In the words of Franka Bayertz, a co-student of hers at the university of music in Weimar and a frequent collaborator: “She’s a badass bitch.” I got to know Tara, when the saxophone player of a project decided to quit the band one day before a huge concert and it seemed impossible to find a replacement, when half an hour before the gig Tara arrived out of nowhere, after receiving a call from our viola player, asking if she could jump in, having just played a concert. She asked for the sheet music and went onstage, completely nailing the one-hour performance, without ever having rehearsed or even heard the music before.
Born and raised in the Pfalz region of Germany, Tara developed a keen interest for music by the age of 10, when she joined the horns class at school. Not long after she also joined the school big band which manifested her love and general emotional investment in music by having intense rehearsals and loads of concerts, sometimes even twice a day. Learning about the life and language of a musician all the while pumping Trombone Shorty, Paul Desmond and Kenny Garrett.
Although being influenced by these guys, her sound and style is something completely idiosyncratic and modern. As she states she listened to “any genre except German schlager, metal and techno”, even though she overcame her differences with the latter two by now. She plays melodic soulful lines with a soft and breathy tone accompanied by a pinch of free jazzy outness and rhythmic complexity, sometimes using effect pedals for additional stank. Her sensibilty for strong melodies might originate in her prefence of playing by ear and feel rather than focussing on theory and standard jazz repertoire, thus making her all the more unique in style.
Being no stranger to the music scenes of Weimar, Dresden and Berlin, she’s currently studying jazz saxophone in Weimar, but often visiting Berlin and playing in tons of projects based in places all over the country and ranging from middle eastern fusion, to free, spiritual or latin jazz, to R’n’B to instrumental dubstep. As a prolific composer she helms several of these projects herself in addition to being an in-demand sidewoman.
The true reason, that makes her playing so compelling might be the fact, that Tara is one of the kindest, most enthusiastic, upbeat and fun people in the music scene today and has a lot more to say, than what can be said with scales, technique, speed and theoretical knowledge. Watch out for this cat, as she spits liquid godfire trough the horn!
