“I keep thinking about how to lead a band from the drums in a way that gives the instrument a central role, but one which is more about shaping the music than displaying virtuosity,” says Wolfgang Haffner. This way of working, a common thread throughout his career, is a key factor in ‘Life Rhythm’, his tenth album for ACT. 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. Each of the eleven highly concentrated, song-like pieces on ‘Life Rhythm’ open up its own world of particularly musical drumming: ‘Balance’ has some gentle brushwork; in ‘Joy of Life’ it is a cymbal groove; for ‘Eternity’ there is the subtle use of electronics; and in ‘Silence and Sound’ less is definitely more. There is a reason why Haffner is able to transform this wide range of styles into a coherent whole, and that is because of quite how much of his career has been spent playing directly alongside the shapers of the music, Al Jarreau, Chaka Khan, Pat Metheny, Jan Garbarek, Esbjörn Svensson, Albert Mangelsdorff and many, many more. All of these collaborations have shaped Wolfgang Haffner’s vocabulary on the instrument and his personality and individuality as a composer. Haffner also welcomes some unique musical personalities to bring their own highly individual colours to the band: Nils Landgren has been a good friend and touring colleague for more than 20 years. Also appearing are saxophone icon Bill Evans, Sting’s guitarist Dominic Miller, Balkan beat star Shantel, the refined bassist Nicolas Fiszman, oud virtuoso Thomas Konstantinou and Bruno Müller, one of the finest of German jazz guitarists.