- West relations to a degree. As a result, the Workshop Band's follow-up album Echos von Karolinenhof - recorded in March 1979 at the West Berlin Workshop Freie Musik (Free Music Workshop) and co-produced by FMP and Amiga - was released in both East and West Germany; in the GDR, it was simply titled Ulrich Gumpert Workshop Band. Ekkehard Jost described some pieces of the band's repertories as 'disrespectful hymns'. In this music, nostalgia and desertion might exist side by side: at times, the band will initially present familiar-sounding material as a tradition that they cherish or treat with irony, only to tear it to pieces and blow it away. Quite often their return to melodic and familiar themes comes as a relief from excessive excursions into abstract free jazz. The band's instinct for a dramatically varied 'composition' of different elements may well be their formula for success.