Don't Open 'till Chirstmas

On his first instrumental album in over a decade, German jazz trumpeter/flügelhornist and pop star Till Brönner offers his own tribute to one of his earliest inspirations: the sound of Creed Taylor's CTI label. Co-produced by the artist with keyboardist Roberto Di Gioia and Samon Kawamura, these 12 tunes employ a crack studio band as well as strings, and evoke memories of the label's arrangers Don Sebesky, David Matthews, and Bob James, but with distinctly modern charts. The mood is relaxed, open, and fluid, and creativity runs high. The production is warm yet crystalline; though attention is paid to detail, nothing feels constrained by nostalgia. These 12 cuts wed hip, soulful jazz-funk grooves to modern jazz, sometimes infused with a subtly cinematic panache. "Will of Nature" has a tight front-line horn vamp (Brönner and saxophonist Magnus Lindgren) that invokes hard bop but sticks closer to spacy soul-jazz – Lindgren even quotes "A Love Supreme" in the intro to his solo. Di Gioia's Rhodes makes room inside the mix for exploration, while staying deep in the pocket provided by Wolfgang Haffner's drum kit and Albert Johnson's double bass. "The Gate" opens with lush, impressionistic strings that hover and float in the intro, highlighted by Lindgren's flute. They introduce Brönner's smoky flügelhorn melody, followed by double bass, rim-shot snare, and cymbals. The strings vanish and, in a nice timbral contrast, the slippery head is led by Lindgren's bass clarinet and the horn.

Together with jazz legend and Grammy award winner Bob James, trumpeter Till Brönner – Germany’s most successful jazz musician – has transformed holiday moods into a multi-layered sound painting. Close your eyes and dream: “On Vacation is first and foremost a feeling for me and we have transformed this feeling into music,” explains Brönner Virtuosic, full of creative love for refined details and at the same time of the greatest possible nonchalance, Brönner and James create an imaginative and sonorous music for inspiration, reflection and daydreaming.

Youthful Viennese pianist Till Fellner has performed J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier to critical acclaim across Europe, and has made it the backbone of his recital repertoire. For this recording of Book I, Fellner performs the 24 preludes and fugues with a rich and full sound, yet with the refinement and fastidious control required in these comprehensive studies of Baroque keyboard technique. Articulation and balanced phrasing are of paramount importance, and Fellner's energies are directed to the clean execution of lines and the careful shading of contrapuntal voicings. What emotion he communicates is subtle and somewhat constrained to the contrasting characters of each pairing – the preludes and fugues often play off each other – yet his interpretations are quite colorful and varied over the course of the set. Neither cerebral nor effusive, Fellner renders the music in an appealing middle area between schools of interpretation, and achieves imaginative results that should please both traditionalists and fans of period practice.

With his new album “Christmas”, trumpeter Till Brönner in trio with pianist Frank Chastenier and bassist Christian von Kaphengst creates a puristic album full of chamber music intensity and refreshing expansiveness. Songs from different decades and genres like “Jesus to Child”, “Ich steh an deiner Krippe hier” or “Jingle Bells” combine them to an intimate listening experience. Relevant art is always a mirror of its time and the circumstances in which it is created.

The Movie Album is a career aspiration come true for Till Brönner, a record he's desired to make for more than a decade. His themes from Hollywood movies, classic and contemporary (with a TV theme thrown in), make this more a pop-jazz record than one for cinephiles. Co-produced by the artist and guitarist Chuck Loeb, most of the set was recorded at Hollywood's East West Studios with a crack band of studio aces, with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester's parts recorded in Berlin.

Till Brönner is Germany’s leading jazz trumpeter. While he is known for his outstanding virtuosity, he is also referred to as a ‘German Chet Baker’. Brönner studied jazz trumpet at the College of Music, Cologne. Among his prominent teachers are Prof. Malte Burba and the American jazz trumpeter Bobby Shew.