Was nun

Curtain up, the music begins! If you had to describe the debut album “Labyrinth” of the Hanoverian band Was Nun in one word, then that would be compact. It is hard to believe that the group is actually only six musicians, because the concentrated cohesive power and phenomenal volume of the group imagine a big band rather than a sextet. The reason is quite simply that all six members were able to gain experience in larger formations and have the big band feeling in their blood. Listening to each other and communicating accordingly is part of their DNA.

The six youngsters know their strengths and build on them. And it is precisely this almost incomparable compactness in the sound that saxophonist Moritz Aring describes as a trademark of the group.

However, another factor contributes to this conceptual and playful coherence. The sextet has participated in several theatre productions at the Schlosstheater Celle and is therefore very familiar with dramaturgical arches. Not only because you used every free minute during the breaks to work on your own pieces, but because music was understood from the beginning as a staging. In addition, you inevitably spend a lot of time together in a theatre production, so that you merge as a band into a permanent unit.

As a theatre band, the group often had to assume the function of an entire orchestra and simulate various sound bodies. Form became just as crucial a component as the flexibility of the sound possibilities. So Was Nun grew into an inseparable symbiosis, which always focuses on the finished production.

From all these circumstances benefit What Now on their debut “Labyrinth”. The album unleashes its own storylines, which you can follow like a play. The music is not just played, but performed in the truest sense of the word. You are attached to something all-encompassing, which one thinks to absorb not only with the ears, but also with all the other senses. Everyone makes their contribution to the overall event without it being split into individual roles. The main actor in any case is the band as a whole.

In the association of Was Nun saxophonist Moritz Aring, trumpeter Marvin Zimmermann, trombonist Jan Frederik Schmidt, pianist Anthony Williams, bassist Marcus Lewyn and drummer Erik Mrotzek emphasize the common always more than the individual. Similar to Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, it is always about the band first and only then about the players.

Unlike Blakey and his long-term squad, however, no member of Was Nun is interchangeable, because as compact as the sound of the group is, it is made up of exactly the six voices and attitudes that the mentioned musicians bring with them.

What characterizes “Labyrinth” is the incredible professionalism of the six persuasionists, which extends in all areas of music from the concept and the game culture to the compositions and arrangements to the common play and solos. Everything is exactly in the place where it belongs, superfluous things are left out, and every musician knows one hundred percent what he has to do at any given time. There is still room for spontaneity.

Not only in the improvisations can you feel the immediate momentum of the game, but even more in the spontaneous exhilaration of the collective generation of sound, which reminds in sections of the best moments of Duke Ellington. Each member knows exactly what every other player is capable of. The mutual support of all participants drives the overall events to ever new dramaturgical highlights. Therefore, no leader in the actual sense is needed, but the collective makes all decisions by consensus.

The six boys of Was Nun stand with all twelve legs in the here and now, and yet they make no secret of their close relationship to tradition. “It’s always about knowing where you come from and then developing it further,” emphasises Moritz Aring. Of course Art Blakey plays a role for us. I still listen to the music from that time intensely, but still try to compress and stretch it and find our own sound in it.

What Now is an event, a spectacle, a thing with hand and foot, uncomplicated and yet demanding, meticulously planned and yet completely open in its effect. “We play the music that sounds good to ourselves and then we can only hope that others will like it,” says Anthony Williams. “You can’t do any more.” In our concerts there is always a good mix of students, people our age and older semesters, and everyone is equally well received because they notice that we are doing well humanely. Then it’s just as much fun playing the music as listening and watching.

In this sense, the band name Was Nun is also understood. In fact, he refers to a pub in Hanover where the six friends liked to hang out together. There is no question mark behind the logo. It is rather a defiant exclamation, an announcement in which the emphasis is on the first, not the second, word. Authenticity and passion are the A and O. A labyrinth is a place where you find yourself, a maze one where you lose yourself. "Labyrinth" is the determined debut of a band that has long since found itself and now articulates precisely what it wants.