On December 15th, 2017, we celebrated the last concert of the year in the cozy rooms of pianist and singer Natascha Osterkorn. Multi-instrumentalist Chris Dahlgren made his debut with his project Dhalgren at Incense of Music in Salon Dreiklang in Prenzlauer Berg and brought two extraordinary guests with him: Evi Filippou (percussion) and Claudio Puntin (clarinet). Chris was born in New York and has lived in Berlin since 2004. In his long career, he can look back on countless concerts, records and collaborations with a wide variety of artists. His double bass playing touches and enriches all facets of jazz from swing to free, from avant-garde to experimental. Chris has been playing viola da gamba since 2006, and in 2017 he released his first album as a singer and songwriter ‚Dhalgren’ on Boomslang Records. This highly eclectic musician never stops surprising, a fact he confirms again on this December evening. Claudio Puntin is a Swiss clarinetist, composer, music producer and goldsmith with Italian origins. He, too, can already boast a rich career as a full-blooded artist, peppered with worldwide appearances, prizes and records. In addition to masterly skill, his play is characterized by a natural intellectual openness. And last but not least, we again admired the Greek percussionist Evi Filippou, known to the followers of Incense of Music through several great performances.
That evening the artists played songs by Chris as well as improvisations in duo and trio formations. For the very first time, no resins, woods, leaves or flowers were burnt at one of our concerts, but essential oils were evaporated. This enabled us to use other, more delicate, less heat-resistant substances. The protagonists of the evening were two different “fruits” of the citrus family. “Petitgrain” was used in the first half, an oil obtained from the leaves, branches and unripe green fruits of bitter orange. It has an earthy, fresh and herbaceous note and has a vitalizing effect. In the second section, the unequally elegant and much more expensive neroli oil, an oil that is distilled from the flowers of the bitter orange Citrus aurantium, more rarely from the orange Citrus sinensis. According to legend, it got its name from the Sicilian princess Nerola. About a kilogram of neroli essential oil is obtained from a ton of flowers. It’s scent was sensual and aphrodisiac.