You can do everything and have been for a long time. There was always someone first or faster or wilder. Stephan Weiser therefore greets the future and winks at the past. And he plays his music confidently and light-heartedly in the midst of the jazz trio’s network of relationships, which is rich in traditional ballast. Because his instrument, the piano, has allowed him to travel far and wide, from the Rosenheimer Land to the Mozarteum to Stefan Raab and now to the teaching team at the New Jazz School in Munich. Weiser let himself be inspired, you can hear the eighties in the sound, the diversity of the past decade in the piano in the style-open ornamentation, the hard training of the classic in the technical finesse. On his new album “Petrichor” you can also feel the fun in the fluid complexity of the pieces, for which he let it run in the studio with Peter Cudek on bass, Christian Holzhauser on drums and the vocal guests Sylwia Bialas and Maximilian Höcherl. They are not only partners in musical conversation, but also counterpoints of creative power. Because Weiser enjoys Holzhauser’s groove, which runs through the music in fine cymbal playing and funky backbeat. He lets himself be carried by Cudek’s resonant bass sound, which, trained by his teacher Ron Carter, underpins the band’s sound. You’ve been allowed to do everything for a long time and so the band indulges in the fun of reducing it to the essentials of making music together. “Petrichor” does not intend to overwhelm with the outrageous, but rather to act as a powerfully modern and tastefully emphatic piano trio. And the last Afro-Latin-tinged track on the album is called “Can You Dance?” – also the one option that is possible.
Weiser/Cudek/Holzhauser: “Petrichor”, Unit Records; live with Maximilian Höcherl on Wed., Oct. 5th, 8.30 p.m., Unterfahrt, Einsteinstr. 42