Joel Locher, Marian Petrescu, Alex Riel

March 27th 2009 marks the 100th birthday of the great saxophonist Ben Webster. The Ben Webster Foundation based in Copenhagen where Ben lived his last years, celebrates with this new release. A double CD, The Brute & The Beautiful will find both sides of Ben Webster with material never or very rarely heard before. These CD's contain music recorded in the U.S. by Ben himself, his first appearance on the Continent, ambitious work with strings, rough evenings in clubs, soft ballads, etc. Look forward to hearing the Beautiful Brute in all his splendor!

If this session were to be described in just one word, that would be "Power." Hard-bop specialists Mads Vinding and Alex Riel have both recorded with Dexter Gordon and have each played powerful, yet straight-ahead jazz for over thirty years. Drummer Riel has worked with hard bop leaders such as Jackie McLean, Michael Brecker, Kenny Drew, and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. Bassist Vinding, similarly, has worked with Johnny Griffin, Ed Thigpen, the Ernie Wilkins big band, and Duke Jordan. The third member of the trio, pianist Enrico Pieranunzi, with nine releases as a leader, works, as do the others, in a hard bop-vein. It would seem quite unnecessary to mention credentials like this if the artists lived in New York City or recorded with a major U.S. label; but Vinding and Riel are from Copenhagen and Pieranunzi is from Italy. Hence, their reputation may not have preceded them.

Jazz fusion from a man who has performed live and/or on recordings with jazz guitar legend Pat Martino, Dave Fiuczynski, Allan Holdsworth, Andreas Oberg, Scott McGill, David Torn, and more.

Like many Americans who opt to live and work in Europe, the recorded legacy of multi-reed player Sahib Shihab tends to be overlooked by fans in his native land. Sentiments pairs recordings he made for two separate albums between 1965 and 1971.

Wawau Adler calls his new album "I Play With You." He changes playfully between the Selmer No. 828, a classical guitar from the forties, over modern types to the electric guitar. Finally, the title could also refer to the repertoire that is played here: After Adler has interpreted in his earlier recordings mainly standards - his last album "Happy Birthday Django 110", released two years ago, was, for example, explicitly dedicated to his and the great role model of all gypsy jazz guitarists Django Reinhardt. With his own songs you can get to know the whole Wawau Adler on "I Play With You".