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So wonderful ! It´s exactly what I want to hear. It´s so close to my musical tastes, it´s amazing. Makes you believe, makes you pray, makes you happy.....like Pharoah Sanders does for me, my all time favourite, whom I had dedicated a composition on my latest album. Sure, I listen also to some straight ahead stuff from earlier periods, especially at a club when I hang around after a gig, or get home and feel exhausted, then some of the 1950´s BlueNotes, or Prestiges help me to relax.....

I wouldn´t say it was a bad year 2025. Serena had schizofrenia and I´m sure that voices had told her to leave me, and maybe always seeing imanginary persons and hearing imaginary voices just exhausted her to an extent that she simply laid down and died..... she was not suffering, she looked like a sleeping angel. And in her strange moods she just had told me in march that it´s over, and when I fell in love with Andreea Irina in June, in a lucid moment she smiled at me and said that she´s happy I am in love again. I had a big birthday party in december in a jazz club (where else you might find me partying 😄), playing a concert with my band, and after getting the vegane cake I made a short speech where I stated, that whatever had happened, it was the most beautiful year in my life ! Sure it was painful, but it is better so, and what should I wish more: I´m healthy and have the condition of a guy at 30 told the doctors, I have the most beautiful girl in the world, and I create music and already must plan my next album, to fulfill the contractual conditions and to create more music, you never stop, you never look back. The album came out just on Friday and it´s over.....I look what I´ll do next. But I would love and appreciate it if you all take some time for me, to listen to the album and since you all jazz buffs, please let me know what you think about it. When I play live I appreciated the kind applause, here I might appreciate your feedbacks......

Dear friends ! I can announce you, that my new album has been released on the very fine label Capricorn Music. You can listen to it on Spotify or on Apple Music ! Let me tell you a few words about it. It´s the result of my musical impressions on last year, a very very turbulent year in my life, with some very sad and bad times and much more wonderful new experiences, and that rollercoaster of emotions triggered my creative forces. I augmented my band with the wonderful singer Lili Maljic aka Lili Mae. I had discovered her when she sat in with my band in a second set as a jam session and from the first moment I knew I had found what I was looking for. Meanwhile she is also an established artist and has her own record "The Nearness of You" with the great late Jim Rotondi on trumpet ! Each member of my group has his strong position in our music, leading his/her own groups as well as playing with me 😄 It´s a 7 piece band now with Lili voc, Johannes Probst tp, Márton Papp as, Uli Langthaler b, Dusan Novakov dr, Andi Steirer perc. A few words about the originals that I composed: The title track "Simmering": That´s the name of the 11th sector of Vienna, not a tourist place that you might visit, it´s strictly working class blocks, but also the Danube River is near. The cover photo has been taken at a certain "lost place" in that sector, near a Bridge where I sometimes sit down and just think. The tune reflects the "sounds" of that place. The bass figure is the noise you can hear when the cars up on the bridge cross the bridge. "Tune for Pharoah"......it is dedicated to the master musician I like most of them all. Just listen to the lyrics sung by Lili and you know where I am at, what I think and in what I believe. "Prințesa Andreea Irina” is dedicated to the girls who came into my life in a magic night last year in June. I played a gig and spotted in the audience the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, and just by coincidence we performed "My Ideal". She is the great love that has come into my life, my Princess ! "Theme from a Nightmare". I really dreamed that little minor waltz, it was a little toy ballerina in a devasted room who started to play that melody. I woke up, still had the melody in my head and wrote it down ! "Miss Ra´s Choice": Miss Ra is the nickname of my girlfriend Andreea Irina. In the course of our second date she stated she does not play but would have loved to have learned to play piano. I told her: You got two beautiful hands, here´s the piano, sit down and play. And believe it or not: What she fingered, made SENSE, it was that little descending figure in A minor, concluding with a bit dissonant chord. It made SENSE ! I didn´t get it out of my head, the next day I made a composition out of it. The little quote of "Concierto de Aranjuez" I play before the horns do the theme, is a nod towards her, because she is half Spanish, half Romanian and was born in Barcelona. Since I am român, of course we speak romanian as our common language. "Sir Uli" is a featured for my superb bass player Uli Langthaler. It´s the only bop tune on that album, based on "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams". "The Blonde Girl with the Brown Eyes" is dedicated to my late wife, who was the stunning cover model on the album "Waltz for Serena" that we had recorded one year before. Just about a year before she left that Planet, we did a fashion shopping at some mall in our hometown Brașov, she tried a wonderful dress, made a Pirouette full of joy in front of me and in that moment that melody came into me. I´m glad she heard it, loved it and heard it live with the Band also. It was hard for me to record it, since we were doing the recording session just 2 days after she was incinerated..... Maybe you wonder why I have a girlfriend since June, when my wife still lived.....well she got mentally ill of Schizofrenia and voices told her to leave me. I couldnt do nothing against it, and maybe that mental illness slowed down her power to live and she just died without having a physical ailment, and it was not suicide....she was like a beautiful sleeping Princess....., I will always love her in another form you know...., Man I cried after we had done that track in the studio, it was actually the first track. They told me "you have to get thru that, you must !" The standards are songs that I have loved all my life long and everybody is playing great. Enjoy it, and please let me know what you think about it. Musically yours Gh.

