Edgar Knecht
Dance on deep waters (LP-Ozella Music-52:68)
Edgar Knecht, announced as one of the best that Germany has to offer in the world of jazz piano, continues his journey through the German traditional music. All tracks, except ‘Wiegenlied’ (composed by Brahms), are arrangements from familiar sounding tunes. Little ‘new’ music here, but it’s well done and played with love. The quartet stands as a tight group of excellent musicians. Especially the bass and piano are coming forward in the music. The liner notes show us that this music is meant to be an trip down to the big questions of humanity. As these notes sound a bit heavy, at first hearing one must admit that this music has enough potential to stay interesting. The opening track ‘Lilofee’ summarizes the record and slips without any effort from the melancholic movements in ‘Tiefe Wasser’ to the dancing mood of ‘Gedankenfreiheit’. The joyful lines of ‘Schwesterlein’ are followed by what is, arguably, the most beautiful song on this record ‘Frühling’. Finally we get the introvert ‘Wiegenlied’ as a desert.
The record that was used for this review was the vinyl disk that was very well presented with a nice quality inner sleeve, TOP. Also the sound is mixed for the vinyl pressing and it’s a real joy to feel that there are still peoples caring about (and loving) good sounding records!
Edgar Knecht (p), Rolf Denecke (b), Tobias Schulte (d), Stefan Emig (perc)
reviewed by: Tom Decuyper
Scores:
Musical content = 7/10, Presentation and sound quality of LP = 9+/10
jazzintheattic 