Turning Point Sebastian Sternal & hr-Bigband

• 1Play05:04
• 2Elegy08:41
• 3Friedkin07:58
• 4Unfold04:25
• 5Muku05:13
• 6Fanfare07:38
• 7Lament06:27
• 8Red Beat08:11
• 9Tomorrowland07:14
• Total Runtime01:00:51

Info for Turning Point

Making music with friends is always a joy. For this reason we are very happy that the Frankfurt Radio Big Band is realizing their project together with pianist Sebastian Sternal. The three-time ECHO award winner has written and recorded an entire album for the Frankfurt Radio Big Band.

Three-time ECHO Jazz Award winner Sebastian Sternal has come full circle with his new recording Turning Point. At the same time, the pianist is once again breaking new ground as composer and arranger of the first-class hr-Bigband for this latest project. He leads the ensemble from the piano, allows the band's outstanding soloists to have their say - and has practically written the new compositions for them. The constant exploration of finely tuned twists and turns in his compositional language is a tradition with him. For more than two decades now, the musician, who trained in Cologne and Paris, has been presenting a self-contained oeuvre full of contrasts. He followed up his first trio albums (from 2009) with his award-winning Symphonic Society (from 2012) with almost orchestral excursions at disc length, before returning to the smallest possible form of music creation with an intensive solo album (2022). Turning Point unquestionably brings this diversity together structurally and conceptually to form the pinnacle of his work to date.

At the age of 14, the jazz enthusiast wrote his first big band arrangement. By chance, Peter Herbolzheimer studied the young arranger's sheet music. Herbolzheimer promptly issued an invitation to take part in the next work phase of the German National Youth Jazz Orchestra at short notice. Sternal was not only able to hear his arrangement played live, but was also able to benefit from many tips from the experienced band leader afterwards. The topic of big band has stayed with him for many years - and has now culminated in the album Turning Point. Sternal is enthusiastic about the two great big band traditions, both the gripping, bluesy sound of Count Basie or Thad Jones and the orchestral richness of colour of Duke Ellington or Gil Evans. Basie's spirit promptly beckons with friendly approval in the opening track Play. The number is cleverly placed as an entrée to Turning Point. The interplay between the hr-Bigband musicians and Sternal initially introduces the ensemble with palpable enthusiasm, which dominates the programme for the following 55 minutes. The liveliness takes on a changeable form in the following composition Elegy. Its beginning is characterised only by delicate piano and percussion sounds. Immediately afterwards, the band moves up to full development, including freely improvised passages, before the action moves back into pianissimo.

Sebastian Sternal, piano, direction
hr-Bigband

ebastian Sternal
Pianist and composer Sebastian Sternal (*1983) is a musical jack-of-all-trades with many creative faces.

Born in Mainz, he runs the Jazz Campus at the Johannes Gutenberg University there. He is a professor of jazz piano at the same university and also teaches jazz theory at the Cologne University of Music.

As a pianist, Sebastian Sternal, alongside Michael Wollny and Florian Weber, is one of the greats of the younger German jazz generation and is exemplary of a new type of musician of recent decades. He possesses outstanding technical mastery and is open to other genres as a matter of course. He was influenced by jazz and classical music studies in Cologne and Paris.

His love of jazz and classical music is part of his program. With his Symphonic Society, he realizes an organic integration of elements of jazz and classical music. He combines the richness of sound of a string quartet with a jazz wind quartet.

His music is characterized by a pleasant mixture of restraint and presence. It radiates dignity and strength, never imposes itself and is so appealing that you simply cannot escape it. Sternal is a virtuoso with a commanding left hand, which often engages in contrasting dialogues with the right hand with independent melodic lines. The influences of jazz greats such as Art Tatum, Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea, as well as those of the impressionists Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy, resonate in this wonderfully balanced sound.

As an innovator of contemporary jazz and also for his diverse projects, Sternal was awarded the ECHO Jazz prize in 2013, 2016 and 2018. He was also honoured with the “Annual German Record Critics Award” in 2015. This is rounded off by the "Neuer Deutscher Jazzpreis", the WDR Jazzpreis and the Concours Piano Jazz Martial Solal (Paris). At a young age, he received a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation. He has worked with jazz greats such as Dee Dee Bridgewater, David Binney, John Riley and Larry Grenadier. Standing still is therefore not an option for Sebastian Sternal and, with this in mind, he has realized a fantastic project with the hr-Bigband (Frankfurt Radio Bigband) in Frankfurt, one of the best big band ensembles in Europe.

Sternal not only plays piano in this project, but also wrote all nine compositions and conducted the band during the recording. As his trademark, the music here also combines influences from classical music and jazz and impresses with dazzling tonal colors, catchy melodies and energetic grooves. The outstanding soloists of the hr-Bigband shine with contrasting improvisation and interactions.

This album contains no booklet.