Fearless

Description

Rolf Kühn’s presence on the jazz scene for several decades was a blessing and a gift. Rolf Kühn was an exceptional artist, a German jazz musician of the highest caliber, one of the few to enjoy international stature. The 92-year-old jazz virtuoso had no idea that this recording with his quartet at Hansa Studio in Berlin at the end of June 2022 could be Kühn’s last. Rolf Kühn sadly passed away in August of that same year. His compositions, whether ballads or fast and lively pieces, always leave room for what jazz meant to him: making music together, letting it fly 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 writing down the music directly. “The piano has always been my instrument of control. Now I feel I no longer need it.” When you listen to the album, you hear that virtuoso clarinet sound, with sharp yet warm contours, 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, such as “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 himself could no longer hear fulfilled, some recordings were later completed with string arrangements for the Quatuor Cuareim. 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 very end. Fearless.