Edgar Knecht - Dance On Deep Waters (2013)

"Dance On Deep Waters" enters the top 30 of the official German Jazz-Charts !!!
Our new album has been released and we are very happy about the fantastic reviews it has received so far. Even more, in September it has entered the top 30 of the Official German Jazz Charts !!!

The critics just can’t hide their excitement when it comes to Edgar Knecht. “Jazz hasn’t been this original and stimulating for a long time”, one of them enthused; “This music is simply stunning”, respected monthly Jazzpodium confessed; and Germany’s biggest quality newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote: “This is truly unheard-of music.” And truly, the German pianist and his band of bassist Rolf Denecke and drum-duo Stephan Emig and Tobias Schulte succeed in ­creating something genuinely new:
A fusion of the vivacity of jazz and world music with the elegance of classical composition and the depth and ­clarity of ancient folk melodies.

On their new CD “Dance on Deep Waters”, the brilliant quartet continue their forage through the “Old German Songbook”. As a result, some of the most popular songs of the romantic era are turning into works of spine-tingling, mesmerising ­intensity, including Latin-flavoured “Gedankenfreiheit” or lightningspeed bebop-piece “Frühling”.

With his unique and refreshing approach, Edgar Knecht has both raised the bar for those following in his trail and opened up new gateways to long-lost traditions. Thanks to their airy, playful magic, his songs are suspenseful spaces for the imagination to run wild and seeming paradoxes to co-exist: “Der wilde Wassermann” (“Wild Aquarius”) is both minimal and classically rich, while tragic love story “Es waren zwei Königskinder” (“Once there were two king’s children”) seems to ­dispense with time and space altogether.

Piano, bass and drums are dancing on the waves of deep waters, rhythms and melodies are rising like ecstatic fireworks. “And all of this”, according to newspaper Hessische Allgemeine, “is done with plenty of Innigkeit, a boisterous joy of playing, a love for improvisation and spontaneity. Sometimes it’s so good, it makes you cry.”