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Christian Elsässer – The Move

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“Webpage Christian Elsässer”

Christian Elsässer (Piano) – Niels Klein (Sax) – Tim Collins (Vibraphone) – Henning Sieverts (Bass)
Fabian Arends (Drums)

Life is change. At its best, it gives rise to inventive jazz—as in Christian Elsässer’s new album The Move.

After a long phase working primarily as a composer, arranger and conductor for big bands and orchestras Christian Elsässer reveals a particularly intimate, chamber-like side on his new quintet album.

„While working on the music a lot of changes were about to happen in my personal life. The most crucial one was that my wife and I decided to leave Munich behind and create a new home for our family in the country-side.“ This emotional shift—filled with excitement, nostalgia, and the magic of new beginnings—runs like a thread throughout the album.

The choice of musicians and the associated instrumentation had a decisive influence on the realization of the compositional ideas. „For this recording I invited four long time friends with whom I have worked in various musical contexts – but never in exactly this lineup. When mentally assembling the band’s sound, I was imme-diately fascinated by the many colorful possibilities that arose from the combination of instruments.“

With The Move, Christian Elsässer creates a musical diary of change: a journey full of farewells and new be-ginnings, shaped by the growth of a family and the quiet yet profound changes that life brings over time. It explores movement in its deeply rooted facets—from the life-changing experience of relocating to a new place to the small and significant steps toward a nature-oriented way of life. Pieces like Birds, Morgentau, and Wie-genlied create sonic landscapes drawing on the rich palette of modern jazz. Other original compositions, such as Kanon and Circles & Corners, reflect Elsässer’s inventive structural concepts, already hinted at in their titles. Likewise, Short Story No. 2 follows a self-imposed challenge: to fit entirely on a single sheet of music—quite a contrast to his large-ensemble arrangements, which typically require dozens of pages.

Christian Elsässer is one of the most versatile voices of contemporary Jazz in Europe. He is regularly commissi-oned by top ensembles such as the Metropole Orkest (three-time Grammy winner), the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, and all four German radio big bands (WDR, HR, NDR, SWR). He has worked with a wide range of acclaimed artists such as Dee Dee Bridgewater, Kurt Elling, Aaron Parks and Mike Stern. Elsässer is also a pro-fessor of Composition and Jazz Piano at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich.

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Tom Reinbrecht & The Cat’s Table – Supernatural Soul Charade

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Webpage Tom Reinbrecht

Good jazz can be like an exciting movie with unpredictable twists and turns, in which many genres go hand in hand:
Action, crime, comedy, romance, thriller, sometimes even horror. Good instrumentalists create suspense and get our
inner movie theaters moving.
Cinematographic jazz is the name of the music by the band led by saxophonist Tom Reinbrecht, named after a novel by
Canadian Booker Prize winner Michael Ondaatje: The Cat’s Table. Sitting at the cat’s table on a cruise ship, far away
from the honorable captain and his guests, are the shady but also most fascinating passengers. They are adventurous,
creative and tell exciting stories. Among them are also a handful of exciting musicians, often called “cats” in jazz. Bassist
Patrick Scales and drummer Christian Lettner have taken a seat at Tom Reinbrecht’s The Cat’s Table; together they
formed the long-standing rhythm section of Klaus Doldinger’s Passport. They are joined by keyboard virtuoso Jan Eschke
and, as the album’s special guest, the talented guitarist Ferdinand Kirner.
With this project, the musician musically transcends genre boundaries, seeking the wild and untamed, the rock’n’roll in
jazz, but also the jazz in rock’n’roll. The Cat’s Table is sensual head cinema that is funky and soulful, grooves powerfully,
is melodically seductive and is simply brightly colored in the overall picture. The Cat’s Table plays music that is so
captivating that we forget to reach into the popcorn bucket. Pulsating riffs and funky grooves, powerful hooklines that
become catchy tunes, seductive melodies and epic harmonies, soulful lines and the bittersweet melancholy of the blues…
The 13 (8) tunes on the album “Supernatural Soul Charade” tell a dramaturgical arc of suspense like the successive
scenes in a grippingly staged movie. The spectrum of moods ranges from powerful and poetic calm radiating a spirit of
optimism (East of Western Woods) to dark, driving drama reminiscent of a car chase (Charade) to a dance mood of
infectious joie de vivre (Superfunktural). Within the individual scenes, the musicians improvise their own individual story,
finding their own story in the stories.
With the album Supernatural Soul Charade, Tom Reinbrecht has written a tribute to the music and zeitgeist of the 80s.
From singing in a rock band as a teenager, his musical path led him to jazz, with the saxophone as his main instrument.
After studying music, Tom Reinbrecht became a sought-after big band leader and worked across genres in the jazz,
classical and pop genres with the New York Voices, Paul Carrack and The European Jazz Project, among others. He
recorded his first album with Claudio Roditi and went on to make two further albums with excursions into bebop and
Brazilian pop jazz. His sound is reminiscent of the jazz traditionalists after Charlie Parker, the bluesy expressiveness of
Cannonball Adderly and the velvety tone of Paul Desmond. The jazz critic Charles Regnault described his energetic and
at the same time butter-soft tone as the “tender bite”. With “Supernatural Soul Charade” he returns to his roots:
Cannonball meets Supertramp, Postbop meets 80’s, Desmond meets Mercury.

