Thomas Heberer – trumpet
Aki Takase – piano
Joe Fonda – bass, flute
Joe Hertenstein – drums, percussion
Recorded April 2, 2024, at Jazzanova Recording Studio, Berlin, Germany
Engineered by José Torelli
Edited by Thomas Heberer, May 2024, NYC, NY
Mixed & mastered by Jon Rosenberg, May 2024, Brooklyn, NY
This is REMEDY’s fourth album on FSR after our self-titled debut in 2021, Vol. 2 in 2023, and Hipp Hipp Hooray in early 2025.
On the last recording, we celebrated trailblazing pianist of the past Jutta Hipp. This time around, we invited trailblazing pianist of the present Aki Takase to join forces with us.
Aki, born in Osaka, Japan, in 1948, is one of the leading jazz artists of her generation, touring and recording worldwide for nearly five decades. Living in Berlin since the late 1980s, she has received numerous awards for her music, including the Albert Mangelsdorff Prize in 2021.
Aki and I met in 1988 in the Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra (BCJO), co-led by her and future husband Alexander von Schlippenbach. Over the years, we played as a duo and with
various trio partners, Nobuyoshi Ino and Maria João among them.
I had the honor to be part of her “Fats Waller” project, which won the German Record Critics Award for Jazz Album of the Year in 2004. We toured Japan twice, first in 1996 in a special edition of the BCJO, and again in 2014, when Aki joined the ICP Orchestra as a guest.
On November 9, 1989, we shared a world-changing event when the Berlin Wall came down. Aki and I were performing a string of concerts behind the so-called iron curtain in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) with saxophonist Paul van Kemenade. Arriving in East Berlin on the fourth, we could already feel the revolutionary spirit at a demonstration of one million people on Alexanderplatz. Then, on the ninth, we watched the authorities open the border, and early the
next day, we witnessed the East Germans line up in pairs for miles to cross into West Berlin. To experience firsthand what a people united can achieve was deeply touching and created a bond between Aki and me that holds to this day.
Fast forward to 2024: REMEDY had a dozen concerts scheduled for Germany and Belgium. Prior to the tou....... more