Germany’s premiere jazz bassist Dieter Ilg has instigated several creative projects, in which he has taken the great composers of Western classical music off in new directions. Here, alongside pianist Rainer Böhm and drummer Patrice Héral, his focus turns to Ravel.

It was the 1899 piano piece, ‘Pavane pour une infante défunte’ (pavane for a dead Infanta)’ which first spurred Ilg’s interest in the French ‘maître’. Ilg had been fascinated many years ago by the version with Jim Hall and Art Farmer: “When I was looking for a new source of inspiration for my trio, the memory of this piece came back to me. We delved deeper into Ravel’s oeuvre and found a wide range of interpretative approaches that are not to be encountered in Beethoven or Bach. His music is tailor- made for us!”

Perhaps it is not surprising that Ilg should be drawn to Maurice Ravel, given that the bassist’s artistic approach is in its essence impressionistic. Claude Monet once said about his paintings: “I’m interested in what happens between me and the object.” This is equally true for Ilg’s creative process, because the musical templates act as the trigger for his own feelings, which he then processes into new sounds: “I don’t work according to any plan, I don’t want to just reproduce anything, but rather to create something of my own which keeps the masters in mind.”

Ilg’s only requirement is that pieces should “jump out at him,” as he describes it. The precise means by which that initial impulse happens is always left open: it might be a melody, a rhythmic figure, a chord progression or even a mood that creates the attraction. “Listen and decide in the moment” is Ilg’s motto for the process of composing, and even more so when it comes to the improvisations with the trio, when the act of creation takes place in real time.