My Animals [3:54]
Aufm Dorf Und Inner Stadt [3:46]
Walking [3:31]
Deutsch [4:04]
Do the Rumba [3:22]
Mann und Mann [4:19]
Just A Little Me [3:35]
Waiting For You [2:55]
Being Lonely [3:24]
Be My Toy, Be My Joy [3:57]
Matthew [3:40]
Im Winter [3:12]
Apple Pie Queen [3:55]
Watersong [3:34]
Michael Schiefel (vocals)
Rec. March 2006, Traumton Studio, Berlin.
Michael Schiefel has something
of a cult following in his native Germany
– and has also toured abroad quite extensively,
often under the aegis of the Goethe Institute.
Born in Münster in 1970, he has been
working as a professional singer since the
early 1990s. In 2001 he was made Professor
of Vocal Jazz at the Franz Liszt Conservatory
in Weimar. He sometimes works in relatively
orthodox jazz settings, but he has attracted
most attention with his solo albums, such
as Invisible Loop (1997; Traumton CD
4426) and I Don’t Belong (2000;Traumton
CD 4433). With reference to both these earlier
CDs – and to the one now under review – ‘solo’
means just that; no other musicians are involved.
Schiefel has a voice of extraordinary
range and tonal variety; he can be convincing
in both the soprano and baritone ranges; his
voice has more than once been described as
androgynous and certainly there are times
when, without knowing otherwise, one would
assume that the voice heard belonged to a
woman. On this CD his voice is fed through
a loop machine and subjected to other kinds
of electronic manipulation, with the use of
flangers, octavers, echo machines etc.; what
sounds like an instrumental accompaniment
is all vocally produced.
The results are decidedly
odd – and intriguing. There is layer upon
layer of sound, though with a solo voice foregrounded
most of the time. Even if there are sometimes
echoes of other vocalists, and even if one
is tempted to make comparisons with Bobby
McFerrin, for the most part Schiefel is a
true original.
Judgement of jazz singers
is peculiarly subjective (more than is generally
the case with instrumentalists). Indeed, even
a basic attempt to define the species of jazz
vocalist, or to circumscribe the act of jazz
singing, is an exercise fraught with serious
difficulties. I’d guess that not all that
Schiefel does on this CD would fall within
most definitions of jazz singing. But perhaps
that isn’t of any great significance. More
important is the question of how satisfying
one finds what he does, whatever one calls
it. For my tastes, his work here is too often
lacking in real emotional content. There’s
a cleverness and knowingness, almost an excess
of sophistication, which somehow acts largely
– and probably not deliberately – to draw
attention to the virtuosity of the how
and away from the what of the singing.
No doubt I am all too likely to make such
a judgement because several of the tracks
are sung in German (no texts and translations
are provided), and I can make only limited
sense of them. But even when I do understand
the English words of the other tracks, my
reaction is much the same. It is as if Schiefel
is inhibitingly aware of how clever, how virtuosic,
his work is. Vocally there is a kind of self-admiring
(I don’t accuse Schiefel of the same fault
in terms of personality) which approaches
archness, and which limits the impact of his
work.
For all my reservations,
there is much to enjoy here, both in terms
of Schiefel’s dazzling vocal technique and
in terms of the moments of tenderness and
brashness, of inventiveness and humour, which
characterise his very considerable talent.
There is much that is striking, and the CD
certainly deserves a hearing. Given the notorious
subjectivity of taste where jazz vocalists
are concerned (after all, there are those
who prefer Dinah Washington to Billie Holiday),
other listeners may not share my qualms.
Glyn Pursglove
CD Reviews
ACT 9711-2 [51:20] 
