Written by Pat Moran
"When I have an idea, I record it with my cell phone. This can be a melody or a groove. Then I sit down at the piano and try to work out the idea. I then take the composition to the band rehearsal where we try it out together and refine it further..." - Mauro Reimann
Fitting for a tune that shares its title with the Rembrandt painting commonly called “The Night Watch,” “nachtwach" by Swiss jazz quintet muralim, deftly plays with shadings, a chiaroscuro of dark nourish mood and bright instrumentation.
After emitting a series of atonal sighs, Mauro Reimann’s saxophone builds in power amid metronomic percussion, sparks of spectral piano and silvery strands of drifting guitar.
As volume builds, the track seems to emerge from a shadowy alley into pools cast, by sodium-vapor streetlights. The saxophone pirouettes in a playful pas de deux with quizzical clarinet.
Then, after a sensual solo, Reimann’s emboldened saxophone uncurls like a cat from a nap and leaps to the forefront, bolstered by a nearly cacophonous cadre of splashy drums and sprightly guitar. After its moment in the spotlight, muralim slowly slinks back into a Gordian Knot of ticking clockwork percussion, shivery slivers of guitar and Reimann’s descending and repeated three-note figure.
“nachtwach” slowly retreats to where it began, a shadowy space much like the alleys patrolled with flickering torchlight in the titular Rembrandt painting.
Take a listen
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