Heart of Darkness Natalia Mateo

• 1The Windmills of Your Mind04:02
• 2Tonight I'll Sleep in Space02:27
• 3Take a Walk On the Wild Side04:03
• 4Trudno03:36
• 5Inferno05:50
• 6Somebody Is Watching Me04:28
• 7I Put a Spell On You03:18
• 8Strange Fruit04:31
• 9Paparazzi03:41
• 10Chocolate Jesus04:00
• 11Solitudo Diaboli06:05
• 12Turtle Dove04:49
• 13Canto 102:43
• 14Blue04:10
• Total Runtime57:43

Info for Heart of Darkness

“I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.” This quote from the 1899 short novel “Heart of Darkness” by Polish writer Joseph Conrad could also be Natalia Mateo’s philosophy of life. The 31 year-old vocalist is a wanderer between the worlds - musically and in real life. Born in Poland, raised in Austria and now living in Germany, she has absorbed the most varied of impressions and cultures into her being. She draws from the Slavic ballad tradition, from American jazz and singer-songwriters ranging from Joni Mitchell to Amy Macdonald, and from contemporary pop and rock music. Mateo’s music is a highly personal declaration of love to tradition and modernity, to familiarity on the one hand and on the other to the wanderlust throbbing in her heart and head, to the beauty of emotional attachment, of deepest interpersonal relationships and the independence we live while in them.

“Jazz blossoms with deep roots” is how the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper recently summarised a concert appearance of Natalia Mateo. The German Jazzpodium writes of the singer: “Mateo’s voice has something crystalline, something wistfully brittle. She sounds vulnerable, but not violated, self confident but without the slightest hint of elitist ambition.” And the Jazzthetik magazine sees in her music “the mysterious other that casts a spell on you.” Natalia Mateo is as yet still an insider tip, but now with her ACT debut she presents her captivating art to a broader audience.

“This voice has its own story to tell“ (Die Zeit).

Natalia Mateo, vocals
Gregor Lener, trumpet, effects
Simon Grote, piano
Dany Ahmad, guitars
Christopher Bolte, bass
Fabian Ristau, drums, percussion Additional Musician: Tobias Christl, vocals (on tracks 02, 12)

Recorded by Markus Braun at Fattoria Musica, Osnabrück, September 12 - 14, 2014
Mixed and mastered by Klaus Scheuermann
Produced by the artists
Executive Producer: Marco Ostrowski

Natalia Mateo
Music and the Arts had always been an integral part of the houshold. She was born in Warsaw, Poland, grew up in Austria, then attended a nuns girls’ school back in Poland, at the time being she is living in Germany. Piano, violin and guitar lessons, the Arts, the nuns, studied languages and humanities, frequent house moving not only left an imprint, they have spun the soul’s fabric into what it is now – a rare mixture, soft but tear-proof, thin as a veil, controversial against the background of all hijab debates, at times thick and rough as biker leather. Against the odds, through the thickett of various projects, teachers, downs and ups, failures and successes (in this exact order) she landed at the Institute for Music in Osnabrück with first class music teachers and a personalised and supportive musical setting. All that is supposedly in the music, but look for yourself.

Lessons and workshops taken with Anne Hartkamp, Tineke Postma, Caroline McPherson, Daniel Mattar, Maria Helmin, Romy Camerun, Fay Claassen, Simin Tander, Andreas Wahl, Efrat Alony, Christian McBride, Christoph Hillmann, David Friedman and others.

Dany Ahmad
Born 1990 in Osnabrück, Germany. He began to play the guitar at the age of 10. From then on he has been taking lessons in classical music as well as in improvised music. Multiple winner of the German, nation-wide music youth contests “Jugend musiziert” and “Jugend Jazzt” as solo guitarrist and as ensemble player. The experiences of playing in many bands (LaJazzO Windmachine, Natalia Mateo, Dany Ahmad Trio, etc.), his enrolment in the early study program and his studies in Osnabrück and Amsterdam as well as his participation in many masterclasses have shown him a broad range of musical means of expression and make him ceaselessly look for new musical ways.

Gregor Lener
Born 1984 in Innsbruck, Austria. He began to play the trupet at the age of 11 and took classical trumpet lessons at music school and lateron at the conservatory Innsbruck. In 2007 he gave up classical studies to take on jazz and popular music studies. Since 2010 he has been studying jazz trumpet at the Institute for Music in Osnabrück. For years he has been playing in BigBands and various jazz formations. Those experiences he is now combining with electronic music.

Masterclass with Ack van Rooyen, Jan Oosthof, Jay Jennings (Snarky Puppy) and others.

Simon Grote
The musical home of Wilhelm Grote (flamenco guitarrist and -teacher) and Barbara Grote (music teacher) shaped him and his brother into multifaceted artists. The playing-experience with many different formations (metal, soul, BigBand, folk, reggae, jazz, show) has been influencing his piano-playing all along, from the age of 6, when he started to take lessons. His initial classical training with Iku Rissmann in Minden was interrupted by a period of autodidacticism, which for him was a time of penetrating the infinite world of improvisation. After successfully completing this period, he took the first jazz piano lessons with Steve Sinko at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hannover. Apart from that his interest for other instruments and means of self-espression have been growing constantly – guitar, mandoline, bass, drums, singing as well as writing, painting and composing. Since he began his studies at the Institute for Music in Osnabrück in 2010 and his piano lessons with Thomas Rückert, he is growinly busy with the production of his own music. The playing-by-ear is very fundamental to him and helps him to many liberties when playing with various musicians or solo. Travelling and a sufficient amount of reading help to keep body and soul in time.

Christopher Bolte Freelance musician, music producer and composer. Played almost 400 concerts with over 20 various bands and projects from all over Germany. Approved musical mentor by the Landesmusikrat Lower Saxony. Since 2011 student at the jazz department at the Institute for Music in Osnabrück.

Lessons and Workshops with: Arnd Geise, Patrick Scales, Achim Seifert, Sebastian Hoffmann, Chrisitan McBride, Florian Weber, Frank Wingold, Stephan Schulze, Christoph Hillmann, Efrat Alony, Peter O’Mara, Dave Liebman, David Friedman, Rainer Glas, Fay Claassen and others.

Fabian Ristau
This mother’s son recognised his love for cooking utensils early on, which intruded upon the peace & quiet in the family and neighbourhood. He was then deported by force to the far-off rehearsing room, together with compulsory and institutionalised instrumentalisation.

From now on he was to spend many lonely hours in a dark, unheated cellar, somewhere in central Germany.

It wasn’t until years later when he was found close to rhythmic depression und slowly re-integrated into something like a social environment. That is also when his first attempts to walk took place, that is – attempts to walk in strange cultural environments. His world-exploring trip brought him to various places of rock-, world and folkmusic, to electronic and populare places, before really approaching the jazz galaxy.

Nowadays he is involved on a freelance basis in various projects. Those are, amongst others, his authorship for the drum journals Drumheads and Soundcheck, the leading of workshops and seminars for the music-academy Sachsen-Anhalt, as well as ensemble- and single coachings.

Booklet for Heart of Darkness