Christian Winninghoff – CLOUD SOUNDS

Description

Christian Winninghoff – trumpet, flugelhorn, euphonium, vocals on ‘Flow Circus’
Martin Schulte – guitars
Kirill Vorwald –  piano, keyboards
Nico Brandenburg – bass
Kai Schönburg – drums
Stephan Emig –  percussion
THE HI HORNZ
Marc Leymann – alto aax, bari sax
Heiner Schmitz – tenor sax, bari sax
Marcus Bartelt – flute, clarinet, bari sax
Jan Schneider – lead trumpet on ‘BAD Bari Blues’
Ludwig Nuss – trombone

VOCAL APPEARANCES
Nora Becker – vocals on ‘Playing With The Clouds’ + ‘Flow Circus’
Sam Leigh Brown – vocals on ‘Two Of Us’ + ‘A Summer’s Day’
Inga Lühning – vocals on ‘Nostalgia’
Albert N’sanda – vocals on ‘Who Do You Wanna Be’

As for so many people, the two pandemic years were a challenging time in many respects for creatives like Cologne trumpeter, composer and arranger Christian Winninghoff, a member of the Jazzkantine and the Cologne Contemporary Jazz Orchestra. Because jazz from the ivory tower was never his thing. His music has always sounded energetic and groovy, more suitable for the atmosphere of a densely packed, heated club than for a ventilated concert hall with a masked audience, possibly even arranged in a checkerboard pattern.

In the prescribed retreat – after what felt like half a life with concerts, shows and theatrical performances almost every weekend – so now a lot of time to concentrate on the essentials: Sound and expression! The goal: soul music. His compositions have always had fragile and lyrical moments and Christian’s fourth album CLOUD SOUNDS almost became a pure song or ballad album.
The focus of the new CD is for him in this project to go in search of traces in terms of song-writing, to fathom the essence of great songs and to reinterpret them for himself. The es-sence is always the expression, the feeling that a song conveys. And his interpretation possi-bilities are manifold, both on the trumpet, the flugelhorn and in his arrangements and com-positions. In the opening song, a relaxed version of the Beatles classic ‘Two of us’ in ¾-measure, Sam Leigh Brown interprets with warm vocal timbre. Dreamy floating pieces follow on easily therefore swinging jazz and multi-layered songs. A lot of hypnotic power is used in these compositions and arrangements (including Brian Wilson’s ‘Surf’s Up’) pieces related wind colors, which sometimes come as a polyphonic chorale, sometimes in an evocative unison. The calm, breathing timing in finely tuned interaction then prepares the foundation for the both powerful and soulful improvisations often on flugelhorn and plugged trumpet, sometimes reduced, sometimes lively and playful.
Christian is grateful to have won illustrious voices of the current jazz and soul scene for his varied and entertaining album. Alongside the all-round strong singers Nora Becker, Sam Leigh Brown, Inga Lühning and Albert N’sanda, there are some friends and companions from the Cologne jazz scene, such as the lead trombonist of the WDR Big Band Ludwig Nuss. In addition, there is a reunion with the HI HORNZ SECTION, which contributes powerful funk spirit. The album owes a special homogeneity to the fact that all 14 basic tracks of the album were recorded live on a single summer weekend in the Topaz studios in Cologne.