Caris
Hermes

The direction is clear. Charlotte Illinger loves tradition. Her world is the music of the divas and originals who laid the cornerstones of modern swing-bopping jazz singing in the fifties and sixties. Pieces such as “But Beautiful”, for example, a charming song oscillating between major and minor cadences, which Jimmy van Heusen originally wrote in 1947 for the Hollywood film “Road To Rio” and which was immortalized by Billie Holiday, among others, a good decade later. Or “Old Devil Moon” by Burton Lane, written in 1946 for the Broadway show “Finian's Rainbow” and discovered for jazz by the cool Miles Davis of the fifties.
Others, on the other hand, were written in French, such as Charles Trenet's “I Wish I Love”, have roots in the adult pop of Burt Bacharach, such as “A House Is Not A Home”, or are the product of the band's own song workshop. All these songs refuse the superficial, the quick effect, and aim at the possibilities of developing independent moods and colors. In doing so, Charlotte Illinger does not leave the boundaries of the harmonic and the closed, but rather opens up the dimensions of her pieces from the inner perspective of a swinging, bopping, ballad-like, sensuous world of sound.

To make this work, she teamed up with like-minded partners right at the start of her studies. At the piano of the quartet, which has existed since 2012, is Jerry Lu, multiple prizewinner of competitions such as “Jugend jazzt” and “Jugend musiziert”, who completed his bachelor's degree at the Cologne University of Music last summer and has earned a reputation as a rising force on his instrument through numerous collaborations and festival appearances in Europe. The bass is played by Caris Hermes, a student of Robert Landfermann and, in addition to her studies at the Folkwang University in Essen, has toured nationally and internationally at festivals and on concert tours.
Niklas Walter, who also ended up at the university in Essen via Dortmund and Cologne and became known through the Soulfood Organ Quartet, among other things, plays the drums. Finally, saxophonist Paul Heller is a guest soloist and sound magician in the team, who is a household name in the Cologne scene of the local jazz world.

The album “But Beautiful” is a mixture of delightfully juvenile vocals, a pleasantly sophisticated repertoire and an elegantly arranged band, making it a debut with which Charlotte Illinger can take the plunge into the shark tank of the competition.