When I Was Taranczewski with Olaf Taranczewski

• 1Coco04:19
• 2And Everything Was Calm07:06
• 3The Composer05:06
• 4Grønland06:31
• 5When I Was04:26
• 6Thing of Souls03:34
• 7Ligature08:02
• 8Twenty-One Years03:56
• 9Mysore06:26
• 10Me Time04:53
• 11Take Me Home04:03
• Total Runtime58:22

Info for When I Was

Taranczewski is a trio from Berlin. Connoisseurs of film soundtracks may be familiar with the name Olaf Taranczewski, for everyone else the band Taranczewski comes out of nowhere, and yet after just a few notes it seems as if it had always been there.

This impression does not come about by chance. Pianist Olaf Taranczewski has known bassist Jean-Philippe Wadle and drummer Benedikt Stehle for decades, and yet they have never played together in this constellation. The pianist is the composer and namesake of the band, but as one can easily hear on the debut album "When I Was", Taranczewski is a stable triangle whose impulses and playing shares are evenly and - more importantly - equally distributed.

The perfection of form of classical music, the nonchalant spontaneity of jazz piano trios such as Bill Evans, the emotionality of Americana music, the binding closeness of fusion music, the epic sound understanding of film soundtracks, the accumulated reductiveness of minimal music, the narrative flow of moritatas, the melancholy cheerfulness of Yiddish music, the individual expressiveness of chansons - all this comes together on "When I Was" to form a unity that has never been heard before.

Olaf Taranczewski, piano
Jean-Philippe Wadle; double bass
Benedikt Stehle, drums

Olaf Taranczewski
After more than 15 years without a touring band, award-winning film composer and pianist Olaf Taranczewski returns to the live stage with his longtime friends and musical partners Jean-Philippe Wadle and Benedikt Stehle.

Already after the first notes, which were played in November 2020 in the studio in Berlin-Kreuzberg, the group sensed that they had found their own sound: Intimate and wide. Gentle and powerful. Calm and rich in textures and with a narrative, painterly approach to each composition and arrangement.

The three musicians describe their music as Cinematic Jazz - creating moods, emotions and acoustic landscapes, giving each note room to breathe and searching for a deeper meaning in each melody, in each harmony.

Olaf Taranczewski has known bassist Jean-Philippe Wadle and drummer Benedikt Stehle for decades, but they never played together in this constellation before the band's formation in 2020. The three musicians are not only united by making music together in different projects, but also by listening to music together.

"The pieces themselves are also up to 15 years old," adds Olaf Taranczewski. "As far as the songs are concerned, it is in a way a 'best of' my compositions from the last decade and a half. However, they always felt unfinished. With Benedikt and Jean-Philippe, they have been completely recreated."

This album contains no booklet.