After making the record "Eddie Who", they played for 2 weeks nightly at the since a long time defunct fine little jazzclub "Jazz Spelunke" here in Viena. I went there almost every night !

I saw Buster Williams once in 1979 as „second bass” in the Ron Carter Quartet (with Kenny Barron and Ben Riley). I must admit I like Ron Carter much more on the regular bass than on Picollo Bass that he played. Buster Williams had one solo but it sounded more interesting to me and he got very much applause for that. I love him on records, to bad I saw him live only one time.

I hear you ! But I don´t think I needed to recalibrate my ears to new listening. Funky grooves and beats were around everywhere when I was a youngster. And Free Jazz had not completly died. So it´s natural that I dug the Miles from 1975 and Ornette Coleman from 1977 and saw them live exactly in that period. The first "jazz" I had heard when I was around 13 was Mingus with Dolphy. So it was the other way round: I "discovered" let´s say Bop and Bird THRU Dolphy, discovered acoustic Miles Davis or Ornette Coleman thru the way they played in the period of my youth. Later, becoming a jazz musician in the late 70´s I concentrated on acoustic jazz and still do, but had periods of electric only, and now I may have got back to more funky stuff, since you just get bored and tired of anything if there is no change, and I keep myself young and all my gang is much younger people. But I must admit I prefer the later PrimeTime from the late 80´s into the 2000´s because I dig the more modern electric sound of let´s say an electric bass, of drums etc. much more than that old 70´s sound of electric instruments. And it got to be LOUD !!!!!! Because I am loud 😀 Oh I know what you are talking about ! Same here, the mature powerful tone. Yeah, those tracks with the choir are fun, and Old Folks is a cute tune ! And they recorded well for their time: Let´s say compare "Swedish Schnapps" or other records with the weak sound of the Savoy records. On a Savoy Bird you never hear the drums properly, but on the Verves you hear them cymbals ringing. Only one downer I have to add: I like the more spontanous Bird in live settings, but only in live settings with congenial partners. My favourite Bird is on that Columbia double vinyl "One Night at Birdland". The sound quality is terrible, but it get´s more in what I really need to hear as a musician......That´s the stuff from what I LEARNED to play. Play those tempos, play piano with similar passion like Bud, demand drummers to play LOUD etc.🤣

Well, I´m more into that funky sound of Prime Time now. I´m a bit tired of acoustic jazz I must admit. At least when I listen to music just as a listener.

Wonderful, beautiful photo !

I dont know but in the last weeks my very favourite for listening is Ornette Coleman´s Prime Time. So hip, so damn good, I LOVE it !

I saw Terumaso Hino once with Dave Liebman, and Hino had a pocket trumpet like Don Cherry !

Love it !

I bought this one after seeing Max Roach with Cecil Bridgwater, Billy Harper, Reggie Workman. I don´t know about flaws of Max Roach. To me he seemed the ultimate gentleman ! He had something aristocratic, very stily, very educated.....

