Max Frankl

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"Max Frankl gehört ohne Frage zu den „Rising Stars“ der jungen deutschen Szene".(Jazzclub Unterfahrt München) Der mehrfach preisgekrönte Gitarrist aus Weilheim absolvierte mit dem „Bundesjazzorchester“ unter der Leitung von Peter Herbolzheimer Tourneen durch Deutschland und die Ukraine, studierte bei den Gitarrenstars Wolfgang Muthspiel und Kurt Rosenwinkel und wird in Kürze in der Reihe "JazzThing Next Generation" seinen zweiten Longplayer vorlegen, für den er seine absolute Wunschformation, das „Max Frankl Quintet“, zusammengetrommelt hat. Mit Wolfgang Muthspiel hat er für diese CD einen fantastischen Produzenten gewinnen können, der den Sound der Band so beschreibt: „In der Musik des jungen Gitarristen Max Frankl geht es in erster Linie um den Ensembleklang. Dieser beginnt mit einer sehr sorgfältigen Auswahl der Mitmusiker. Frankl zeigt eine Umsicht bezüglich der Gesamtbalance, die man in diesem Alter selten antrifft. Alles atmet, alle Protagonisten haben Platz, alles fügt sich organisch dem Gesamtklang ein. Nahezu das komplette Programm stammt aus seiner Feder. Es sind Stücke die genau ausgehört sind und spezifische Räume bauen, in denen sich die Improvisatoren bewegen können, quasi sanft geleitet durch die Komposition. Der Sound, den Max Frankl am Instrument erzeugt ist tief getränkt vom Jazz. Die Kompositionen hingegen öffnen Fenster in andere Welten. Hier macht sich jemand auf eine lange Reise und wir dürfen zuhören.“(Wolfgang Muthspiel)
The first "one"
By Alexander Schmitz
The Big Apple - that’s where he’s heading. And although he has enjoyed a good solid musical education, he is sure that “learning jazz at college has its limits. I think it’s better to learn by doing." To discover the world and to play for it: that’s the goal of Max Frankl, 23 years of age. His first CD "Frankzone 1 [Mons Records MR 874 389] was released in September. The Title "1" is a signal: "I’m still at the start of my career but I know exactly where it’s going". When listening to "Frankzone 1", one can see that this young man knows what he wants. He has what it takes - and a bag full of references, too. "Frankzone" is also the name of his group, which includes himself on guitar, drummer Peter Gall, bassist Benny Schäfer, Andrea Hermenau on piano, Magnus Schriefl on trumpet & flugelhorn and the distinguished guest Johannes Enders - saxophonist, as well as a friend, teacher and promoter of Frankl - participating on 5 out of 9 tracks , a real accolade for Max. Nevertheless, as the young man from Weilheim says in a newspaper interview: "I wasn’t a shooting star, on the contrary!”At the age of 12 he took classical guitar lessons: it was a big band concert that impressed him but he needed a foundation first. Fortunate to have parents who liked jazz, he obtained an electric guitar, an all-purpose ES-335, and ended his classical period by joining the school big band. Playing the guitar was quite a challenge at first, Max says, but from ninth grade on he progressed a lot technically. Even so, it was still “Guns’n Roses, “Nirvana” and similar juvenile power rockers that bewitched the developing youngster. He still stretched the limit of his distortion sound in various rock bands in the region, but finally he was chosen for the Jazz Youth Orchestra of Bavaria where he played in the concert line-up for three years. When he was in his last year of high school with final exams ahead, he won the youth jazz competition of Bavaria and “went through to the next round”, as one newspaper article put it. Max and his band won one of four main prizes in the nationwide competition of “Jugend Jazzt 2003” – a CD production. In September 2004 the band recorded the CD in the Deutschlandfunk Studio in Bonn, one year later “Frankzone 1” was released.Johannes Enders was the idol and guardian angel of this young guitar player. Enders arranged private lessons for his protégé with no less than Wolfgang Muthspiel, his “second idol” – Frankl being just one of four students. At this time, 2003/2004, Max was still studying at the renowned Academy of Music in Amsterdam. He then changed to the Music Academy of Basel where he gave lessons himself from May to July 2005. And as if he were still under-worked, he participated in workshops by Pat Metheny, Joe Lovano and Lee Konitz.So he is already well on his way - fully committed to music. Everything else has to take a back seat, as he says. He has performed at the Baltic Sea Jazz Festival and Off Beat Festival in his student residence in Basel, he has played with Emil Mangelsdorff, Lee Konitz, Bruno de Filippi, Henning Sieverts, Thomas Stabenow, Herman Breuer, Harald Rüschenbaum and many more. He has played jazz in various TV productions and won the soloist prize of the “Jugend Jazzt” competition of Bavaria in 2002. Since early 2005 he has also been part of Peter Herbolzheimer’s National Youth Jazz Orchestra.And now “Frankzone 1” is here and it really deserves top marks: he sounds like somebody who is going right down the path which was made for him. All the way to the top - to the Olympus of modern jazz guitarists.
For 35 years the unremitting journalist Alexander Schmitz has almost been omnipresent when it comes to “jazz guitar” or “jazz guitarists”. He writes for “Jazzpodium” and is Germany’s correspondent for the American magazine “Just Jazz Guitar”. His book “Jazz guitarists” is the German benchmark on this subject and became very well known after its release.