Der Brand 2011

Dutch pianist Wolfert Brederode, on his second formal quartet outing (following 2007's Currents), leads his compatriots, clarinetist Claudio Puntin, bassist Mats Eilertsen, and drummer Samuel Rohrer, in a selection of thoughtful, classically influenced jazz on Post Scriptum. The instrumentation may suggest the Dave Brubeck Quartet with Paul Desmond, but if Brubeck represented a brand of "college jazz" in the 1950s and ‘60s, this is strictly graduate school stuff. Brederode and company are on the right label with producer Manfred Eicher's ECM, since they are playing very much in the ECM school of cool European jazz. That's apparent immediately on the appropriately named opener, "Meander," which finds Puntin making like a more laid-back yet freer Desmond in a Brederode composition that will suggest new age to many listeners.

Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler already enjoyed a worldwide legendary standing during his lifetime he was considered the German conductor and performances were greeted with rapturous applause. Today, more than 50 years after his death, Wilhelm Furtwängler is still an icon and his work has become an integral part of the music scene.

Founded in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1968 - Disbanded in 1972 - Reunited in 2003 and again since 2009. Part of a vibrant Amsterdam pop music scene in the late sixties with their harder edged blend of psychedelic rock and Chicago blues, Dutch band Brainbox paid hommage to both American and British Contemporaries while at the same time developing their own more progressive brand of pop music.