The Musician I love most from them all 💕

Siegfried Kessler was such a great pianist. I loved his playing from the first moment on. I heard him with Archie Shepp for example. It´s strange that sometimes I read or hear that music lovers even today call that "Avantgarde" or say it´s to heavy stuff for them. For me it isn´t even an "electric album"......well the keyboards, thats all. But it still has so much the old conception of theme-solos-theme and it is not much more advanced than "In a Silent Way". So it´s hard for me to follow those who tell me they find it "weird" or "far out" or who knows what. I had heard Miles in 1973 with Liebman, Reggie Lukas, Pete Cosey, Mike Henderson, Al Foster and Mtume, that was my first Miles, and I must admit when people told me to buy Bitches Brew cause it´s the first "electric album" of Miles, I was almost disapointed first....imagine, Aghartha, Dark Magus, Pangeea still were not even recorded !

There were some good records on that label. I have this, and maybe a few others, I think one of Bird in Washington, Bud Powell in Washington, and Dexter´s "American Classic", Woody Shaws "Master of the Art" Oh yeah I have this, and the Howard McGhee Vol. 1 too. But I must admit I spinned more the first half of the CD, the McGhee. I´m not so much a guitar fan and it´s a bit too focussed on the guitar....don´t misunderstand me, I like Kenny Burell, Grant Green, but they are mostly in settings with horns and with piano, I like that more.

It´s one of my all time favourites. I remember an older friend had it, and it was in the time when the BN was dying, so most of the albums were OOP and there was mostly only those hidous paper bag cover double albums, and only few of them. This album was and is exactly my taste ! When I was still new in jazz I thought that what Cherry does ist automatically "Free Jazz". But this is not a Free Jazz record, it´s mostly straight ahead swing and many themes. I love each of the players, it´s an all star album. I think this and another of Cherry are the only ones of Gato Barbieri that I have. One of my favourite McTyner albums! I think that´s the line up I saw live. Maybe another drummer, I think Ronny Burrage, and a percussion player, it was a sextet with sax, violin, b, dr, perc.

Oh, me too ! I love that record, I love Alice Coltrane and especially those where Pharoah Sanders is playing with her !

Oh yeah I love it. Especially "The Nearness of You". I loved that song since I was a kid and that´s the reason why I included it in my new album. The lyrics of that song are great. Can´t play a ballad in the really heartfelt manner if I wouldn´t know the lyrics....

I love the record. I have heard that it did not sell very well and Miles accused Columbia for weak marketing. But the music is incredible fine ! But I also like the way they played the Jack Johnson stuff years later on Agharta. Especially I like the bass sound on the Agharta album more. Also, in the mid 80´s on Miles´ album "You Are Under Arrest" the bass figure at the beginning is the same like on Jack Johnson.

"What Is This Thing Called Love?" (Cole Porter) – 7:33 "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing" (Sammy Fain, Paul Francis Webster) – 4:13 "I'll Remember April" (Gene de Paul, Patricia Johnston, Don Raye) – 9:13 "Powell's Prances" (Richie Powell) – 3:28 "Time" (Richie Powell) – 5:03 "The Scene Is Clean" (Tadd Dameron, arr. Dameron) – 6:04 "Gertrude's Bounce" (Richie Powell) – 4:09

I just ordered it 🤣

Oh I have to purchase this one. It seems that this is the one with "Round Midnight" on it ? Because I saw them in 1978 and they played a stunnig wild version of "Round Midnight". Oh, such a nice album ! I have it on those RCA black&white series, from the late 70´s. I remember I had a nice conversation with Bill Hardman when he played in Cehoslovacia and I played with my group, long ago, and during intermission he said he remembers that record very well. We had a nice conversation really.

oh that would be great !

Interesting. I have a Clifford Brown-Max Roach vinyl very old and its also titled Basin Street but seems to be a studio record. It has mostly Richie Powell´s tunes, but also Dameron´s "The Scene is Clean".

at least I can say I saw him live once. Was a great gig, he was together with Dee Dee Bridgewater on stage, it was double billing. So great. And a stellar rhythm section. One of my European favourites was on piano: Siegfried Kessler, he was soooo great always, with Archie Shepp etc. On bass was David Eubanks, it was after his tenure with Dex. He had double booking those days, he played with Jackie McLean and the next day with Jimmy Witherspoon/Dee Bridgewater. I can´t remember who was on drums. Too bad they did not record it. It was incredible !