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Benjamin Lackner

Spindrift

ECM
Release Date: January 10, 2025

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1 Spindrift.  
2 Mosquito Flats  
3 More Mesa  
4 Chambary  
5 See You Again My Friend  
6 Murnau  
7 Fair Warning  
8 Anacapa  
9 Ahwahnee  
10 Out Of The Fog  
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Back with a newly formed quintet, gathered together for a particularly fruitful 2024 session in Southern France, the German-American pianist Benjamin Lackner now presents a different side of his composer-approach that should go a step further in exposing Lackner as a force to be reckoned with in the contemporary jazz world. Trumpeter Mathias Eick is the sole returnee from Lackner’s debut Last Decade and heard here in striking dualism with Mark Turner’s idiosyncratic saxophone dialect, forming a key-characteristic of the interplay that permeates Spindrift. The horn-duo and pianist are joined by the nonpareil bassist Linda May Han Oh and French drummer Matthieu Chazarenc, who was part of Lackner’s trio before the pianist’s tenure with ECM.

“I spent the last two years writing nearly 100 tunes and experimenting with two or three voices in each song,” Lackner outlines the process that led to new material. “I would write the tune, record a demo version that same day and then let it rest for a week before deciding on whether it was a keeper or not. The closer we got to the recording the more I started editing my list down and I showed up in the studio for the recording with about 20 songs. We chose the nine we deemed the best for the session. I was really blown away by how the musicians approached the music with such openness and spontaneity, despite a lot of the music having been far more written out than on Last Decade.“

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