Kenny Werner The Melody

PRESS CONTACT:
press release
PIROUET Records
Grünwalder Weg 30 · 82041 Oberhaching · Germany
www.pirouet.com · info@pirouet.de
phone: +49-89-55 077674
Steffen Mayer
Spritzenplatz 12
22765 Hamburg
Germany
phone: +49-40-8817288-6
s.mayer@herzogpromotion.com
www.herzogpromotion.com
Kenny Werner
The Melody
Release date: July 7, 2015
Pirouet Records · PIT3083
Kenny Werner piano
Johannes Weidenmueller bass
Ari Hoenig drums
1. Try to Remember
2.Who?
3.Balloons
4. 26-2
5.Voncify the Emulyans
6. In Your Own Sweet Way
7. Beauty Secrets
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Press release
Kenny Werner:
The Melody
Release: July 7, 2015
Pirouet Records · PIT3083
PRESS CONTACT:
press release
PIROUET Records
Grünwalder Weg 30 · 82041 Oberhaching · Germany
www.pirouet.com · info@pirouet.de
phone: +49-89-55 077674
Steffen Mayer
Spritzenplatz 12
22765 Hamburg
Germany
phone: +49-40-8817288-6
s.mayer@herzogpromotion.com
www.herzogpromotion.com
Three-Way Melody
The great American pianist Kenny Werner together with the tasteful drummer
Ari Hoenig and versatile bass virtuoso Johannes Weidenmüller play seamless music in trio,
transporting The Melody to the forefront.
T
here is a sparkling brilliance to the pieces on this CD.
The wide-awake interaction and tongue-in-cheek looseness of the playing captivates straight away. Every bar
draws forth unexpected subtleties as the three engage in a
seamless high-intensity give-and-take. There is a good
reason why pianist Kenny Werner calls this recording The
Melody. A finely ramified cooperation converges into a gripping melody-in-trio. And there’s humor within. The popular
ballad Try to Remember dances through several scintillating
transformations before ending with a tip of the hat to Sonny Rollin’s calypso classic St. Thomas. Surprises are casu-
2
ally dispersed throughout the pieces—The Kenny Werner
Trio’s strong statement as to the vitality of a jazz form rich
in tradition: the jazz trio.
Born in Brooklyn in 1951, Kenny Werner has played with
greats across a wide spectrum of styles, including Charles
Mingus, the Mel Lewis Orchestra, and harmonica virtuoso
Toots Thielemans. This breadth of experience has gained
him the self-confidence to relax and trust his instincts.
His acclaimed book Effortless Mastery, which deals with
creativity, also describes his approach to playing. Drummer
Press release
Kenny Werner:
The Melody
Release: July 7, 2015
Pirouet Records · PIT3083
PRESS CONTACT:
press release
PIROUET Records
Grünwalder Weg 30 · 82041 Oberhaching · Germany
www.pirouet.com · info@pirouet.de
phone: +49-89-55 077674
Ari Hoenig was born in Philadelphia in 1973, and bassist
Johannes Weidenmüller came into the world in Heidelberg,
Germany in 1966. They have been playing together in
Kenny Werner’s trio since 1999. With a violinist and pianist
for a mother and a conductor for a father, Ari Hoenig is a
musician who conjures a fascinatingly melodic sound on
the drums. Hoenig won the prestigious 2013 BMW World
Jazz Award with his own band, and he has played with jazz
giants Joe Lovano, Pat Metheny, and Wynton Marsalis.
In 1991 bassist Johannes Weidenmüller left Cologne, Germany where he had been studying, to make the move to
New York, to learn from bass greats Dave Holland and
Cecil McBee. Since then he has worked with a number of
world-renowned players, including Randy Brecker, George
Benson, and Joshua Redman. He is a bassist who masterfully applies his strength and versatility to the most variable
of formations.
“They were pretty much youngsters at the time,” says
Werner as he looks back some 15 years to the beginning of
the trio’s relationship. “They would always call my wife and
say, ‘Is Kenny back from tour yet?’ It was easy to start
working together with such eager young players who could
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Steffen Mayer
Spritzenplatz 12
22765 Hamburg
Germany
phone: +49-40-8817288-6
s.mayer@herzogpromotion.com
www.herzogpromotion.com
play anything I could come up with. What I love about that
playing is that they are so creative while being so advanced
rhythmically and in every other way. I feel like I still learn
from their rhythmic stuff, but as advanced as they are, they
are always composing while they play. This is what I appreciate—a band that composes spontaneously rather than
just solos all the time.”
At times there is a sense that the three discover musical
motifs together, then disassemble and restructure them in
a new musical context; fascinating, as in Dave Brubeck’s
In Your Own Sweet Way, which at first seems to emerge
from a completely different musical world—rhythmic figures appear Morse-code-like, commingling at the beginning, when suddenly the theme springs forth, only later
to be entangled within the earlier rhythmic figures. John
Coltrane’s classic composition 26-2 is also given an exciting interpretation in which Werner’s trio carries over the
harmonic complexity of the original with an air of complete
sangfroid. Try to Remember, the hit pop song from the longrunning off-Broadway musical The Fantasticks, is an interesting choice of Werner’s. He says that, “Sometimes, as in
the case of Try to Remember, I pick it just because it's such
Press release
Kenny Werner:
The Melody
Release: July 7, 2015
Pirouet Records · PIT3083
PRESS CONTACT:
press release
PIROUET Records
Grünwalder Weg 30 · 82041 Oberhaching · Germany
www.pirouet.com · info@pirouet.de
phone: +49-89-55 077674
an atypical jazz standard. But usually the reason is that
I found some funny or unique way of playing that standard.
I don't believe in playing standards otherwise; they have
been played so many times. I try to treat the standard like
an original composition, and treat the original composition
like a standard.”
The listener comes face to face with Kenny Werner’s own
incisive compositions. There is the closing piece, Beauty
Secrets, with its lyrical beauty conjoined to a pulsating
rhythmic density. And there is the curious, onomatopoetic
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design: Konstantin Kern · www.kern-design.com
photography: Rob Davidson
Steffen Mayer
Spritzenplatz 12
22765 Hamburg
Germany
phone: +49-40-8817288-6
s.mayer@herzogpromotion.com
www.herzogpromotion.com
Voncify the Emulyans, with its impressionistic flow. (Don’t
bother looking the words up: you won’t find them.) There’s
a good story to Balloons: “When my kid had a birthday
party, my wife would buy 50 helium-filled balloons. The
house would be filled with those balloons. After the party
was over, the balloons would stay in the house until they
all died. The song charts the trajectory of the balloons from
when they were bouncing against the ceiling until the depressing point when they were hovering just off the floor.”
The Kenny Werner trio—three superb storytellers, masters
at commingling musical tension and beauty in The Melody.
Press release
Kenny Werner:
The Melody
Release: July 7, 2015
Pirouet Records · PIT3083