SingleRelease date:
31.07.2020
Clemens Christian Poetzsch, Sven Helbig
A Tear
Musicians Clemens Christian Poetzsch and Sven Helbig had known each other for years. They met in 2008 at Dresden’s conservatory, where Helbig taught drums and Poetzsch studied the piano. Soon enough they would be playing in the same Jazz trio, jamming to Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus every Sunday at the city’s famous Blue Note club. But following their years in Dresden, the two lost touch. For ten years both would go their separate ways pursuing their distinct musical identities; Helbig delving deeper into orchestra and genre blurring music and Poetzsch developing his solo piano work. That was until 2019, when Helbig decided to invite his old jazz mate onboard a special project, “For a very long time I thought about the right interpreter for my music, and with Clemens I found the ideal combination of technical skills, feel for sound and musical background,” he explains, “We both share a passion for the extravaganzas of the piano gods, but also for the unique aesthetics that jazz pianists bring to the instrument, and we can also get lost in electronic music from the ambient and experimental world.”
Clemens Christian Poetzsch
During his childhood in Dresden, Poetzsch received his first piano lessons from his grandfather, an opera singer, and immediately immersed himself in the worlds of Bach, Schubert and Clementis. Then, at the age of ten, a birthday present from his brother: a music book with Frank Sinatra standards that opened his ears to more extensive musical possibilities. Poetzsch soon played in the bar of the neighbouring house, improvising and throwing song structures over and over again.
These were formative experiences that accompanied Poetzsch throughout his classical music education at the Hochschule für Musik in Dresden. During his piano and composition studies he spent his free time playing in jazz and free improvisation bands with friends and colleagues. He gave concerts, went on tour, discovered electronic music and absorbed all knowledge like a sponge. "I really like playing Bach and all the big ones," he says, "but from the beginning I just liked writing music myself and making my own songs. Playing in the orchestra or in big bands never really interested me".
And so what started as pure pleasure and the need to "find environments where I can surprise myself" became an ever-increasing influence on his music. "There never was a real plan," Poetzsch explains, "but I found that when I stepped away from all the sheet music and tried to find something for myself, it became my little language, and my voice and composition style really developed out of all of that."
Photo: Sandra LudewigMore releases
Sven Helbig
His debut "Pocket Symphonies" was released on the traditional Deutsche Grammophon label followed by his choral work "I Eat the Sun and Drink the Rain" on the Neue Meister label. Sven Helbig is a co-founder of the Dresden Symphony Orchestra, the first European orchestra devoted solely to the performance of contemporary music. Sven looks back on may years of creative collaboration with the Fauré Quartet, the opera singer René Pape, the conductor Kristjan Järvi, the Pet Shop Boys and the cult rock band Rammstein.
