One friendly patron jabs a finger at evidence of this street-level club’s raunchy past – red lightbulbs, wall-length mirrors and glittery golden frills hung around the ceiling. Legend has it King Georg is a former table-dancing spot. It’s not true, but the place lives up to the myth anyway. It hosted a night of saucy swing and hot-blooded solos on 27 March.
The show is part of the venue’s New York Jazz series and features tenor saxophonist Ralph Moore and pianist Dave Kikoski, with Markus Schieferdecker on bass and Joris Dudli on drums. The musicians first met in the Big Apple, except Schieferdecker, who is based in Germany. They deliver a romping set charged with the energy of the city that never sleeps.
Kikoski kicks off a couple of songs with coy improvisations before his bandmates roll up with a truckload of swing. That’s how it goes on the Duke Pearson number Is That So? When the pianist gets his chance to solo, he demonstrates a dazzling capacity to construct tunes within the tune – while bobbing like a caffeinated cockateel and grinning from ear to ear.
Schieferdecker and Dudli briefly sneak downstairs when their colleagues play a duet that provides a rare moment of calm. It’s an out-of-sorts piece, where each bar seems stuck in all seven stages of grief. Moore’s saxophone carries a faint croak in the palm-key range and he often uses slips or trills to frame decisive tones, which gives him a Coltrane-adjacent voice.
Cologne-based saxophonist Seamus Blake joins the fun for three songs, including Hank Mobley’s This I Dig Of You. The guest shows up ready to fight, pummelling each beat with a thousand notes and daggering it with altissimo runs. When the horns trade solos, Moore takes his turns with a far gentler approach that relies on lyrical phrasing rather than brute force.
While the venue’s history lacks wiggling hips and table-top twirls, this gifted group got toes tapping and heads nodding with their irresistible, swinging music. The club’s decor playfully builds its folklore into the fixtures and fittings. And the quartet, plus guest, built NYC spirit into North-West Germany for a couple of hours. That’s what the locals reckon, anyhow.
Ralph Moore, Dave Kikoski, Markus Schieferdecker and Joris Dudli at King Georg in Cologne, 27 March 2025
