Wolfgang Haffner - Life Rhythm

Haffner may shun the virtuoso drummer / bandleader stereotype - and do so intentionally - but ‘Life Rhythm’ nonetheless has the drums at its very heart. Back in 2022, it was Wolfgang Haffner’s very first solo concert at Schloss Elmau in the Bavarian Alps which set the process in motion that has led to this album. He remembers: “That was an insane challenge. I had a decision to make: was I really going to play a drum solo... for a full hour? Of course not! So what I did was to add a lot of percussion instruments that I could use melodically, looped passages played live, I worked with reverb and delays - basically it was as if I was in the studio, but on stage.”
This has led to Haffner taking the drum kit, the instrument which has been his close companion throughout his life and re-thinking his relationship with it: whereas Haffner’s tunes normally originate from the piano, all of the tracks on ‘Life Rhythm’ have the drums as their source. The consequences of this approach can be experienced right from the start of ‘Life Rhythm’: the title track has a driving groove in which drums rather than cymbals set the pulse.