Rolf Kühn's presence on the jazz scene for several decades was a stroke of luck and a gift. Rolf Kühn was an exceptional artist, a German jazz musician of the highest caliber, one of the few to enjoy an international stature. The 92-year-old jazz virtuoso had no idea that this recording with his quartet at Berlin's Hansa Studio in late June 2022 could be Kühn's last. Rolf Kühn sadly passed away in August of the same year. His compositions, whether ballads or fast and lively, always leave room for what jazz meant to him: making music together, letting it soar through improvisations fed by listening and feeling. This time, he said, he wrote the material as a personal experience, not composing at the piano but notating the music directly. "The piano has always been my control instrument. Now I feel I no longer need it." When you listen to the album, you hear that virtuosic clarinet sound, crisp yet warm, crystalline and precise even in the quietest passages. In tender, dreamy ballads like "Somewhere" or "Tears in Heaven," as well as in completely free improvisations like "Free Exit," a piece created spontaneously in the studio. Four generations came together in his quartet: bassist Lisa Wulff, drummer Tupac Mantilla, pianist Frank Chastenier, and finally Rolf Kühn himself on clarinet. At his request, which he could no longer see fulfilled himself, some recordings were later completed with string arrangements for the Cuareim Quartet. He had already used this collage technique on previous recordings for MPS, such as his album Symphonic Swampfire. He always tested and expanded musical boundaries and followed his own sonic vision. The music he loved until the end. Fearless.
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