kenny werner the melody - herzogpromotion · his acclaimed book effortless mastery, which deals...

Press releaseKenny Werner:

The MelodyRelease: July 7, 2015

Pirouet Records · PIT3083

PIROUET RecordsGrünwalder Weg 30 · 82041 Oberhaching · Germanywww.pirouet.com · [email protected]: +49-89-55 077674

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PRESS CONTACT:

Steffen Mayer

Release date: July 7, 2015 Pirouet Records · PIT3083

1. Try to Remember2. Who?3. Balloons4. 26-25. Voncify the Emulyans6. In Your Own Sweet Way7. Beauty Secrets

Kenny WernerThe Melody

Kenny Werner pianoJohannes Weidenmueller bassAri Hoenig drums

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[email protected]

PRESS CONTACT:

Steffen Mayer

There is a sparkling brilliance to the pieces on this CD. The wide-awake interaction and tongue-in-cheek loose-

ness of the playing captivates straight away. Every bar draws forth unexpected subtleties as the three engage in a seamless high-intensity give-and-take. There is a good reason why pianist Kenny Werner calls this recording The Melody. A finely ramified cooperation converges into a grip-ping melody-in-trio. And there’s humor within. The popular ballad Try to Remember dances through several scintillating transformations before ending with a tip of the hat to Son-ny Rollin’s calypso classic St. Thomas. Surprises are casu-

ally dispersed throughout the pieces—The Kenny Werner Trio’s strong statement as to the vitality of a jazz form rich in tradition: the jazz trio.

Born in Brooklyn in 1951, Kenny Werner has played with greats across a wide spectrum of styles, including Charles Mingus, the Mel Lewis Orchestra, and harmonica virtuoso Toots Thielemans. This breadth of experience has gained him the self-confidence to relax and trust his instincts. His acclaimed book Effortless Mastery, which deals with creativity, also describes his approach to playing. Drummer

Three-Way Melody

The great American pianist Kenny Werner together with the tasteful drummer Ari Hoenig and versatile bass virtuoso Johannes Weidenmüller play seamless music in trio, transporting The Melody to the forefront.

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[email protected]

PRESS CONTACT:

Steffen Mayer

play anything I could come up with. What I love about that playing is that they are so creative while being so advanced rhythmically and in every other way. I feel like I still learn from their rhythmic stuff, but as advanced as they are, they are always composing while they play. This is what I appre-ciate—a band that composes spontaneously rather than just solos all the time.”

At times there is a sense that the three discover musical motifs together, then disassemble and restructure them in a new musical context; fascinating, as in Dave Brubeck’s In Your Own Sweet Way, which at first seems to emerge from a completely different musical world—rhythmic fig-ures appear Morse-code-like, commingling at the begin-ning, when suddenly the theme springs forth, only later to be entangled within the earlier rhythmic figures. John Coltrane’s classic composition 26-2 is also given an excit-ing interpretation in which Werner’s trio carries over the harmonic complexity of the original with an air of complete sangfroid. Try to Remember, the hit pop song from the long-running off-Broadway musical The Fantasticks, is an inter-esting choice of Werner’s. He says that, “Sometimes, as in the case of Try to Remember, I pick it just because it's such

Ari Hoenig was born in Philadelphia in 1973, and bassist Johannes Weidenmüller came into the world in Heidelberg, Germany in 1966. They have been playing together in Kenny Werner’s trio since 1999. With a violinist and pianist for a mother and a conductor for a father, Ari Hoenig is a musician who conjures a fascinatingly melodic sound on the drums. Hoenig won the prestigious 2013 BMW World Jazz Award with his own band, and he has played with jazz giants Joe Lovano, Pat Metheny, and Wynton Marsalis. In 1991 bassist Johannes Weidenmüller left Cologne, Ger-many where he had been studying, to make the move to New York, to learn from bass greats Dave Holland and Cecil McBee. Since then he has worked with a number of world-renowned players, including Randy Brecker, George Benson, and Joshua Redman. He is a bassist who master-fully applies his strength and versatility to the most variable of formations.

“They were pretty much youngsters at the time,” says Werner as he looks back some 15 years to the beginning of the trio’s relationship. “They would always call my wife and say, ‘Is Kenny back from tour yet?’ It was easy to start working together with such eager young players who could

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PRESS CONTACT:

Steffen Mayer

design: Konstantin Kern · www.kern-design.comphotography: Rob Davidson

an atypical jazz standard. But usually the reason is that I found some funny or unique way of playing that standard. I don't believe in playing standards otherwise; they have been played so many times. I try to treat the standard like an original composition, and treat the original composition like a standard.”

The listener comes face to face with Kenny Werner’s own incisive compositions. There is the closing piece, Beauty Secrets, with its lyrical beauty conjoined to a pulsating rhythmic density. And there is the curious, onomatopoetic

Voncify the Emulyans, with its impressionistic flow. (Don’t bother looking the words up: you won’t find them.) There’s a good story to Balloons: “When my kid had a birthday party, my wife would buy 50 helium-filled balloons. The house would be filled with those balloons. After the party was over, the balloons would stay in the house until they all died. The song charts the trajectory of the balloons from when they were bouncing against the ceiling until the de-pressing point when they were hovering just off the floor.” The Kenny Werner trio—three superb storytellers, masters at commingling musical tension and beauty in The Melody.

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kenny werner the melody - herzogpromotion · his acclaimed book effortless mastery, which deals...

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