Christian Elsässer - Spurensuche (2020)

In recent years, Christian Elsässer has made a name for himself beyond Germany's borders as a composer and arranger for big bands and orchestras. The i.a. Pianist from Munich, who has received a Jazz Echo, has released productions with the big bands of HR and NDR as well as the Jazzrausch Bigband (The Mirror Suite 2018). In the meantime, he founded his own jazz orchestra, named after him, which received the Bavarian Art Prize in 2016. Elsässer has a continuous collaboration with the Dutch Metropole Orkest, which has received numerous awards (including three Grammys), and he has also been engaged several times by the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. As part of these collaborations, Elsässer worked with international greats such as Dee Dee Bridgewater, Kurt Elling, Mike Stern and Mike Mainieri.

Now Christian Elsässer presents a new album, this time with the big band of the WDR. We have known each other since 2015, in the last three years Elsässer has been invited to Cologne more and more often as a composer, arranger and guest conductor. For the search for clues he created compositions and arrangements with a considerable range. Despite their differences in details, the pieces convey a stringent aesthetic. It reflects Elsässer's motivation to always think a little more orchestral, to sound out tone colors and nuances even further. The WDR big band and its artistic director balance elegantly between historical awareness and contemporary aesthetics and find an impressively variable, multi-layered musical language.