Hayden Chisholm – Checkpoint 50 Cologne

The saxophonist Hayden Chisholm, who now lives in Belgrade, has entitled his evening at the Cologne Jazzweek ‘Checkpoint 50 Cologne’. 50 is an allusion to his age; the New Zealand-born musician turned 50 at the end of May. At the same time, ‘Checkpoint 50’ refers to his other passion, the ultramarathon, and marks a supply station that tells the runners that the real race is just beginning. Well, Chisholm spent formative years in Cologne – both as a musician and as a person. ‘Love In Numbers’ is one of Chisholm’s compositions in which he attempts to represent the mathematical Fibonacci series with chords and breath. For the Cologne Jazzweek, he has arranged this piece for a brass trio and organ (Kit Downes) plus alto saxophone. The second part is reserved for Chisholm’s quartet Chemical Kinetics. In chemistry, kinetics describes the speed of reactions. Applied to his quartet, this means that for the four musicians, improvisation is fluid composing in ‘real-time’ and at breakneck speed.