Peter Lehel Quartet // Paul Auster Jazz

For the Peter Lehel Quartet's new program, saxophonist, composer and arranger Peter Lehel draws inspiration from the novels, stories and characters from Paul Auster's rich ouevre.

Paul Auster, who died in 2024, was a bestselling author in the USA and a cult author in Europe. With his powerful language and sophisticated thought processes, he struck a chord with postmodernism.
He made his breakthrough in the mid-1980s with his "New York Trilogy". He wrote experimental crime stories, such as "City of Glass", which - with ingenious twists - lead to ambivalence and complex existential questions.

"When writing, he was completely blind and floating. At the beginning, he has a fairly precise idea of the book, but then surprising things happen, and in the end it results in a completely different book," Paul Auster once said.The grandson of Jewish immigrants from Galicia lived for a few years as a bohemian in Paris, where he met Samuel Beckett, but was actually at home in New York, in Brooklyn, which he also immortalized in films such as "Smoke".

In almost all of Auster's novels, there are cross-references within his entire oeuvre. The author himself sees his books as parts of the same map. Certain characters appear several times or are related to each other.

In all these facets there are analogies to Peter Lehel's approach to music, his reminiscence of Paul Auster:

Self-reflection on his own musical identity
Cross-references to his own musical work, both in improvisation and composition
Exploring surprising twists and turns
Approaching existential questions
Since the mid-1990s, Peter Lehel has led a quartet that has been constantly evolving through continuous work with a long-lasting line-up and a busy concert schedule on almost every continent. This has resulted in over 20 CDs and programs of the most diverse character.

Initially it was jazz history, especially the modal jazz of the classic John Coltrane Quartet, which influenced the sound of the Peter Lehel Quartet, but later elements of groove jazz, classical influences of chamber jazz and Hungarian folk music around Béla Bartók were added.

The Peter Lehel Quartet regularly brings in guests from classical music, world music and jazz to broaden the spectrum.

Line-up: Peter Lehel (sax, comp); Ull Möck (p); Dirk Blümlein (b); Jakob Dinnebier (dr).