Kurt Vonegut

This one-and-only recorded collaboration between jazz greats Geri Allen and Kurt Rosenwinkel took place live at the famed Philharmonie de Paris in 2012—the two play as if with one mind.

"I prefer music that brings people together rather than politics that divides them…" This sentence could have sounded a bit cliché in the mouth of another, but in that of Kurt Masur, it took on a very concrete meaning, he who declined the offer made to him to play a political role in the construction of a reunified Germany… Born on July 18, 1927 in Brieg in Upper Silesia (today Brzeg in Poland but then German territory), Kurt Masur very young in Hitler's army. One of the 27 survivors of his company of 130 men, he enrolled at the Musikhochschule in Leipzig at the end of the war to study music. The direction is in fact not the first choice of the young Masur. Suffering from a genetic disease contracting the tendons of his fingers, he knew very early that a career as a pianist was not within his reach. This did not prevent him, after the war, from playing jazz (his great passion!), in clubs… In 1948, this fan of Furtwängler and Walter became chief rehearsal then conductor at the Théâtre de Hall. He continues as kappelmeister of the operas of Erfurt and Leipzig.

Recognized worldwide as a virtuosic percussionist Burhan Öçal has made the bridging of musical cultures his central mission. A native of Kirklareli in Thrace region, he grew up in a musical family. From his father, he learned a variety of percussion instruments, while his mother introduced him to religious vocal music. After his first contact with Western music, he became interested in combining other genres and cultural traditions, such as jazz and Western classical music, with his own.