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New Album: Kilian Kemmer – Am Ende der Nacht

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https://glmmusic.de/AmEndeDerNacht

A smoky bar, rainy April weather or a scene from a French black and white film – on their new album “Am Ende der Nacht”, the trio led by pianist Kilian Kemmer tells of people, faded memories and marginal notes of the everyday in eleven musical miniatures. With Thomas Stabenow on bass and Julian Fau on drums, the trio explores catchy themes and then embarks on a journey into the poetic unknown. On the two compositions “Durch die Nacht” and “Fabi 43”, long-time companion Matthieu Bordenave joins the trio on saxophone.

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Happy Release Day: Martin Weiss & David & Danino Weiss Quartett – Smile

“Smile” is the name of the new album by Martin Weiss and the David and Danino Weiss Quartet. And it also begins with the song of the same name, the most famous composition by Charlie Chaplin. A choice that perfectly describes the character of the album in several respects. First, because the piece, later made famous by Nat King Cole and today played as a jazz and pop standard by countless performers, dates from 1936. The time when Django Reinhardt invented the only original European style in the classical era of jazz: the Gypsy Swing, also called Jazz Manouche or Hot Jazz. Then, because “Smile” with its highly emotional mixture of melancholy and consolation fits exactly the ambivalence of Gypsy Swing. And finally, because the piece comes from the film “Modern Times”, which deals precisely with the interface between tradition and departure, which is now also the musical focus of Martin, David and Danino Weiß.

Listen to the music: https://glmmusic.de/SmileWeissWE

More informations: https://www.glm.de/en/product/martin-weiss-david-danino-weiss-quartett-smile/

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Happy Release Day: Anthony Cox, Cornelius Claudio Kreusch, Johannes Tonio Kreusch – HOTEL CASABLANCA

At its best, a music album is a journey, for the musicians as well as for the listeners. Like hardly any other subject, music offers the chance to get from here to there and from yesterday to tomorrow without preconditions or borders, with one’s thoughts as well as one’s feelings. As a universal world language, it can take everyone with it. The adventure is all the greater when the tour guides come from different genres, but freely and impartially seek a common path. Like the avant-garde bassist Anthony Cox, the groove-oriented jazz pianist Cornelius Claudio Kreusch and the classical guitarist Johannes Tonio Kreusch. On their new album, the three now invite you to check into the “HOTEL CASABLANCA” as the basis of a remarkable expedition.

Listen to the music: https://glmmusic.de/HotelCasablancaWE

More informations: https://www.glm.de/en/product/anthony-cox-cornelius-claudio-kreusch-johannes-tonio-kreusch-hotel-casablanca/