Vincent Chicowitz Flow Studies

Now almost 15 years into her New York City life, South Korean pianist and composer Jihee Heo has thrived during her deep journey into the city's towering jazz piano legacy. Her studies in Amsterdam and at the Manhattan School of Music blended experimental jazz with classical and bop, but the rich connection she discovered with drummer Joe Farnsworth and bassist Alex Claffy several years ago awakened sounds she's had stored away since she first encountered jazz. Now a steady presence in New York's clubs, this trio's journey is documented on Flow, which was, appropriately enough, recorded by Maureen Sickler at Rudy Van Gelder's famed studio in Englewood, NJ. Joining the trio for two tunes is the alto titan, Vincent Herring.

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".