THE GREAT POLISH SONGBOOK…Kurt Rosenwinkel & Jean-Paul Brodbeck: The Chopin Project

Yeah, I know…”is this one of those ‘jazz meets classical projects’ where neither types of fans are satisfied?”

“Au, Contrare!”

If you didn’t know that the ten songs on this album were composed by the pianist Frederic Chopin, you ‘d never associate the melodies with great romantic. Guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and pianist Jean-Paul Brodbeck team together with Jorge Rossy/g and Lukas Traxel/b to use Chopin’s Liszt of originals as inspirational starting points (and not paint by numbers forms) for the band’s template of ideas.

Thus, you get Rosenwinkel and Brodbeck deep and bluesy around Rossy’s snappy sticks on “Prelude in E-Flat minor”, and team delves into ESP-era Miles Davis on a post bop read of “Prelude in B minor”. Rosenwinkel is richly impressionistic on the lovely “Nocturne in C-sharp minor” and glistens to “Valse in C-sharp minor” while he dances through Rossy’s cymbals on “’Raindrop’ Prelude in D-flat major”. Brodbeck, with the most to lose in a Chopin-inspired album, is his own man, gentle on “Nouvelle Etude in A-flat major” and flowing for “Prelude in E major” with each piece a novella in its own right.

To their credit, these gents could have easily scratched out Chopin’s name for the composing credits, as this music is simply original romanticism at its jazzy best. Bon appetite!

New Release From Kurt Rosenwinkel and Jean-Paul Brodbeck,”The Chopin Project”

Jazz guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and Swiss pianist Jean-Paul Brodbeck join forces on “The Chopin Project”, a historic collaboration reinterpreting the music of Fréderic Chopin for jazz quartet.

A collaborative reinterpretation of Chopin’s music for jazz quartet, Rosenwinkel and Brodbeck are joined by the brilliant young Swiss bassist Lukas Traxel, and drummer Jorge Rossy, a leading figure in the Spanish and American jazz communities. To be released on April 22nd, 2022.

The band met for the recording in Zurich in August 2021 and discovered an immediate chemistry and rapport. Brodbeck’s piano outlines the beauty of Chopin’s compositional structures, while Rossy and Traxel provide an energetic textural groove which subtly reframes that beauty into the rhythmic language of jazz. It’s this foundation which allows Rosenwinkel’s ecstatic lead lines to fly over the band, metamorphosing Chopin’s familiar melodies into something profoundly new.

“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.