Georg Graewe and Ray Anderson

Georg Graewe 'Nothing Personal'
Since the release of my CD “Six Studies for piano solo” (1987), solo evenings have been an integral part of my concert agenda. The 3-CD box “Nothing Personal” will be released in November 2023, the fifth release with a selection of concert recordings from 2012 - 2019.

Solo concerts require a certain amount of stamina in terms of technique and imagination, but they have the advantage that no one gets in your way - except you, and that means you have enough to do. (Georg Graewe, Vienna, September 16, 2023)

Lyrically playful, highly virtuosic, sound-sensitive and clearly structured: Georg Graewe's solo performance in Ludwigshafen impressively demonstrated the pianist's exceptional position. Graewe's musical language has absorbed the history of jazz from Jelly Roll Morton to Bill Evans to Fred van Hove as well as the elegance of the French piano tradition or the laconic conciseness of the Second Viennese School. (Julia Neupert, SüdwestRundfunk (SWR), 2015)

"What distinguishes Graewe is his remarkable control, a focused urgency making his compositions/improvisations feel twice as dense. The way his hands tumble across the keys and over each other should make it inevitable that his fingers would get twisted up like Bugs Bunny playing Liszt , yet there is never a moment of anything other than perfect articulation. This is complemented/contrasted by an unusual rhythmic sense in some sections, almost a drunken lurch approaching proto-stride. And when he plays slow passages, the loveliness is highlighted by his seeming to wait until the absolute last possible millisecond to play a note. (Andrey Henkin, New York City Jazz Record, 2018)

Ray Anderson 'Marching On – Solo Trombone'
Solo trombone, for the duration of an entire CD; You have to have the courage first, because a trombone is a barren, sometimes stubborn thing; it can usually only play one note at a time. And then you have to have something to communicate, something that goes beyond the usual suspect, beyond the vocal velvet sound of the instrument, beyond the certainty of a melody, something based on the surplus information each individual note produces. Among the trombonists of modern jazz, Ray Anderson has always been the one whose playing was particularly characterized by the enormous wealth of forbidden sounds from the arsenal of early African-American jazz trombonists such as Vic Dickenson and Trummy Young. On “Marching On”, his trombone solo album, he now explains, in the spirit of the ancients, how fun and warmth of heart are combined with an instrument for which the distinction between legitimate sound and illegitimate noise, music and noise, does not exist. (Stefan Hentz, Jazz thing 146)

Program and cast

Georg Graewe: piano
Ray Anderson: trombone