Max Nagl follows his plan of one-word titles for his pieces with iron consistency. "Parade", "Bausch", Anninger", "Wildnis", "Cargo", "Gangsta" etc.

And he pulls off another remarkable feat: the cultivated proliferation of styles, listened to with the ears of someone with jazz roots, which, under rigorous "gnawing", lead an unmistakable, colorful life of their own. Now it was time again for the "Once In A Club-Year" concert. To kick things off, the collective celebrated a delightful suggestion of a mariachi parade. The piece could be called "Sombrero" or "Clavo". You don't know exactly. The exuberant joy of playing that permeated the entire performance was immediately unleashed. What followed was a kind of Eisler/Weill cocktail in a palatable mixture. Suddenly Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone were discussing Fellinian floods of images. Then there was jubilant circus music - paraphrases that could not have been staged better by Willem Breuker or Hannes Zerbe. A bit of klezmerism. Brass music furor with a special Upper Austrian touch and a little "Manhattan rock" choleric were also a must. Consequently, Nagl's musical ability and understanding, his openness to all sides, determine why the aggregate state and architecture of the music, so eloquent and relevant in terms of content, touch the cognitive and emotional levels in equal measure - brains with egg, in other words. Nagl assembles all the characterizing set pieces and borrowings into his sound worlds with the same odd, humorous stubbornness and seriousness. There, bizarre harmonic twists and turns, lush polyphony in a dense fabric, contrapuntal vocal lines in a dialog between string and wind instruments, tempo changes in a frenzy of joy cavort in sophisticated, labyrinthine arrangements. The core: the flexible, eloquent melody. Underpinned by rhythmic straightforwardness, which allows itself tricky "fill-ins" here and there. As a crescendo of tension. In Nagl's concept, there is undoubtedly room for individual improvisational enthusiasm. In the large format, this free space is subject to a focused dimensioning. As this also applies to the length of the piece. Features were provided for all musicians. Characterized by classical intonation, blues-soakedness, hymnic soulfulness, elegant yet heated jazz phrasing, electronic glissandi, magical drumming and personal dialect. Nagl knows how to use this for the complexity of his music with great ears. Ingenuity and originality were present in every moment.

The bottom line: the finest chromatic-diatonic madness based on first-class compositional competence. MAXimalistic. (Hannes Schweiger, about the concert in January 2022)