Gebhard Ullmann

Kreuzberg Park East is the second Soul Note album of Gebhard Ullmann's quartet Basement Research, with the same line-up as the first: tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin, bassist Drew Gress and drummer Phil Haynes. Ullmann plays tenor and soprano saxophone and bass clarinet and wrote all eight pieces. It was recorded on 2 and 3 May 1997 at Tedesco Recording Studios in New Jersey and mixed more than a year later. On his own site Ullmann writes that it had even more impact in jazz circles than the 1995 debut.

Jon Rosenberg recorded the quartet and mixed the tapes on 29 August 1998 at Sound On Sound in New York, and Bill Shoemaker wrote the liner notes. Ullmann produced the album and also designed its cover. With two tenors in the front line and no chordal instrument, the weight falls on the horns and on the Gress and Haynes rhythm section. The pieces mostly run between five and nine minutes. Blaues Lied opens the programme, and the title track, Meltemà and Almost Twenty-Eight are the longest, at eight to nine minutes each. The T. T. Walk, Flutist With Hat And Shoe and Those 4 R lead to Blue Trees And Related Objects at the close. After the album the band toured Europe in 1999 with Tony Malaby in place of Eskelin, a tour later documented on Live In Münster, before Ullmann paused the project for five years.

This is the original Soul Note CD 121371-2. It carries a 1999 copyright, and Discogs dates its release to 11 January 2000.