Paul Bley About Time (2008)

The beauty of long musical relationships can be the culmination of many things. The familial bond that is created from sharing and living together, the influence of bandmates on one another and welcome surprises can keep these bonds fresh and enervating. Pianist Anat Fort and her trio mates have been making music together for twenty years and continue to grow and share in new ways, as is evinced on their new recording, Colour.

It is hard to believe it as one listens to this album: pianist Vincent Meissner is just twenty years old. The drummer in the trio, incidentally, is even younger. Recognition for this major talent has started to grow, however, and the prizes are rolling in. Meißner has so far won six: the Bechstein Piano Competition, the Concert Prize of the Jazzopen Stuttgart, the Förderpreis of the German Jazz Union, the Jazzhaus Competition Freiburg and the Central German Jazz Prize. And he is also already showing quite some capacity to make smart decisions and follow them through. When he was chosen as to represent Saxony in the prestigious “Jugend jazzt” event in 2019, he opted to take a new approach to presenting his music. Rather than building pieces out of fragments or sketches, as he had done until then, he created a suite of connected pieces. This mature quality, the desire to present a coherent programme is also a hallmark of his debut album "Bewegtes Feld".