JAZZ & COCKTAILS (2003)

Concert: CHAMBER MUSIC
Instumentation:

for violin, violoncello & piano

Publisher:

Doblinger Music Publishers (catalog #37 213)

Premiere Performance:

07/04/2004 at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, NY by Ulrike-Anima Mathe - violin, Kari Ravnan - violoncello, Allen Shawn - piano

Duration: 12 minutes (1 movement)
Commissioned by:

Cambridge Commission for Music from Salem, NY

CD Recording:

Gernot Wolfgang, COMMON GROUND, Albany Records TROY854;
Trio Accento, EXTANT BLUES, Albany Records TROY1792

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DOWNLOAD PROGRAM NOTES (English)
DOWNLOAD PROGRAM NOTES (German)


(click on images of excerpts to enlarge)

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More information about the recording of Jazz & Cocktails  on the album COMMON GROUND
More information about the recording of Jazz & Cocktails  on the album EXTANT BLUES
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Purchase the sheet music for Jazz & Cocktails  at:
Theodore Front Musical Literature, Inc.
sheetmusicplus.com

Reviews:

“Then we reach Gernot Wolfgang’s “Jazz and Cocktails”and almost immediately one is aware of a first-rate musical mind at work … This is really a marvelous piece, and Trio Accento plays it very well.”

Lynn René Bayley, The Art Music Lounge

“In Gernot Wolfgang’s “Jazz and Cocktails”, he explores a musical party of sorts where different styles are referenced to depict intimate conversations with some of the great composers and performers of the 20th Century. Wolfgang’s use of extended harmonies makes for a striking backdrop to the way jazz and classical styles merge and move through different moods.  It is at times like a third-stream jazz number of Shostakovich mixed with a little Grusin.”

Steven Kennedy, Cinemusical

 

Jazz & Cocktails is an entertaining musical conversation, the musical equivalent of sophisticated talk over cocktails, with jazz in the background. There are what Shakespeare called “set[s] of wit well played” as ideas are sent backwards and forwards between instruments … ”

Glyn Pursglove, Musicweb-International.com

“Gernot Wolfgang elegantly blurs the borders between New Music and Jazz, high art and sophisticated entertainment.”

Ensemble (Germany)

“The piano trio Jazz & Cocktails is again just as the title suggests; the three ‘voices’ bring a hubbub of conversation; monologues, two-part or triangular exchanges; some blurred by distance, others partially or fully overheard. They’re characterized by their variety – snippets of serious, reflective or light-hearted converse – fundamentally played out in jazz idioms.”

Howard Smith, Music & Vision

“There is certainly a lot of space in the relaxed ambiance of Jazz & Cocktails (dominated by bleeding string breaths and Robert Thies’ shimmering piano cascades.”

Tobias Fischer, Tokafi.com