Description

A great CD presentation by Tettero ‘Don’t Explain’

Folker: ‘We made this album in a year with almost no live music. After a long time this group came together at studio 2 in Hilversum. You can hear the fun and energy we had recording it.

This is by far the most personal album I made with Tettero. The funny thing is, all the songs are standards and not my original songs. I made the arrangements (except for Hackensack) and they fit the group very well.
Besides the great songs, I could work with a group of people I really trust and like a lot. The result is great in my opinion and I am very great full for everybody’s effort in making this new Tettero album.’

Liner notes Folker Don’t Explain:

“Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion”. Martha Graham,
These songs have been part of my life for a long time.
Some go back to my early childhood, while others came later as I started to explore my own taste in music. Somehow these songs also came to represent a significant memory of a person or an event in my life.
During the pandemic I felt a need to revisit these old songs but also to surround myself with people whom I trust and furthermore really like on a personal level.

So I got hold of the original members of the Tettero band, asked Peter Bjørnild to produce and Frans de Rond to record.
The Tettero Band goes way back. We played many nights in the legendary Jazz Cafe Alto at the start of this century: exhausting 5 hour long sets that gave us the opportunity to really play and develop our sound both as individuals and as a group.

On those nights we would mix our sets with prearranged music as well as with completely open jams. It could be a drum or bass groove getting the music going or Charlie or I would play a set of changes and we would all jump on it.

Slowly but surely the jam parts started to invade our rehearsed repertoire and we came to realize that by mixing up freedom and structure within an arrangement it was possible to get the best of both worlds. Furthermore we saw that the Saturday night crowd, which could be hard to please, responded to the new direction the music was taking with enthusiasm.
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So when we started to write the arrangements for this recording, freedom within structure became the adage.
Listening to the recording as I am writing these words, I realize that this album is probably the most personal album I have made so far, and that is puzzling me since all the songs on the album are written by others. But that’s music, it never ceases to astonish.

Besides the great songs, I could work with a group of people I really trust and like a lot. The result is great in my opinion and I am very great full for everybody’s effort in making this new Tettero album.