Rebecca Trescher Quartet

Rebecca Trescher has mastered a great art: the ability to create dense musical textures while always maintaining a sense of transparency. Whether she has nine musicians at her disposal or only three is completely irrelevant – Trescher is able to make any ensemble she works with sound far larger than it actually is. Tentet, quartet? These are just numbers on a page. 

In her quartet with pianist Andreas Feith, bassist Lukas Keller, and drummer Jan Brill, Rebecca Trescher creates a soundscape of almost orchestral dimensions with a fascinating interplay of textures, voice leading, and role switching. One reason this is possible is because Trescher, born in Tübingen and based in Nuremberg and Berlin, does not allow herself to be distracted by rules, principles, or conventional formal idioms. She follows her own impulses and ideas: translating impressions, observations, inspirations, and emotions both large and small into music that stirs the imaginations of her listeners, who sometimes find themselves in a “magic garden”, which is actually the title of one of her pieces. 

As a performing member of her quartet, Rebecca Trescher has both an internal and external perspective on the music, as the title of her current album, “Changing Perspectives”, makes clear. As the composer, she always has one eye on the larger context, but as a performer she is right in the middle of the action. As a clarinet and bass clarinet soloist, she can enjoy freedoms that are rarer in larger ensembles like her Tentet. In a smaller setting, the shading and nuance of her sensitive and flexible playing reveal why in 2022 the jury of the American magazine “Down Beat” named her a “Rising Star” on the clarinet scene.