Battle League In Kyoto (2009)

When asked who the most talented young musicians in Germany are, the answer echoes back from the rural town of Hückeswagen near Cologne. Surrounded by hills and forest live two brothers who play "with a magical tone" (Süddeutsche Zeitung) that is "of the finest quality" (JazzPodium). Their 2006 homage to Chet Baker, Remember Chet, was celebrated as a "stunning debut" (Süddeutsche Zeitung). In faraway Sweden, Nils Landgren heard about these young musicians' abilities through the jazz grapevine, and decided he wanted to produce the two shooting stars inviting the brothers to that famous sound kitchen in which Landgren has cooked up his own highly successful albums, the Nilento Studio in Gothenburg…

Filmed live in 2007 at the prestigious Rossini Opera Festival in the composer’s birthplace, Pesaro, Il Turco in Italia is a madcap ensemble opera with an inspired score that boasts music of both comic genius and extraordinary beauty. Set in Naples, it spins a crazy tale around a poet who uses the romantic entanglements of the inhabitants with a Turkish prince as inspiration for the plot of his next play. Ultimately, life imitates art as all ends happily, but not before a planned abduction leads to a chaotic situation of mistaken identity.

In Poland, the younger generation of jazz musicians such as Leszek Możdżer and Marcin Wasilewski are celebrated like pop stars, and have made themselves well known outside of Poland. 25 year old pianist Paweł Kaczmarczyk is on the right path to follow them - ever since his Live album with the KBD trio was chosen as the “Album of the Year” in the 2005 Polish Public Television Channel2 Awards, he has been considered a major force in polish jazz music. In the same year he won the Melomani jazz society’s major prize, Poland’s so-called “Jazz Oscar”. Since then the readers of Poland’s prestigious Jazz Forum magazine have regularly voted him “most promising” musician in the publication’s yearly poll, and in 2007, the magazine named Audiofeeling, Kaczmarczyk’s first album as leader “Album of the Year”…