NEW WIND JAZZ ORCHESTRA & KRISTJAN RANDALU

The New Wind Jazz Orchestra combines young and fervent temperament and professional mastery. The ensemble of a new generation of musicians who started working in 2019, set the goal of bringing the culture of Estonian jazz orchestras to an international level by cooperating with the best Estonian and foreign composers and orchestra conductors. The big band, brought together under the leadership of saxophone player Lauri Kadalipp, loves to test itself with new challenges and a repertoire that requires professionalism – as is the work of Kristjan Randalu.

Kristjan Randalu is one of the most active and wide-ranging Estonian jazz musicians in the world. Thanks to his diverse creative activities, Randalu has represented Estonia at world-renowned jazz festivals and major concert stages, being valued as a performer and composer of both jazz and classical music. Randalu’s piano playing as a soloist and ensemble musician is played on more than 40 records, including a Grammy nomination in 2006 and the 2012 Jazz Album of the Year title at the Estonian Music Awards. In 2018, Randalu’s album “Absence” was released by ECM Records. Released in 2020, the duo Mussorgsky Pictures Revisited (BMC Records) with Dave Liebman was selected as “Best of 2020” by The New York City Jazz Record magazine.

Over the years, the internationally renowned pianist and composer Kristjan Randalu has shown his creative face more and more boldly and in various ways, writing music for both ensembles and larger ensembles, from male choirs to symphony orchestras. Randalu’s music with the New Wind Jazz Orchestra was performed for the first time in the summer of 2020 at the Triigi Filharmoonia. New works will also be completed for this Jazzkaar concert.

The focus of the concert is the piano as a soloist with a contemporary jazz orchestra. In addition to new works, there are new adaptations of previously released works – (“Enter Denter”, “Absence”), more recent orchestral and choral compositions “Inner Asylum” (Randalu & TKO) and “Songs of the Four Births of the Country” (Randalu & RAM) will be premiered.

This concert will be conducted my Wolf Kerschek.