Berlin based guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel (originally from Philadelphia) is one of the most influential role models for the current generation of jazz guitarists worldwide - due to his virtuoso playing and because he successfully enriches the modern jazz guitar vocabulary with influences from rock and hip-hop. His work reaches far beyond jazz.

Kurt Rosenwinkel Trio - Angels Around traverses new musical frontiers in the standard jazz idiom. While they embody and emote the rich traditions of jazz at its purest form, make no mistake, this music is thoroughly contemporary, focused, and for the here and now. Following on the success of 2009’s “Kurt Rosenwinkel Standards Trio - Reflections”, the new album cements Kurt Rosenwinkel’s standing as a living jazz master; a torch bearer for the art form at its purest and most honest level. Italian bassist Dario Deidda has long been known as one of the finest players on the European scene and has been featured on over 60 recordings as a sideman in addition to his two records as a bandleader. What sets Deidda apart is his entirely unique bass sound and approach. Deidda is the perfect bass counterpart to Rosenwinkel’s expansive approach on the guitar. Percussionist Gregory “Hutch” Hutchinson has established himself as one of the foremost drum virtuosi of his generation. A musician’s drummer soundly rooted in the jazz tradition, Hutch is able to approach all styles of music with supreme accuracy and imagination, decorating compositions with his natural feel and mind-blowing innovation. His relationship with Kurt Rosenwinkel extends back to the New York jazz scene of the 1990’s, a fruitful and boundlessly creative time for many of today’s top players, and a period of great invention for jazz music as a whole.

„Rosenwinkel has come to be just as identifiable as Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell or any of the modern-school guitarists with whom he's usually compared.”
JAZZTIMES

Photo credit: Marco Preikschat

Dario Deidda (bass), Greg Hutchinson (drums), Kurt Rosenwinkel (guitar)

Acclaimed Swiss pianist Jean-Paul Brodbeck, and legendary jazz guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel join forces on The Chopin Project, a historic collaboration which finds them reinterpreting the music of Chopin for jazz quartet. Brodbeck and Rosenwinkel are joined by Lukas Traxel on bass, who plays in the Jean-Paul Brodbeck Trio, and Jorge Rossy, a stalwart member of the Spanish and American jazz communities.
Rossy’s percussion and Traxel’s bass provide an enveloping and energetic textural world for Brodbeck’s piano which outline the beauty of Chopin’s compositional structures, while subtly twisting them into the logic of jazz. Rosenwinkel’s ecstatic lead lines fly over the band, mutating Chopin’s all too familiar melodies into something profoundly new.

The fearlessness that this quartet’s harmonic and rhythmic inventiveness brings to Chopin’s music traces the connection between Chopin’s virtuosic chromatic improvisation and its inspiration on the ever-evolving language of modern jazz harmony.

"A masterclass in re-imagining one of the greatest classical composers of our time, performed by some of the greatest contemporary musicians of our time."
JAZZFUEL

" “The Chopin Project” demonstrates with deft precision how refreshing it can be when we treat the music of the western classical canon as a living document, and allow ourselvesthe freedom to reinterpret it with curiosity and open ears."
JAZZGUITARTODAY

Jean-Paul Brodbeck (piano), Kurt Rosenwinkel (guitar), Jorge Rossy (drums), Lukas Traxel (bass)