Susanne Ortner Trio:
Last Stop Sehnsucht – Acoustifying music from disparate traditions

Susanne Ortner – clarinets/saxophones
Nahum Zdybel – guitar
James Singleton – bass

Driven by an “addictive yearning” for deep connection this stellar trio, led by German born reed player Susanne Ortner, explores often overlooked 20th century repertoire from disparate traditions in an inside/outside kind of way – and with great sensitivity, communication, and fire. Nasty-silky-good.

New Orleans based German clarinetist, saxophonist, and composer Susanne Ortner is equally conversant in jazz, classical music, and various ethnic musics.
The German Newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine states that she is “a musician par excellence, capable of moving you deeply“.
Her desire to find the similar in the different has lead to the exploration of a myriad of musical traditions, as well as to collaborations and international concert tours with numerous outstanding musicians – mostly in the intimate duo or trio format - such as Belgium Gypsy icon Tcha Limberger, accordionist/pianist Alan Bern, 1. Concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonics Noah Bendix-Balgley, multi-instrumentalist Vince Giordano, pianist Tom Roberts and many others.
She is the subject of the book “Living the Dream” – Für die Musik nach Amerika” (Wissner Verlag Augsburg, 2011), written by German Television journalist Helge Fuhst.

Nahum Thelonious Zdybel is a New Orleans-based guitarist, improviser and composer restlessly shifting roles between innovative explorer of improvised musics, creative indie rock sideman, and ardent revivalist of early jazz styles and repertoire. Attracted to musical settings that are intimate and sincere, Nahum deploys a playful, hyper-sensitive approach to re-imagine material from disparate musical traditions as baffling combustions of spontaneity and subtle cleverness. Correspondingly at home amongst jazz tunes, free improvisations, original works, and early 20th-century american music, Nahum is an inventive improviser who regards with equal fondness and irreverence his relationship with early jazz, hardcore punk, and unstructured improvisation.

Composer/Double bassist/bandleader James Singleton has been ubiquitous on the New Orleans music scene for more than 40 years. He has performed, toured, and recorded in many styles from the earliest New Orleans traditions to R'n'B, Blues, all imagined types of jazz to punk rock and the avant-garde. The New Orleans traditions he most adheres to are invention, making it new, and making it deep.