The concert by the Pablo Held Trio featuring Chris Potter at Poznań’s Blue Note – housed in the former boiler room of the Imperial Castle – was one of those evenings that resist easy definition. This was not a trio accompanied by a guest in the traditional sense, but rather an encounter of four equal musical personalities bound by a shared language of improvisation.
For two decades, the trio’s identity has been shaped by its unchanged line-up: Pablo Held (piano), Robert Landfermann (double bass) and Jonas Burgwinkel (drums). Such continuity translates into a rare quality of communication – a near-telepathic interplay in which roles are never fixed once and for all, but constantly redefined. The trio’s 20th-anniversary tour gained additional resonance through the presence of Potter, one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists of our time. From the very first notes, it was evident that he did not function as a soloist set against a rhythm section, but as an integral component of a living, breathing collective organism.
The concert unfolded in two sets, separated by a brief intermission, allowing for a clearly articulated dramaturgical contrast. The first emphasised sound and space; the second leaned toward heightened intensity and kinetic drive.
A pivotal moment of the evening was the interpretation of Bandits from last year’s album Unity. Built on an ambiguous, fragmentary motif, the composition became the springboard for an extended improvisation of pronounced narrative scope. Held guided it with his characteristic freedom, his phrasing poised between lucid construction and a deliberate dispersal of form. Landfermann produced a tone both elastic and precise, serving simultaneously as foundation and equal partner in dialogue. Burgwinkel shaped the dramaturgy through subtle articulation – ranging from barely perceptible murmurs to dense, dynamic climaxes.
Potter injected the structure with remarkable narrative intensity. His tenor did not dominate; rather, it permeated the ensemble’s texture – at times merging seamlessly with the piano, at others steering the improvisation toward new expressive territories. Particularly striking was his command of long, coherent arcs, in which each note seemed to arise from the previous one with an internal inevitability.
A contrasting mood emerged in Very Early, the Bill Evans tune which Held interpreted on the album Trio Plays Standards (2024). Here, the group revealed its more lyrical facet. The theme unfolded with restraint, almost fragility. Held employed silence with the same awareness as sound, leaving space for the saxophone’s subtle, introspective lines. Potter’s playing assumed an almost vocal quality – warm, focused, yet charged with inner tension.
The Poznań audience also heard less frequently performed pieces such as Booker’s Almanac, the meditative Ode To Turiya, and the metrically intriguing 11/4. In these works, one of the ensemble’s defining traits became especially apparent: the ability to shape form in real time. The musicians allowed the narrative to evolve unhurriedly, concentrating on nuanced shifts in dynamics, texture and tension. The club, filled to capacity, followed the process with palpable attentiveness.
Two decades of shared music-making have not led Pablo Held Trio toward artistic complacency. On the contrary, the group remains intensely explorative, continually expanding its vocabulary. Chris Potter’s presence proved to be more than a celebratory gesture; it became a creative catalyst, opening new narrative pathways for the German musicians. It is precisely within such processes – within the act of collective creation – that jazz reveals its deepest essence.
Text and photos: Szymon Ratajczyk (ratajczyk.art)
Editor: Damian Kacprzak
Pablo Held Trio & Chris Potter at the Blue Note, Poznań, Poland, 15 February 2026
