New Release Spotlight Featuring: Juergen Friedrich and Kenny Wheeler

CD Title: Summerflood

Year: 2004

Record Label: CTI

Style: Free, Smooth, Contemporary & New Classic

Musicians: Jurgen Friedrich(Piano, Composition), Kenny Wheeler(Flugelhorn), Darren Beckett(Drums), Claudius Valk(Tenor, Soprano Sax), Volker Heinze(Double Bass).

Tracks: My Shy Eye, Inner Garden, Summerflood, Light In Green, Opal, Baghira, The Right Mistake

Listen to track(s): My Shy I / Summerflood / Opal

Purchase CD: At CTI Jazz or At CTI Records

Biography: "Jürgen Friedrich is the great, young composition talent. He is the first non-american who won the Gil Evans Award. 'The Right Mistake' and 'My Shy I' are tomorrow`s jazz standards." - Matthias Creutziger

" 'Summerflood' is the discovery of the summer! The Jürgen Friedrich Quartet creates an enormous depth with minimalistic structures and chamber music-like nuances. Kenny Wheeler never acts as a guest star but plays with like-minded companions moving, hopeful, magnificent music." - jazzthing

"If his compatriot Johannes Brahms would arise from the dead and become a jazz musician he would doubtlessly appreciate the astonishing architectural logic of Friedrich`s composition "The Right Mistake." Friedrich has huge creative potential, access to innovation, and a highly personal concept. A fantastic CD." - Arnaldo DeSouteiro, Tribuna Bis

For years Ive admired the great Canadian musician Kenny Wheeler because of his fantastic compositions and arrangements, his incredible sound on both the trumpet and flugelhorn, his superb recordings as well as his wide open artistic vision. Last week I went to a big-band concert that featured Kenny as the guest performer and composer. At 70+ years of age Kenny still has the ability to amaze both as a player as well as composer. He sounds as fresh as any young lion and deep as any veteran. His pieces are full of complex harmonies and changing times and rhythms and have a wide variety of styles from straight ahead swing to totally free. Kennys playing is completely wide open. He can go anywhere at anytime. His sound is uniquely beautiful and his range is as high as any lead trumpet player and lower than most trumpet players ever dare to go. His deep knowledge of harmony is hidden by his ability to make everything sound so easy. You could only tell how difficult some of the music was at the concert when someone else in the band tried to take a solo and stumbled over themselves. This is a fantastic growing improvising musician. One of the finest around! - Peter Madsen, All About Jazz

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